cracking sounds, when moving windows

[nebelfuerst]

When I move windows (even within scope5.1) on my win7-32bit system with pulsar2+pulsar1+pulsar1, I hear a cracking sound out of my A16.
My Bios is allready set to all recommendations and I tried to de-accellerate my gfx-card.
Unfortunately, the nvidia gt9500 doesn't give feedback about deactivation of hw acceleration.

How can I track the cause of this problem ?

Is there a better brand of gfx cards to use with scope ?

[fra77x2]

I think this is a power supply and grounding issue.

Is everything connected to the same fuse?

Can you test another fuse? In home studios that are powered
by common mains sometimes part of the electric network is "polluted".

I remember a situation where every time the elevator of the building was activated
i heard a high pitch sound from my monitors.

Sometimes the phase that supplies the kitchen (in a home) is separated and better grounded.

I'm not sure, though. (i' m not an electrician)

Perhaps wait for some other answer

[JoPo]

It's possible ot have crackling sounds when moving windows but a power supply/ground issue would generate noise all the time. The elevator had certainly a frequency modulator to control speed electric engine. That generates harmonics (like in music !) in the electric net voltage value -> peaks & hollows. It certainly was like there was a long attac EG on the high pitch you heard, no ?
But it's also true that with a very good ground, those noise may disapear...

I remember I had that issue log time ago but I can't remember how they disapeared.. You should try a research on the forum.

--> nebelfuerst, you are a bit laconic about how / when those noise appeared ... Did you do something or are they there since ever ?

[nebelfuerst]

My setup is like this:

A16 <-> Pulsar1 + Pulsar1 + Pulsar2; Win 7/32Bit, Intel I5
or
A16 <-> Pulsar1 + Scope; WinXP/32Bit, AMD Athlon3200

Normally the scope runs as slave to the A16.
I use the first Pulsar1 as Adat-interface to be able to load my projects in both systems.
My BiosSettings are audio-optmised.. I think

If I don't touch anything, the sound is clean without any cracks.
But when editing, I sometimes move the routing-window oder even filerequesters. I usually hear little cracks, but when moving the windows around for 2 seconds, the sound stops completely for about 1 second. This also happens, if the scope is the master.

I also tried to work with remote desktop ( to keep the local gfx-card from doing anything) but it still occurred.

[fra77x2]

So you get crackling noises when moving windows and you have:

a. checked the bios
b. messed with the graphics card settings
c. tried to not move your mouse
d. used remote desktop

Now if you press alt+ctrl+delete you will get a unique BIOS+graphics card settings panel with
the option "make crackling noises when moving windows around"

You should untick this option.

If this succeeds but you also like to get a free screen saver
perhaps you can try find better grounding for your system.

[JoPo]

A16 <-> Pulsar1 + Pulsar1 + Pulsar2; Win 7/32Bit, Intel I5
or
A16 <-> Pulsar1 + Scope; WinXP/32Bit, AMD Athlon3200

You mean you've got 2pc ? And there is noise in both ?

[ronnie]

USB mouse sharing interrupts?

[nebelfuerst]

Yes, I have two Pcs.
The AMD Athlon makes the crackling noise only on excessive window movements and the cracks sound like a old recordplayer.
The I5 is much worse. Dragging a window within scope makes not only cracks, it even stalls the soundprocessing for 1 second.

I set the pci latency on both systems to 32 and disabled all possible GPU accelerations.

On the I5, the problem is with windows, that are moved opaque. I switched this off for system windows, but within scope the movements are still opaque.
Small windows within scope ( like the DSP load) don't cause cracks.. it is just the bigger windows like mixers or routing.

I played around with lots of windows latency-measurement tools, but the don't seem to recognize this problem.

The mouse/keys are PS2, there is just a networkcard and harddisk left, which are unlikely to become busy when moving windows.
If the I5 is forced to become busy ( running 3d games/benchmarks), there is no cracking.
Cracks only occur, when the graphics job seems to be done by the I5 itself.

Anything I can do ?

[fra77x2]

https://www.google.gr/search?q=digital+ ... swG195CIBw

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Hearing-thing ... 04766.aspx

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/329 ... g-speakers

[nebelfuerst]

Found it !!

The problem consists of using the pulsar1 as Adat-interface while the pulsar2 or scope being the primary card.
As soon as I directly attach the Adat to the pulsar2/scope, the cracks are gone.

It seems like scope cannot handle a secondary card to be the adat interface correctly.
( I have no clue, what the CPU can influence here, as I expected the DSPs to work by their direct link..)

Fortunately, scope is smart enough to recognize, that the Adat of pulsar2 within a project should be loaded as "adat of scope" on the second machine.
I do not even loose my redundancy.

[garyb]

no, that's not the problem, it's probably a bad ground.
anyway, i'm glad that it's working.

[nebelfuerst]

I did further investigation on this topic:
It seems like the Adat-input, where the slave scope is syncing to, needs to be on the primary card.
I can make the pulsar1 to be the primary card by removing the pulsar2, so there are no cracks.

If A16 is the clock master, things are much worse than running the A16 as a slave of the pulsars.
( But I prefer the A16 to be the master.)

Although I'm very sensitive to grounding, I am sure, that it's just the logics, which cause problems.
I am just "rewiring" the optical Adat between two optical ports in the same pc to make the cracks come and go.
Somehow it doesn't occur on each pc with the same intensity.

Thanks everybody for your suggestions. It helped me through a dark day

[garyb]

well, ADAT shouldn't matter which card, it's possible that there is dust in a port or that an ADAT port isn't working so well....

[JoPo]

If you've got 2 pc's and both make bad noise, first, you're unlucky... Then, you should as a priority search what 2 pc's have in common that could make those noise, that restricts a lot all possibilities... And indeed, ground would be a very good candidate... Do you live in a house or apartment ?
If you are in a house, you should improve the electric ground by hammering a 1 meter metal bar in your back yard, close to the house and wire it to the other electic ground wires. This should reduce your ground resistance, and you can even throw some water around...
If you are in an apartment, location : call the owner to improve the ground of his building ! (it's above all for your and other, like children, safety !!) If you're the owner, ask to all building owners to make some work !

If the ground resistance is too high, anybody in your house/building risks his life ! And last but not least, you can have bad noise in your audio system !