Crackly sound from Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
Hello all! I've searched the forums and I've seen that others have had similar issues with the Scarlett, but I haven't found an answer to this problem so I thought I'd ask.
I'm using a Sennheiser dynamic mic going into my Scarlett, then into Max MSP for a vocoder/harmoniser patch a la Jacob Collier. It actually sounds really good, there are just little pops and crackles in the sound, like little interruptions. At first I thought my compressor or limiter might be causing issues, so I removed them completely. Interestingly, even if there's no sound going into the mic, I'm still hearing little interruptions in the noise floor of the sound output, almost as if the Scarlett has a bad connection to my computer. So I tried switching mic cables, and switching USB cables for Scarlett to my computer. I also tried removing all USB devices except the Scarlett, because I read that can cause issues.
I tried using the same Scarlett set up to record a track in Garageband, and there were no pops, crackles, or interruptions in the sound, which means it's not an issue with cables, the mic, or the Scarlett itself, it must be something going on in Max MSP. Any ideas?
Thanks all!
I tried creating a new Max patch and got clean sound! So it must be something inside my other patch. But I tried bypassing literally everything — I tried going into my vocoder patch and disconnecting the adc~ and dac~ from everything else in the chain, then connecting them together and still got crackles. So what the heck could be causing it??
UPDATE: problem solved by spending lots of time experimenting with the options in the audio status window. Here are my current settings, which are giving me a very clean sound:
Sampling rate 44.1 kHz
I/O vector size 1024
Signal vector size 512
Scheduler overdrive: Yes
Audio interrupt: No
I/O 512 and Signal Vestor 64 is a minimum for anything real time.
128 / 64 would be better.
If the scarlet can't cope with that, than I am afraid You need a better interface.