Distortion noise through monitor after one or two takes

[amaized]

I just bought the Apogee Ensemble to serve as my audio interface
upgrading from my preSonus Firebox. After a take or two in Logic,
during Playback or even if I decide to record another track over, an
ugly distortion sound begins coming through the monitors. It almost
sounds like a cheap plugin for distortion, one that you wouldnt
consider to use. Apogee told me it was my external Harddrive (LacIe
Firewire 1TB). So I went out and bought a new HD as a cheap solution
to the problem. Same issue happens again. I've tried recording without
an external HD in the past and it seems to be too heavy on my iMac
2GHz, Core Duo's internal HD. So I disagreed with Apogee telling me
not to record externally to a HD. I've played with buffer sizes with
no luck. The only way to get the sound to go away is to reboot or
another hack, to go into Audio Midi Setup and change the format from
44100 Hz to 48000 Hz and then back to 41...needless to say cant make
progress with recording. Is it my old iMAc with 2 Firewire 400 ports
starting to die on me? I have seen other people post about this issue
and they return the apogee ensemble and bring home a new one only to
see the same issue arise. If you can help, it would be greatly
appreciated

[geoff]

amaized wrote:
> I just bought the Apogee Ensemble to serve as my audio interface
> upgrading from my preSonus Firebox. After a take or two in Logic,
> during Playback or even if I decide to record another track over, an
> ugly distortion sound begins coming through the monitors. It almost
> sounds like a cheap plugin for distortion, one that you wouldnt
> consider to use.


Are you sure your combined tracks are not causing the 'mix' to go over 0dBFS
? Try dropping each track level, and look out for red bits on whatever
metering you might have.

geoff

[amaized]

On Jul 9, 12:20*pm, amaized > wrote:
> I just bought the Apogee Ensemble to serve as my audio interface
> upgrading from my preSonus Firebox. After a take or two in Logic,
> during Playback or even if I decide to record another track over, an
> ugly distortion sound begins coming through the monitors. It almost
> sounds like a cheap plugin for distortion, one that you wouldnt
> consider to use. Apogee told me it was my external Harddrive (LacIe
> Firewire 1TB). So I went out and bought a new HD as a cheap solution
> to the problem. Same issue happens again. I've tried recording without
> an external HD in the past and it seems to be too heavy on my iMac
> 2GHz, Core Duo's internal HD. So I disagreed with Apogee telling me
> not to record externally to a HD. I've played with buffer sizes with
> no luck. The only way to get the sound to go away is to reboot or
> another hack, to go into Audio Midi Setup and change the format from
> 44100 Hz to 48000 Hz and then back to 41...needless to say cant make
> progress with recording. Is it my old iMAc with 2 Firewire 400 ports
> starting to die on me? I have seen other people post about this issue
> and they return the apogee ensemble and bring home a new one only to
> see the same issue arise. If you can help, it would be greatly
> appreciated




Thanks guys for the replies.

I may have found a solution however I made a few adjustments. First, I
turned off I/O Safety Buffer in Logic's core audio settings (specific
to Logic 8). My understanding is that this was removed from Logic 9
all together. What I did next may have done the trick. When I first
registered my apogee online there were 2 links for software to
download:
Apogee's core drivers and the Maestro SW
As well a link saying if you had an Ensemble with a serial number
higher than EN7xxxx (Sorry i don't recall the specific ver) there was
a Firewire Calibration required.

That second one may have very well been my smoking gun. The update
took about 2 minutes with the unit rebooting on its own and then I was
able to test.

I had given USB 2.0 some thought as well but so far so good. The thing
with FW400 vs. USB 2.0 is that FW has a more consistent throughput. I
did take this into consideration and asked around to get multiple
opinions. In my experience using both USB and FW external HD's, I've
noticed the FW a little less heavy on the CPU.

I did also play with my buffer settings, currently I am at 512 with
little monitoring latency. In fact its not even noticeable during live
takes.

I recorded this weekend with success which was a relief. I hope this
helps some of you out there, I really do. Apogee's support was
disappointing, but i wont dwell on that, I just want to have a smooth
working chain in my studio as do you all.