2. pc-audio
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USB Soundcards - faint popping/clicks

I am currently using a G4 iBook 933 MHz and have my new Waveterminal U24 connected to a DAC and Headphone Amplifier. The sound is really fantastic. I do notice every minute or so, I get a very faint pop or click sound. Sometimes I go longer without hearing it, but it occurs often enough that I notice it. I have tried to research this and there seems to be an opinion that this is just a USB audio problem and nothing can be done. I have experimented with settings. I have more than enough RAM than I know what to do with. I am using iTunes and so there really aren't any settings to adjust there except turning off all of the enhancements.

Anyway, anybody have any suggestions for USB audio pops?
dshea_32665
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
This is a buffering/cacheing problem. You should try different buffer size settings and latency settings if you have those available. If you are using iTunes player these usually go away. They can occur with Foobar2000.
dshea_32665 OP
28 posts
 
Thanks for the info. I am actually using iTunes and I don't have the ability to adjust the buffer, at least I haven't seen it anywhere. My hard drive is almost maxed out and somebody suggested maybe I need to clear more space for the computer to use its virtual memory. I am still pretty far under my maximum RAM memory, but if the computer uses the hard drive for buffering/caching, could this be the issue?

When I used my Transit I didn't notice any of these faint clicks, however, the sound was not as detailed. I also had the ability to control latency with that driver. The ESI Waveterminal card I am using now, does not have any controls for latency on the Mac.
drobbins
20 posts
 
DShea,

You want to have at least 20% free on your hard drive. Otherwise you will have the potential for major file fragmentation that will result in low performance and the problem you describe above.

Specifically, I'm pretty sure the problem is the fragmentation. When you have only 1 or 2% (or 10%) space free on a drive, the maximum *contiguous* space on the drive could only be, say, 400K in size. Then if you download or rip a 30MB file, it will need to store parts of it in around 8-10 different places. Then, to read it back, the drive needs to jump from place to place, and when this happens you can have buffering problems. This problem also compounds itself when *other* files on your hard drive are fragmented. It results in lousy IO performance.

Regards,

Daniel
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