Problem Statement:
Intermittent and random problems are the toughest to solve. I'm experiencing intermittent noise, static and crackle when I play any audio. The crackle will last for only a fraction of a second or so and the music will smoothly continue as if nothing happened. The crackle seems to be on top of (external to) the music as opposed to being in the music. The source of the music could be a Studio One track, an MP3 file being played by Windows Media Player or a YouTube video on the web. The crackle may happen only one, two or three times a day but if I happen to be recording my bass or keyboard it will throw me “out of the zone”. The crackle has happened once while I was recording and did not appear in my recording.


Background:
I recently made 3 major changes to my system.
1. I upgraded my i5 machine to an i9
2. BiaB 2023 UltraPak is now installed on an external drive; not on the C: drive
3. I upgraded from Studio One version 5 to version 6


With my older i5 machine I never experienced noise or crackle . . . ever.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve spoken to 2 Dell Tech Support engineers and 1 supervisor (all based in India) and although they are motivated to help me they are not audio engineers and seem baffled. They and I confirmed/installed the latest audio and Tascam drivers, disabled NVIDIA and set the power option to “High Performance” all to no avail.

I also notice a strange symptom that may be related. For no apparent reason, an F: drive Windows explorer window will appear unexpectedly even if BiaB is not running. The only thing on F: is BiaB. If I close this window, it will magically reappear at a later time. It’s as if this window wants to be active all the time despite me shutting it down.

Next Steps:
I’m thinking my next steps are
1. Solicit suggestions from this forum
2. Disconnect the F: drive for a few days to see if this helps
3. Contact Tascam (they have shown lukewarm interest to help on past questions)
4. Contact JBL
5. If required, re-contact Dell Tech Support again


There are smart people in this forum like Mario who solved my “M on the diagonal” bass panning issue so I’m hoping some suggestions will come in for this problem.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

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Audio Setup Diagram.jpg (126.48 KB, 202 downloads)
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677
BiaB 2025 Windows
For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.