Im about to break things! Please help! Recording replay slow and distorted

[dyerseve]

Hi everyone, please help me as I am really losing it with trying to record - every track I record when I replay it it sounds slow and distorted. I have tried various software(Audicity, Record Pad) but same results. Ive looked at all the settings I can to see if its something obvious but no joy.

I am recording directly from my bass plugged straight in to my soundcard which is a Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96. The really annoying thing is that ive done this before without issue - I even managed one track tonight without issue but now its gone to stinky poo and I dont know why.

This is on Windows 10 btw

thanks

Chris

Edited March 25, 2019 by dyerseve

[SH73]

I've encountered the similar issues recently. The sound was crackling, distorted and slow. I was unable to record.

I ran chkdsc and the message was ' windows replaced bad clusters in file'  after several hours and different messages the end result was:"Window has made correction to file system'.

I am running Ableton live DAW. It turned out to be that VST is causing crashes. I'm told to try re install VST.

I did chkdsc after some research and took risk I don't suggest it unless you know what you're doing.

Is there are free lance pc expert in your area?

[DaveFry]

First , check you have the latest driver for your soundcard from the manufacturer's site , and also check Windows for updates .

Then , when the problem is happening open Windows Task Manager ( right click on taskbar and select Task Manager ) and open the Performance tab .
Here look for what may be slowing things down ;
- If the CPU graph shows it is running flat out , then consult the Processes tab to see which processes are using up all the processing power of the CPU. It may be an antivirus scan running in the background , or a wireless card , or Windows update , or something .
- If the RAM graph shows you are running out of RAM then use plugins that use less RAM , or get more RAM , etc ( sometimes a browser , especially Chrome , hoards a lot of RAM which makes it unavailable to the DAW software  - try a reboot without opening the browser afterwards , just run the DAW ).
- If the Disk graph shows 100% activity , then that is the bottleneck in performance . This could be an antivirus scan happening , Windows scan , etc or a harddrive ( especially a spinning platter type drive ) on the way out .

HTH for a start .🙂
 

[songofthewind]

This might sound very obvious, but are your playback and record sample rates the same?

Also, I used to have the same Terratec sound card, which was really good, but I first had a wonky one which played absolute havoc with my whole system. Took me weeks to figure that out. It’s quite an old card now, maybe Windows just won’t support it any more. 

[Sibob]

Do Terratec have any Tech Support that you can call to get some 1-2-1 help?
Whilst it might not necessarily be a sound card hardware issue, they will be best placed to guide you through any known issues with their driver and Windows 10 (if it is an old card/unsupported driver, some significant changes happened in Windows 10 which might be scuppering you if driver development hasn't happened), but also then hopefully guide you through the optimum setup for their interface/driver on your computer for recording.

Si 

[BreadBin]

2 hours ago, songofthewind said:

This might sound very obvious, but are your playback and record sample rates the same?

Also, I used to have the same Terratec sound card, which was really good, but I first had a wonky one which played absolute havoc with my whole system. Took me weeks to figure that out. It’s quite an old card now, maybe Windows just won’t support it any more. 

This, sounds like you are sampling at 48khz and playing back at cd rate - 44.1

[dyerseve]

thanks for all the replies. I will have a look at the sampling rates but i think maybe something is on the way out as sometimes it is affecting all audio playback (youtube, media player etc.) and then i just reboot and the audio is fine.

 

i hate computers!!!