I just found out that this very problem has triggered a thread more than 5 years ago!

Please, RME, help!

https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopi … 24#p123524

I just found another thread concerning this error.
https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=18045

Likely a problem of your USB connection. Did you check DPC latencies yet via "Latencymon"?

And another one who has a RealTek chip. I know those chips are fairly common, but eventually I get the feeling it's something to do with it.

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic … ;t=1303453

Not sure if that's the same problem (sounds slightly different), but this guy figured out what his problem was, so maybe it helps to know what was going on with his system.

https://www.sysnative.com/forums/window … rtion.html

Did you check DPC latencies yet via "Latencymon"?

There is nothing wrong with our drivers. You either have a hardware problem, USB cable, power supply, BF itself, or more likely a performance problem with your computer hardware and OS.

FWIW: If you look up any other interface, you'll probably find people with the exact same syndrome: "all" other interfaces work, except the one at hand. Usually, the other interfaces are limited to one or two...

Not exactly a significant number.

And, yes, I feel the on-board RelaTek has something to do with it. Disabling the RealTek in the BIOS, installing newer or older drivers has fixed the problem with audio several times. But the solution depends on the hardware at hand.

Besides, as a trouble-shooting tool, DPC Latency Checker will probably tell you what's wrong. So follow that road first?

Hi guys!

I bought a Babyface Pro a little earlier in the year and haven't had a single problem with it- it's been fantastic!

However, upon returning from a 5 week holiday this week, it's started intermittently making a loud crackling/distorted sound while anything is playing. The sound is like a combination of a bitcrusher and a saturator cranked up to 11. Interestingly, the distortion only appears while sound is playing- it stops immediately when playback is stopped. It appears in any application- Ableton, Chrome, VLC, etc.

Quioloy- I've been searching these forums and it sounds like it's a similar issue to what you're experiencing. I've tried closing TotalMix and the Fireface USB settings (which both run at startup) but the issue persists/returns. I've also ensured I've got the latest drivers and firmware installed. I'm on a Windows 7 PC.

I haven't found the specific cause of the issue yet, and it's strange that it should start at a time where I haven't made any hardware or software changes. However, it's worth noting that LatencyMon DOES give me the following message within a couple of minutes of running a latency test:

'your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio'

I haven't gotten to the bottom of the root cause yet (sometimes I might be playing for upwards of half an hour before the distortion returns) and I typically just unplug/re-plug the Babyface to alleviate the problem. I'm optimistic the issue is to do with my USB latency problems rather than an actual fault with the Babyface and/or it's drivers.

I'm very appreciative of any other suggestions on things I can check to help mitigate the problem. For what it's worth I've ensured my computer is running in high performance mode and have also ensured my USB devices in devmgmt.msc are set to 'never sleep'.

Thanks again for your thoughts!

All the best,

-Josh

edit: I also forgot to mention, I've disabled my on-board realtek sound card, but the issue unfortunately persists.

Just a thought: if you leave a Windows computer off for five weeks, the system will probably conclude some sort of service is needed. So the presumption that it is the same computer from five weeks ago, might be wrong?

I have had the exact same issue that I think both KoneDawg and quioloy are describing.  It has happened to me exactly once.

I'm using a BabyFace pro, Win10 64, have Realtek main board audio (like most PCs), and use Reaper for DAW.

I don't have any thesis about the cause, but I'll share what I remember happening before the problem occurred.  I did two unusual things, so I figured the audio issue was related to one or both.

I had been running Reaper and the Superior Drummer 3 VSTi for a few hours, no problems.  I decided to take break from drumming for a bit to do a few things.  First, I wanted to copy a bunch of the Superior libraries over to an external USB drive to use on my laptop.  The USB drive was plugged into the same external USB hub as my BabyFace (and vdrums and MIDI control surface).  Copying the samples just wasn't going anywhere.  It was copying, but it was slower than a snail, so I could see there was something very wrong going on.  I cancelled the copy operation and moved the external hard drive from the USB hub to a direct USB port and then copying worked at normal speed.  I assumed I was just drawing too much power on the hub and the drive couldn't write.

Then I installed a new VSTi I wanted to try.  Turns out the VSTi was bugged.  It crashed upon loading in Reaper several times.  I uninstalled it, reinstalled, and same crashing every time.  (It installed a standalone version as well as the VSTi, so it wasn't just purely a "copy the VSTi to the Steinberg directory" thing).

Then I opened a web browser to go to the VSTi maker's web site do download the latest version.  While there I listened to some of the audio samples on the website and that's when I noticed the audio distortion. I pulled up TotalMix to see if it something was clipping there, but it was fine.  Way below clipping levels.  To test what was going on I opened YouTube, and same audio problem there.  Everything sounded heavily distorted constantly, almost like hard clipping sounds but not exactly.  It wasn't clicks and pops, it sounded sort of like something was clipping somewhere in the audio stream, but not quite the same sound as clipping.

I pulled up Media Monkey just to see if it was happening with mp3's as well, not just web audio.  Same thing, everything had the same constant distortion.  I went back into TotalMix again to see if maybe I had some sort of effect on, but everything looked fine there.

So I rebooted and then everything was fine.  And it's been fine ever since.

I tried to replicate the problem by reinstalling the broken VSTi.  The VSTi still crashes on launch, but I haven't been able to recreate the audio issue.  I don't really feel like trying the write test to the USB drive again because I'm not keen on power starving the external drive while I'm writing to it.

I don't have any latency issues on my system.  It's an i5 6700k system, so not a super powerhouse, and I run Superior 3 in Reaper for live drumming at 48 samples for hours on end with no problems.  Half the time I'm streaming torrents in the background and playing along with MP3's that I'm streaming through Media Monkey off a local server.  I'm just saying that I don't suffer any kind of kernel latency issues.  But this isn't a latency-driven clicking and popping sort of thing.

There were no other system lag issues going on at the time of the problem.  I pulled up the task manager just to quickly check if I had any kind of malware on my system (I thought maybe the buggy VSTi install had virused me) but CPU usage was 1%, memory 14%, drive and memory usage low, and no new or unusually processes visible.

If it ever happens again I'll do some more testing.  In particular I'm curious if the windows audio would have remained distorted if I switched the playback to a different device (e.g., motherboard audio ports or a different USB audio device [I always have Creative H7 headphones plugged in for online gaming voice comms]).  That would obviously point to something in the windows audio subsystem rather than the RME drivers.

To be clear, I don't think  it's an RME issue.  I have enough audio toys, software, and systems that I run into this kind of thing maybe once a year in some way.  If this were an RME issue that has been around for 5 years there would be numerous complaints, not half a dozen complaints over the past 5 years.

I can confirm that there seems to be some kind of USB issue in my system, at least LatencyMon says so, but I've read somewhere that LatencyMon finds issues almost on any system.
To be clear: I don't encounter ANY problems at all, though, except from the Babyface sound distortion. No performance issue, no hardware problems, no software problems.

And yes, Matthias, you're right: Changing buffer size or sample rate works, but only temporarily. It doesn't fix the problem, just buys me a few minutes before it happens again.

The interesting part is: The distortion issue doesn't happen as long as I stick to using my DAW software right after starting Windows WITHOUT using any other software (apart from drivers and utilities that auto-start in the background). However, if I connect to the internet, start the Chrome browser, do something there, and start Cubase after that, I'm likely to run into the distortion phenomenon. Rebooting my system, not connecting to the internet, not doing anything except for running DAW software almost always works - at least on my system. (Fortunately, otherwise I'd go nuts).

I will try that and post the outcome here. Thanks!

Meanwhile I've got a question: I've had the distortion effect a few minutes ago and I noticed when I opened TotalMix that moving the faders down didn't change the volume. Turning the hardware volume dial on the Babyface however did change the volume, but no software fader went along. Now I have to admit that I don't use Totalmix, I set it up once upon a time and haven't changed a thing about it ever since, so I can't tell if that's normal behaviour. Is it? Or could it be another symptom that might help us find the cause of the problem?