Help needed. Garageband crackle ruining my life.

[depechemode66]

Ive been working with GB for 2 years now and have always had this intermittent random crackle when either recording or especially mixing/converting to i-life preview or iTunes. It comes and goes but I am about to complete a huge project and am making an i-life preview of each track, then opening a new song -adding the i-life track and adding the GB peak limiter (pushing it up to 2db0 just for extra oomph). This is working great with some songs but most are being jeopardised by this random cracking noise which lasts about 5- 10 seconds and really is appearing randomly sometimes and other times in the same places in songs. Yes I am using a lot of inbuilt FX etc but I do have a lot of RAM to cope with this-no latency probs etc...I use a basic M Audio Fast track interface which works well> Ive trouble-shooted for months but nobody is giving any advice that seems to work..
ie-1 ive disconnected the interface and tried the same procedure -still crackles
2 altered all Gb preferences and tested
3 updated my Gb software
4 moved all files to an external drive to lessen my imac's cpu load
nothing is stopping this crackle from rearing its ugly head.
I am trying to finish this 17 track album for an itunes release and am literally sat here with no way of knowing where to turn too next for help.
Do I need to match sample rates between interface and iMac? or drivers etc..?
any help greatly appreciated.
Paul

 

[ChrisA]

Garage Band is so "dumbed down" is has removed many of the controls. What you need to do is increase the buffer size but you can't do that in GB '11. Older versions had the control in Preferences. Logic has it. Upgrading to Logic is mostly painless as Logic can import Gb projects.

In GB11 the best thing you can do is "freeze" some tracks (that is GB's term four "bounce")

Ive been working with GB for 2 years now and have always had this intermittent random crackle when either recording or especially mixing/converting to i-life preview or iTunes. It comes and goes but I am about to complete a huge project and am making an i-life preview of each track, then opening a new song -adding the i-life track and adding the GB peak limiter (pushing it up to 2db0 just for extra oomph). This is working great with some songs but most are being jeopardised by this random cracking noise which lasts about 5- 10 seconds and really is appearing randomly sometimes and other times in the same places in songs. Yes I am using a lot of inbuilt FX etc but I do have a lot of RAM to cope with this-no latency probs etc...I use a basic M Audio Fast track interface which works well> Ive trouble-shooted for months but nobody is giving any advice that seems to work..
ie-1 ive disconnected the interface and tried the same procedure -still crackles
2 altered all Gb preferences and tested
3 updated my Gb software
4 moved all files to an external drive to lessen my imac's cpu load
nothing is stopping this crackle from rearing its ugly head.
I am trying to finish this 17 track album for an itunes release and am literally sat here with no way of knowing where to turn too next for help.
Do I need to match sample rates between interface and iMac? or drivers etc..?
any help greatly appreciated.
Paul

 

[depechemode66]

Garage Band is so "dumbed down" is has removed many of the controls. What you need to do is increase the buffer size but you can't do that in GB '11. Older versions had the control in Preferences. Logic has it. Upgrading to Logic is mostly painless as Logic can import Gb projects.

In GB11 the best thing you can do is "freeze" some tracks (that is GB's term four "bounce")

many thanks for responding...not sure how to freeze tracks..is this the same as the "lock tracks" option in GB?

 

[ChrisA]

many thanks for responding...not sure how to freeze tracks..is this the same as the "lock tracks" option in GB?

Yes, lock, bounce, freeze are all the same thing. Basically stop them from being re-rendered.

 

[depechemode66]

Yes, lock, bounce, freeze are all the same thing. Basically stop them from being re-rendered.

hi, well i had forgotten entirely that this solved the prob on the last album so was very hopeful...it has worked for 4 of the remaining 6 songs so thank you very much...The last 2 songs Ive actually managed to track down which track is causing the crackle. On one song it was right at the very end after the drum stopped but the track was left to run on so I automated and closed the level to 0 and was sure that would close the crackle but..no.
I actually locked all tracks on another attempt and converted to itunes being very hopeful but still crackles...they are only in very small doses and always roughly in the same area now but will not go completely on only 2 songs. I will persevere but am running out of ideas. Track lock is def helping though. Many thanks its massively appreciated.
Paul

 

[ChrisA]

hi, well i had forgotten entirely that this solved the prob on the last album so was very hopeful...it has worked for 4 of the remaining 6 songs so thank you very much...The last 2 songs Ive actually managed to track down which track is causing the crackle. On one song it was right at the very end after the drum stopped but the track was left to run on so I automated and closed the level to 0 and was sure that would close the crackle but..no.
I actually locked all tracks on another attempt and converted to itunes being very hopeful but still crackles...they are only in very small doses and always roughly in the same area now but will not go completely on only 2 songs. I will persevere but am running out of ideas. Track lock is def helping though. Many thanks its massively appreciated.
Paul

Take some of the $Millions you will make off this project and invest $199 in Logic. It's a huge upgrade and Logic can read GB projects, so you don't loose your work.

There is a bit of a learning curve, so buy it a few months before you really need to so you can come up to speed. Maybe even also invest in an on-line subscription to macprovideo.com and do the on-line Logic classes. Or do what I did, do the first class before you buy Logic, as a way to see if you'd like it.

 

[gannonsamuel]

Take some of the $Millions you will make off this project and invest $199 in Logic. It's a huge upgrade and Logic can read GB projects, so you don't loose your work.

There is a bit of a learning curve, so buy it a few months before you really need to so you can come up to speed. Maybe even also invest in an on-line subscription to macprovideo.com and do the on-line Logic classes. Or do what I did, do the first class before you buy Logic, as a way to see if you'd like it.

What he said.

Also, it might help if you can post up an example of the crackle for us to hear.

a few things to try though:

ease off the limiter a tad, maybe increase the release time a little bit...

bounce stems, i.e. bounce a stereo drum track, then a stereo track with rhythm instruments, then BVs etc etc with proccessing... Then import all these into a new project and it should run a little better as all it's doing is playing audio and not doing any plug in processing

 

[depechemode66]

hi, i hope Ive uploaded this URL successfully. This is the whole song but to demonstrate the crackle that is keeping me up nights fast forward to to 3.58 and you will hear it intermittently killing my songs. It always seems to arrive at the end of songs rather than the start actually and usually when most tracks have stopped and the song is only using 3 3 or 4 tracks at most. Someone had a theory today that using the same soft synth more than once in a song is the prob. ...This seems odd to me as why would anyone buy a great soft synth like Alchemy like me and then limit it to just one track in a song.
anyone's advice here greatly greatly appreciated as i cannot afford to upgrade to Logic and nor do I want to if Im honest...there has to be a solution.

https://soundcloud.com/porlemery/dreaming-test