Odd hissing noise

Cubase
#1

Hi all,
I’d be grateful for some help. A student has installed Cubase Essentials 5.1.1 on a Windows XP machine, connected to a Lexicon Alpha interface. When he records, an odd, modulated noise is produced, though the waveform looks fine. The odd things are:- 1. Recording with Audacity is fine, and 2. as soon as Cubase is started not only are the recordings unusable but Windows own system sounds are similarly distorted. If he reboots, the system sounds return to normal and decent recordings can be made through Audacity.

Any ideas??

Many thanks

Steve

#2

There can be many things wrong.

  1. what soundcard was he using before
  2. have you updated all your drivers for cubase and win XP
  3. check your asio and your latency is not to high
  4. check you have the most upto date drivers for your USB dongle
#3

There can be many things wrong.

  1. what soundcard was he using before
  2. have you updated all your drivers for cubase and win XP
  3. check your asio and your latency is not to high
  4. check you have the most upto date drivers for your USB dongle

Do check your driver, but instead confirm that your latency is not too LOW. :wink:

Also, I don’t see how updating dongle drivers is going to improve the situation.

#4

Hi,

many thanks for your responses.

He didn’t have a previous soundcard - just the onboard sounds. The weird thing is that it all works fine with Audacity, so that would suggest that the ASIO drivers are working fine - just not in Cubase!

The latency was set quite high originally and I adjusted that to 512 but with no noticeable difference.

Cheers, Steve

#5

I don´t think Audacity uses ASIO, might be wrong though…

#6

Make sure the samplerates match (cubase project setup and soundcard), also make sure the soundcard is not set to external clock.

#7

Thanks for that - I’ll investigate

Cheers, Steve

#8

Which ASIO driver are you using? 512 samples is still too low, you should be looking at like 2048 samples. What does your external connections setup look like (mics, guitars, MIDI devices, etc.)?

#9

When I think about it how can updating a dongle improve your sound ! nope cant make that one out

but since updating to the latest drivers for my USB dongle that was some time middle of last year, I cant remember
when my cubase glitched or hanged when I close down, befor updating to latest drivers you can guarantee it will hang at least once every two weeks or so.

If and when there is a problem with cubase I will include making sure my dongle has the latest drivers aswell as other formal checks to correct the problem. its a kind of check these first kind of thing ( habit)

and yes your right LOW latency is what you should check.

#10

Hi, yes 2048 samples was the default buffer - I only tried changing it in a vain attempt to get something working!

cheers

Steve

#11

You didn’t say what kind of equipment is hooked up to the Lexicon Alpha or which driver you are using. Since Audacity supposedly does not use ASIO, I would try a different driver than the one you are using. If you’re not using the ASIO4ALL driver, that would be a good one to try http://asio4all.com/. ASIO doesn’t seem to like your hardware. :laughing: You would think there would be a simple answer to this question, but in reality there are so many things that can go wrong that it’s ridiculous.

BTW, if you’re using that stupid duplex driver, that would explain your problem.