Sporadic sound disturbances on Noah EX

HiEnergy · Post by **HiEnergy** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 3:34 pm

Hope that this was not posted previously.
I already asked the Creamware support team via email and got no response.
When playing back sound from a computer via the Noah ASIO Wave device over USB, after a while there's a sporadic disturbance distorting the sounds the Noah receives from the computer.
The sound then suddenly becomes hissing and crackling. Noah's internal instruments are not concerned, only the audio delivered by a computer gets damaged.
The problem occurs on different computers, no matter what music software is used.
The operating system is Windows XP Home SP2.
Seemingly the ASIO buffer size has no impact on the problem.
The drivers are: cwusbaud.sys, version 1.2.1.8, wdmaud.drv version 5.1.2600.2180, Noah firmware version 1.4.23.
Does anybody know this problem or can give me a helpful hint?

Joxer the Mighty · Post by **Joxer the Mighty** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 7:57 am

I have this very same problem, but on a mac. Have not been able to come up with a solution despite trying many things. I never encountered this problem when I used the Noah on my Windows machine though. It's very annoying, and the reason why I don't use the Noah very often.

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 8:03 am

just an idea, because i remember having things like that in the past. it was solved by putting the noah on its own usb controller.
for ex, i have 3 usb inputs : the usb controllers go by pairs. so noah is on the third usb slot (ie, this controller has noah only).
before, it was sharing an usb controller with the mouse, and each time i moved the mouse, it produced clics.
now it is fine.
i do not know if your problem is the same...
also, i don't use the usb sound driver very much, because it tends to loose synch sometimes (eventhough i make some recording sessions with noah usb and it goes fine most of the time).
good luck.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: spacef on 2005-08-09 09:06 ]</font>

natsuga · Post by **natsuga** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 4:57 am

Hi.
I had similar problems, not exactly the same, but now I'm almost sure that Noah is very week against ground loop. So I think that the noise you describe is kind of hum concerning ground loop. I bought a transformer isolator (hum elliminator) Ebtech LL2 (You can look at Art T8 too) and now everyting is very clean. I understand that the noise you describe is beetween Noah and computer but, Ground loop act as an antenna, so if you connect your Noah to a mixer with an isolator, probably you'll have no more hum.

Joxer the Mighty · Post by **Joxer the Mighty** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 11:44 am

Spacef, thanks for the tip, I'll try that.

I don't think it's a ground problem, it's not really a hum. It sounds like distortion more than anything. It suddenly appears, and then is gone after a few seconds. And again, it's only when using usb, that's why I'm guessing Spacef may be onto something. I'll definitely give that a shot.

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 12:50 am

you can try to play with the asio latency of the noah through device managercreamware noahnoah synthsettings tab. It is set to a default of 2ms...

Gordon Gekko · Post by **Gordon Gekko** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 1:03 am

oops, i read back your post and you said you already tried this

HiEnergy · Post by **HiEnergy** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 11:57 am

I think that it's not a ground loop as all devices in my setup are fed from only one wall socket and there's nothing involved except for a non-networked laptop, a Noah, a DAT recorder, a USB Midi controller (draws its power supply from USB) and a headphone. The laptop, Noah, DAT share the same wall plug.

I tested all six possibilities of plugging the Noah and the controller (Novation Remote 25) into the 3 USB ports of the laptop (Toshiba Satellite M40X), with no success. Every possible combination led to distortion sooner or later.

Still no answer from Creamware even after re-sending a mail to support-at-creamware.de and info-at-creamware.de.

Wired · Post by **Wired** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 7:59 pm

i had the problem with my laptop at one time, i closed down the excess usb ports in my laptop and took away the battery and used ac for it. The reasoning for this is that the cpu 'scrolls' the ports and does a 'check' on the battery once in awhile and it it not unique to the noah, it also did this on my mackie onyx firewire

HiEnergy · Post by **HiEnergy** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:23 am

Update: My Noah has now been sent to Creamware after I contacted them and explained the problem. (I even added a CD with some audio samples containing glitches and disturbance)

I've been told that there could probably be a hardware issue with my Noah's USB port.
I'll await the return of my device and thereafter report progress to this forum.

natsuga · Post by **natsuga** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 1:24 am

Hi.

I wanted to share it with you,that's from electronic musician's Noah review:

"Also, whenever the Noah was hooked up to my computer's USB port, I heard soft but persistent motorboat noises coming from the audio output of the M-Audio Delta 66 that serves as my computer's main audio interface. The Delta is not a USB device — it lives on a PCI board — but somehow, the Noah was contaminating its audio stream. That was true even when the Noah itself was switched off, but pulling the USB cable from the Noah caused the noises to stop. CreamWare speculated that perhaps the Noah hardware unit I was reviewing had a ground loop problem."

http://emusician.com/elecinstruments/em ... mwarenoah/

Could you please let me hear the noise samples you recorded? Perhaps I'll send my Noah too.

HiEnergy · Post by **HiEnergy** » Thu Nov 03, 2005 6:14 am

The issue has been solved.
I sent the Noah to my dealer who got it repaired by Creamware.