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

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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.
2
I have been experiencing this exact issue, to be honest I breathed a sigh of relief when I read your post since up until this point, I had been unsuccessful in finding anyone with a similar issue. I recently purchased the Scarlett Solo (2nd Gen) so I could use both my new Rode NT1 as well as my Sennheiser HD 598se's. So far I have only experienced problems with the microphone, not the headphones (touching wood here). Despite there being no issues initially, after several hours of use within Teamspeak and various other programs such as Audacity and an online recording tool, I began to experience severe robotic-like distortion when talking into the mic, friends in the teamspeak server immediately noticed it and warned me that there was clearly something wrong.

To begin with I jumped to the conclusion that there was an issue with the microphone, which irritated me considering how much the damn thing cost me! However since then I have discovered (as you said) that unplugging the Scarlett Solo from the USB port and plugging it back in again fixes the issue for an undesignated period of time. This is incredibly annoying as there is no way for me to tell when it decides to switch to robot mode, the only way I've known so far is people telling me that there's something wrong with my mic, and it'll make the switch from crystal clear audio to a crackling mess seemingly randomly and in an instant.

Any help or advice in preventing this issue going forward would be greatly appreciated as this is an issue we realistically should not be expected to deal with when promised high quality, reliable products. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread over the next several days that's for sure.
3
Hello All,

Sorry to hear of the issues that you are experiencing and for not seeing this post sooner; but I wanted to reach out and help wherever I could!

If you both have optimized your computers and the behavior is present on all USB ports with no DPC Latency issue present; the behavior could be driver related.

To confirm, are both of you using the 4.15 driver?

If you are, I would be interested to see if you get the same results with the 3.2.2 driver found below.
http://beta.focusrite.com/file.php?id=1196

When installing the 3.2.2 driver, please be sure to remove the 4.15 driver firs,t as well as disable any anti-virus or firewalls.

What are your findings when using the 3.2.2 driver?

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support
4
Thanks for getting back to us and taking the time to troubleshoot, I'm not currently home right now but as soon as I get home this evening I'll be sure to give these things a go and post the results here. In terms of what driver I'm currently using, I'm not entirely sure. I just went to the focusrite website and downloaded whatever was there, I presume that would have been the latest driver as of 2 weeks ago.

Thanks again,
Cailan


Quote from David_Focusrite:
Hello All,

Sorry to hear of the issues that you are experiencing and for not seeing this post sooner; but I wanted to reach out and help wherever I could!

If you both have optimized your computers and the behavior is present on all USB ports with no DPC Latency issue present; the behavior could be driver related.

To confirm, are both of you using the 4.15 driver?

If you are, I would be interested to see if you get the same results with the 3.2.2 driver found below.
http://beta.focusrite.com/file.php?id=1196

When installing the 3.2.2 driver, please be sure to remove the 4.15 driver firs,t as well as disable any anti-virus or firewalls.

What are your findings when using the 3.2.2 driver?

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support
5
Hi Cailan,

Happy to help!

Please let me know your findings once you are home again with the unit.

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support
6
Quote from David_Focusrite:
Hi Cailan,

Happy to help!

Please let me know your findings once you are home again with the unit.

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support


Hey David,

So I had a go at this a little while ago. I went and checked the driver version that I was running and it was indeed version 4.15 as you originally mentioned. I went ahead and uninstalled the driver, replacing it with the earlier driver you suggested. As of yet, I have not noticed any of the issues I have experienced up until this point, however the nature of the problems we were experiencing means that it could yet occur at some point within the next day or so, so I'll be sure to head back here if I encounter any further issues.

Seriously, thank you for seemingly resolving the issue at the moment. It's a shame that the newer drivers seem to be also implementing these issues. Would be great to see a fix somewhere down the line. Also, random side note, this driver also seemed to have switched my Rode NT1 from recording in mono by default, to stereo. For me this is great since certain recording software doesn't support mono input correctly.

Kind Regards,
Cailan
7
Hi Cailan,

Is the problem still fixed on your side?
I will try the old drivers during this week.

Thank you.

8
Quote from meeshaw:
Hi Cailan,

Is the problem still fixed on your side?
I will try the old drivers during this week.

Thank you.



As of now, I have not yet encountered any further issues which is great! Extending my thanks to David above for providing a fix, although would be nice of course to be able to utilise the latest drivers, hope to see a fix for that issue someday, however of course it'll be hard to keep track of whether this very specific issue has been resolved.

I'd say give the driver thing a go and make sure you fully uninstall your current drivers before attempting to install the older ones.

Regards,
Cailan
9
Quote:
As of now, I have not yet encountered any further issues which is great! Extending my thanks to David above for providing a fix, although would be nice of course to be able to utilise the latest drivers, hope to see a fix for that issue someday, however of course it'll be hard to keep track of whether this very specific issue has been resolved.

I'd say give the driver thing a go and make sure you fully uninstall your current drivers before attempting to install the older ones.


This sounds very promissing. Thank you for sharing this info.
I've installed the older driver since a few hours. No Problems so far. But still testing..

The only difference I noticed is that the khz/bit is easier to configure directly in the playback and recording device.
And you cannot change the buffer size directly (which is totaly fine for me). There are three options in the UAC2ControlPanel panel which I set to "BALANCED" (default).
The mic is still mono by default. Using the AT 2035 with Windows 10 (x64).

Regards
Meeshaw

[ Post last edited on 03/15/2017 at 00:29:12 ]

10
Hello there,

Thank you MedPackSnack for your post, we have almost the same PC (you have a 960 and I have a 970) and I have the same problems of popping and crackling sounds plus an extreme robotic voice on my VOIP applications (Mumble / Skype). I'm glad to see that's not an hardware issue, I just bought a Scarlet solo 2nd Gen to power a Rode Procaster and I was worried about any material issue.

Thank you David_Focusrite for your answers, I'll run the beta drivers after doing another check. For now I'm forced to unplug / replug my usb port every 15/30 minutes.