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Thread Focusrite scarlet solo (2nd gen) intermittent popping crackle

  • 48 replies
  • 26 participants
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  • 26 followers
1 Focusrite scarlet solo (2nd gen) intermittent popping crackle
Hi guys,

I have spent the last few weeks trying to fix this issue but its hard to troubleshoot due to it being intermittent and unable to identify what the cause is. Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated, as I feel a little out of my depth.

I bought a Rode NT1A Microphone with a Focusrite Scarlet Solo (2nd gen).

Sounded pretty crisp to start but for some reason starts making popping and crackling sounds, and at times just becomes completely inaudible with robotic noises coming from it. Unplugging and plugging back in from the back of scarlet seems to be a temp fix.

I have tried all USB ports in computer including USB 3.0 which don't appear to fix the issue. I have also insured that USB root hubs are not set to power saver mode.

System specs below:
Operating system: Windows 8 pro 64-bit
Chip type: Nvidia Geforce GTX 960
16g RAM
proccessor: i7-3770 CPU @ 3.4ghz

I followed these instructions for optimisation for windows 8.

https://global.focusrite.com/answerbase/optimising-your-pc-for-audio-on-windows-8

I am trying to use the program called reaper to run the audio through however the crackling appears to happen irrespective of using reaper so i guess thats handy to know.

Unsure of where to go from here. Any help would be greatly appreciated, understanding that this topic has been created several times.
Show first post
31
Good to hear that there is a solution for you Brian. Anyway I wont buy another NIC because its clearly a driver issus, because:
- with the 3.2.2. driver the problem does not occur.
- with the newest "stable" drivers the problem occurs.
- I have a desktop pc with a NIC integrated on the mainboard (Asus ROG Mainboard). I would rather buy a new audio interface than buy a new NIC.

I'm still testing (since yesterday) the new driver 4.62.1 which was released on the focusrite beta site. Until now I have no crackling issues with it. I will give an update.

http://beta.focusrite.com/file.php?id=1343

Edit 2019-06-04: still no issues for me.

[ Post last edited on 06/04/2019 at 04:17:50 ]

32
Was googling and saw this thread, so I came to chime in.

I just reinstalled it from the official version to the beta version and can confirm on initial observation that crackling is gone.

There is still an initial delay pop at the start of recording in Discord but as you use the application it disappears in time.

That is important, in time. Not immediately, at the start it's still occasionally glitchy.

No crackle though and for that I'm grateful that you pointed me in the beta drivers way, because it's just annoying for other people to listen to.

And yeah, as always, listening to the audio driver directly through the sound control panel(the old not the new Win10 trash) was always perfect with the old driver. But any application and naah, crackle at random.

EDIT: I was wrong I think actually, the pop comes from the network, and it's fixed as the stream smooths out. ISP is doing some bad buffering... TeamSpeak is perfect but that does a local test. It's another app that was crackling before too.

Will observe how this goes.

EDIT2: Ok, after a longer stretch of randomly trying I did still manage to get it crackling on discord once again, so no, it's still not fixed. Teamspeak was fine though. But right after I couldn't get it to crackle again...

Guess I'll keep observing.

EDIT3: Apart that 1 observation ,thus far at randomly testing the crackling seems to be so much more rarer that I could almost say that it doesn't exist. 1 day of useage and I haven't countered it again, apart that intial bleep with Discord, it sort of sorts out right after. I will add to this if I encounter it again, otherwise I'll probably disappear.

[ Post last edited on 06/05/2019 at 15:25:55 ]

33
You are right, there are sometimes some crackling sounds whike recording or in Teamspeak / Discord. But it seems to be only for short period and much less than before. Still some room for improvement...
34
Dun dun dun, now it's an official release. I do wonder if they changed anything, even though the versioning number is the same.

(I've had experience with beta drivers that were versioned the same but were actually changed a bit, NVIDIA in this example)

But yeah, it's solved. The Discord Burp is gone because I had my sound system set to legacy, standard doesn't bug out at all. (still on beta though, I'll be reinstalling to the official release in a sec)
35
I'm back on 3.2.2. It's rare but the cracks while recording are still there. It annoys me, so there is no reason to upgrade to the latest firmware for me.

[ Post last edited on 06/15/2019 at 12:24:07 ]

36
Do you happen to have the binary for that version?

The thing is, after a while of useage I've noticed that certain kernel drivers are spiking in DPC. And an intial burp in crackle still exists when starting to record with Discord for example.

But it does work okay after that inital crackle.

(This is to remedy whatever I've said earlier. And also, the beta driver didn't seemingly have these spikes, and I was stupid enough to delete the file, and now they've removed it from the beta site..., if someone has that somewhere too, I'd be grateful)
37
I uploaded the 3.2.2 driver earlier in this thread.

Quote:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArSPT-qNarAnpBxaud86IccfPuTH
38
Yeah for my unit that driver is definately broken. Youtube videos, for instance, play at 1.2x speed. Something I've never come across before.

Stuff is out of sync with it. And on its default it was crackling a bunch. Tuning to 16 bit 44.1 removed that but the extra speed remained.
39
Quote from Huzzaa:
Yeah for my unit that driver is definately broken. Youtube videos, for instance, play at 1.2x speed. Something I've never come across before.

Stuff is out of sync with it. And on its default it was crackling a bunch. Tuning to 16 bit 44.1 removed that but the extra speed remained.


I experienced the same sync issue in the past especially after big windows updates. Solution which worked for me:

1. uninstall all Focusrite drivers. Removed the remaining files manually if sone exist.
2. Restart PC
3. Fresh reinstall of the 3.2.2. driver
4. Restart PC
4. I set the Audio input and output to 24bit 96khz (the default should work too)

[ Post last edited on 06/18/2019 at 20:17:09 ]

40
Quote from meeshaw:
Quote from Huzzaa:
Yeah for my unit that driver is definately broken. Youtube videos, for instance, play at 1.2x speed. Something I've never come across before.

Stuff is out of sync with it. And on its default it was crackling a bunch. Tuning to 16 bit 44.1 removed that but the extra speed remained.


I experienced the same sync issue in the past especially after big windows updates. Solution which worked for me:

1. uninstall all Focusrite drivers. Removed the remaining files manually if sone exist.
2. Restart PC
3. Fresh reinstall of the 3.2.2. driver
4. Restart PC
4. I set the Audio input and output to 24bit 96khz (the default should work too)


Interesting, by the files remaining do you simply mean the files in the directory in Program Files(x86) or do you also mean the keys in the registry etc.? Truth be told, going after all the keys it laid around is a headache I'm not willing to put myself through but the simple process of just nuking out the folders it put itself in(I'm also assuming something in AppData as well) then that I'm fine with.

I'll give that a go with the reboots and file deletions. Although I already did the reboot sequences. I'll give it another go tonight. See what it does.

PS. Do you use the 2nd gen 2i2 or the 1st one?