Advice Needed! – Sound Dropping Out on Old AND New System

[Nick Brown]

I can’t comment on CS6 because I’m still on 5.5. In 5.5 I get some crackling and popping. When I close the Project and reopen it the problem goes away temporarily. Another intermittent audio issue is the first time I click on the timeline a hit the spacebar to play, the audio for the 1st clip doesn’t play the 1st time. The 2nd time I play it it’s OK. It might be the Matrox MX02 LE? I was hoping Adobe would have solved these in CS6. It’s been a month since I order the CS6 upgrade so possibly Adobe will have the 1st CS6 update once I get my software next month.

[Dave Ryan]

Don’t know if you guys got to the bottom of this, but I came to this thread with similar problems.

I’m editing on a Mac Pro 6-core Xeon with 16GB of RAM, an internal RAID, and an AJA KONA 3G.

I have a Premiere Pro CS5.0.4 1080p Timeline with some ProRes QT, DSLR h.264 QT and an AIF music file.
As the timeline plays back the volume of the music track mutes in and out. When I export it as a standalone QT movie, everything plays back fine from the desktop.

I’m new to Premiere, and I presume that it’s not unusual for tracks to mute on playback if the system is getting bogged down.

[Ryan Patch]

Never got to the bottom of this. Still an issue. I find that it happens more when you have more tracks going on, or more plugins activated, but can still happen with just one or two simple files playing. Dealing with this all over the place today.

I am usually editing some sort of H.264 footage as well. Don’t have enough examples of non h.264 stuff to know if that’s the problem.

Definitely something that needs a fix.

[Dave Ryan]

My timeline has some H.264 and mostly ProRes HQ with one AIFF file. Many other times, I have all H.264 or all non HQ ProRes and don’t get the muting.

I tried raising Buffersize. No change.
I tried lowering Playback Resolution. No change.

[Ryan Patch]

I am hitting this issue today HARD CORE. Making editing impossible.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Ryan Patch]

Stephen –

What audio device / drivers are you using?

[Ryan Patch]

HEY ALL. So, I believe I’ve found a solution.

I go so frustrated with this, though, that I changed my MEDIA CACHE location to my RAID 0 config that’s made up of 10K rpm drives – should be speedy enough. No change in issue. Very frustraited.

I decided to take my own advice and upgrade my sound card, though, and bought one of these yesterday: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004TA2870/. Cheapest card with ASIO support (normally $90, for it for $49 refurb). I got it today, installed, and EVERYTHING WORKS. So, my solution to the skipping audio problem was I guess one of just having a sound card that couldn’t keep up with all of the tracks / effects I was using.

Now I have ASIO for surround as well!

I wish this was more clearly stated in system requirements!

[Tom Daigon]

Congrats Ryan. Nice trouble shooting. Must feel good.

Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.7.3
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Ryan Patch]

Update:

I thought that a new sounds card fixed this issue, but it didn’t. I’m not sure if it was a placebo effect, but the audio was perfect for a couple of days, but now it’s back to being inoperable again, cutting out and skipping, making editing impossible.

It definitely seems to happen more and more as the day goes on, so perhaps it’s a result of filling up RAM? Either that or a disk not keeping up (but I am working with a RAID0 and not particularly high bitrate footage. I really am out of ideas!

My instinct is to go higher RAM, but I’m maxed out DIMM slots at 12gb, so it’d have to be a 24gb upgrade, and I’m on a borrowed computer… don’t want to invest in it!

[Stephen Hill]

I have run into this exact same problem the last day or two and decided to take to the net to investigate. Having read this entire thread I concur with Ryan’s last post. I recently had 12GB of RAM installed and everything has been running perfectly. 2 Sticks of RAM proved to be faulty so I RMA’d them back to Scan UK at the weekend. Since I have dropped down to 4GB of RAM while I await my replacements and the problem has reared its ugly head!
I should be running a brand new set of 16GB system RAM in the next couple of days. I’ll then be able to see if that truly is the source of the problem. Its near on impossible to cut to music at the moment 🙁