Moved to new system. Audio snap, crackle, pop.

I've recently moved from an Intel Xeon system to a new AMD Threadripper machine. The new machine is a real beast but I've been plagued with audio crackle/pop during playback. Resolve is the only program that is having this issue. Music, games, other apps...100% no problem. Sound is as clear as a bell.

I'm using a Scarlett 2i2 (3rd gen) USB interface that then feeds an amp and studio monitors. The interface worked flawlessly on my old system. I'm running the latest software/firmware for the 2i2.

The files are playing back off a 12-drive thunderbolt RAID-0 so it isn't a playback bottleneck.

Under DAVINCI RESOLVE\PREFERENCES\VIDEO AND AUDIO I/O I have tried both ASIO and system audio as I/O engine without any improvement.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

I'm having the same issue.

My system is fairly new. AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, plenty of RAM, GTX 3080ti.

I'm getting crackling on my audio in the following situations:

- With my Yamaha monitors running into an Audient EVO 8 and into the PC via USB-C
- With the same monitors running into a Yamaha AG03 and into the PC via USB 3.0
- With headphones plugged into either of those audio interfaces
- With headphones plugged into my PC's front IO and rear IO

This ONLY happens in Resolve. Happens on EVERY project. This is a major issue. I'm in the sound design stage of a project and I can't accurately work on this.


I've updated my drivers. I've updated Resolve. I've updated Windows 10. I've even gone through my entire XLR chain of cables and tried to see if it was a ground issue with the cables. It's clearly not since this crackling happens with a regular headphone port on the PC.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Paul

Based on the screenshots, engineering suspects that the Focusrite is unhappy with the stated buffer size of 480 in its settings. They advise setting Resolve's processing buffer size explicitly to 512 and checking if that makes a difference.

Regards
Shrinivas

Thanks Shrinivas, that solved it!

Hi there,

sorry to pitch in here but I have the same issue with the latest resolve verson 17.4.3 build 10 on windows 10. I also use a focusrite audio interface, the scarlett solo 3rd gen. I have tried all buffer sizes the scarlett solo supports and I always have the crackle in my audio playback. But when I listen to the audio outside of resolve and have it shut down, everything is fine.

Is it a reintroduced bug? I though I had fixed it in the past by setting the buffer size to like 512 as Shrinivas Ramani suggested.

Any ideas? I would really like to use resolve for a small video project, but in this state it is unusable. Is it tied to the scarlett or is it a general issue?

Here are the settings that worked for me.

I also noticed that it the USB port, cable, hub I was using had something to do with this issue.

All system sounds were 100% fine but Resolve was producing this crackling. I was using a USB2 extension cable with a USB powered hub. Again, worked fine for everything but it wasn't until I changed to a USB extension cable with a new USB3 powered hub that everything cleared up. Your motherboard may have USB2 and USB3 ports.

As a work around I also found that the embedded audio in the SDI/HDMI output from a Decklink card was clear. I'm running 4K HDMI to a Sony Master panel. From that panel I took the optical output and ran it into an amp which then fed speakers and that worked fine for editing.

Hope that helps.

Focusrite is known for crappy drivers. Motu M4 is a much better choice. Both in performance and driver quality.

Oh my god! I just had audio issues with rendering MP4. Can't say that I had it before...
Now using DR 17.4.3

Audio playback in the edit and Fairlight page is fine since switching to ASIO.

The only way to fix it was to use "Custom" - Quicktime (instead of mp4)
And setting the Audio to PCM instead of AAC.

I think it is an issue with the AAC codec. Also there is no option to set it to 24bit and/or higher than 192kpbs...

I hope this is getting fixed soon.
This bug is a big problem!