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I acquired about a 5yr old laptop that I have fresh installed win7x86, removed all non-essential services and optimized the computer. I installed reaper and adobe audition on it.Issue: Using a Fast Track pro to record some guitar I got popping noises. Not standard crackling you get from latency but almost static like bursts of different loudness. Almost like a geiger counter but the bursts are more scratchy/noisy.In reaper the noise was showing on on the ouput level. The Fast track worked fine in other laptops(even much older ones). Recording does not record the pops. Therefore the issue is either in the software or the laptop itself.The laptop does not have a battery so I have to run it off the power supply. The supply itself may be the cause of the problem. I repeat, this not latency noise(stuttering, etc) and I've never heard that type of noise before except possibly from radio interference. (it almost sounds like tv static or ham radio noise but short bursts(around 1/4th of a second). It's almost as if the capacitors are failing in either the power supply or the laptop. I'm thinking that if I had a battery to check it then it would be ok but I don't. While it does record fine it's useless for any serious playback. Also, it could be the asio drivers on that particular machine but I know the exact same device works fine on another older laptop.Any ideas?I should also mention that the built in sound card does not have these issues.

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Boswell Thu, 01/03/2013 - 03:13

Are you saying that the noise is on replay only, so if you take one of the recorded tracks and play it on another computer, it's fine?

Do you get the noise while monitoring the audio via the FTP during recording?

What happens if you play recorded tracks through the built-in soundcard on the problem laptop?

Stretto Thu, 01/03/2013 - 03:39

The noise is only on the output(regardless of how it if it is monitoring or playingback). The strange thing is that the noise seems to show up in reaper on the output track(I could be mistaken about this though as it could have been the guitar just making the noise).All I know is that the noise is constantly there(although sometimes it is quite for about half a minute or so usually every few seconds it makes a pop or few and sometimes it is pretty active). The recorded tracks do not have the pops on them though(I just transferred them to my main computer and they are fine). The build in sound card does not have the issue at all(as far as I can tell).Basically it seems there are two scenarios:1. The noise is generated "inside" the computer as reaper is picking it up and showing the pops on the levels of the output track. This probably points to a driver issue.2. I was mistaken about reaper picking up the pops and therefor the noise is in/after the output section of the computer. The fast track uses USB and maybe the cable was bad or something(I tried shaking it to see if I got more issues but this is a possibility too).I guess I'll have to do further testing when I get a chance. This doesn't seem like an obvious issue but I was hoping someone would potentially recognize it. Being that the internal sound card seems to work fine suggests that the issue is with the other sound card. Either asio or usb(it is a external usb audio interface). I didn't try to use the device without asio though so when I get a chance that will definitely narrow it down.(BTW, why the heck is this forum eating my newlines?)