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Focusrite scarlet solo (2nd gen) intermittent popping crackle

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Topic Focusrite scarlet solo (2nd gen) intermittent popping crackle
Hi guys,

I have spent the last few weeks trying to fix this issue but its hard to troubleshoot due to it being intermittent and unable to identify what the cause is. Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated, as I feel a little out of my depth.

I bought a Rode NT1A Microphone with a Focusrite Scarlet Solo (2nd gen).

Sounded pretty crisp to start but for some reason starts making popping and crackling sounds, and at times just becomes completely inaudible with robotic noises coming from it. Unplugging and plugging back in from the back of scarlet seems to be a temp fix.

I have tried all USB ports in computer including USB 3.0 which don't appear to fix the issue. I have also insured that USB root hubs are not set to power saver mode.

System specs below:
Operating system: Windows 8 pro 64-bit
Chip type: Nvidia Geforce GTX 960
16g RAM
proccessor: i7-3770 CPU @ 3.4ghz

I followed these instructions for optimisation for windows 8.

https://global.focusrite.com/answerbase/optimising-your-pc-for-audio-on-windows-8

I am trying to use the program called reaper to run the audio through however the crackling appears to happen irrespective of using reaper so i guess thats handy to know.

Unsure of where to go from here. Any help would be greatly appreciated, understanding that this topic has been created several times.
2
I have been experiencing this exact issue, to be honest I breathed a sigh of relief when I read your post since up until this point, I had been unsuccessful in finding anyone with a similar issue. I recently purchased the Scarlett Solo (2nd Gen) so I could use both my new Rode NT1 as well as my Sennheiser HD 598se's. So far I have only experienced problems with the microphone, not the headphones (touching wood here). Despite there being no issues initially, after several hours of use within Teamspeak and various other programs such as Audacity and an online recording tool, I began to experience severe robotic-like distortion when talking into the mic, friends in the teamspeak server immediately noticed it and warned me that there was clearly something wrong.

To begin with I jumped to the conclusion that there was an issue with the microphone, which irritated me considering how much the damn thing cost me! However since then I have discovered (as you said) that unplugging the Scarlett Solo from the USB port and plugging it back in again fixes the issue for an undesignated period of time. This is incredibly annoying as there is no way for me to tell when it decides to switch to robot mode, the only way I've known so far is people telling me that there's something wrong with my mic, and it'll make the switch from crystal clear audio to a crackling mess seemingly randomly and in an instant.

Any help or advice in preventing this issue going forward would be greatly appreciated as this is an issue we realistically should not be expected to deal with when promised high quality, reliable products. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread over the next several days that's for sure.
3
Hello All,

Sorry to hear of the issues that you are experiencing and for not seeing this post sooner; but I wanted to reach out and help wherever I could!

If you both have optimized your computers and the behavior is present on all USB ports with no DPC Latency issue present; the behavior could be driver related.

To confirm, are both of you using the 4.15 driver?

If you are, I would be interested to see if you get the same results with the 3.2.2 driver found below.
http://beta.focusrite.com/file.php?id=1196

When installing the 3.2.2 driver, please be sure to remove the 4.15 driver firs,t as well as disable any anti-virus or firewalls.

What are your findings when using the 3.2.2 driver?

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support
4
Thanks for getting back to us and taking the time to troubleshoot, I'm not currently home right now but as soon as I get home this evening I'll be sure to give these things a go and post the results here. In terms of what driver I'm currently using, I'm not entirely sure. I just went to the focusrite website and downloaded whatever was there, I presume that would have been the latest driver as of 2 weeks ago.

Thanks again,
Cailan


Quote from David_Focusrite:
Hello All,

Sorry to hear of the issues that you are experiencing and for not seeing this post sooner; but I wanted to reach out and help wherever I could!

If you both have optimized your computers and the behavior is present on all USB ports with no DPC Latency issue present; the behavior could be driver related.

To confirm, are both of you using the 4.15 driver?

If you are, I would be interested to see if you get the same results with the 3.2.2 driver found below.
http://beta.focusrite.com/file.php?id=1196

When installing the 3.2.2 driver, please be sure to remove the 4.15 driver firs,t as well as disable any anti-virus or firewalls.

What are your findings when using the 3.2.2 driver?

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support
5
Hi Cailan,

Happy to help!

Please let me know your findings once you are home again with the unit.

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support
6
Quote from David_Focusrite:
Hi Cailan,

Happy to help!

Please let me know your findings once you are home again with the unit.

Best regards,
David // Focusrite Technical Support


Hey David,

So I had a go at this a little while ago. I went and checked the driver version that I was running and it was indeed version 4.15 as you originally mentioned. I went ahead and uninstalled the driver, replacing it with the earlier driver you suggested. As of yet, I have not noticed any of the issues I have experienced up until this point, however the nature of the problems we were experiencing means that it could yet occur at some point within the next day or so, so I'll be sure to head back here if I encounter any further issues.

Seriously, thank you for seemingly resolving the issue at the moment. It's a shame that the newer drivers seem to be also implementing these issues. Would be great to see a fix somewhere down the line. Also, random side note, this driver also seemed to have switched my Rode NT1 from recording in mono by default, to stereo. For me this is great since certain recording software doesn't support mono input correctly.

Kind Regards,
Cailan
7
Hi Cailan,

Is the problem still fixed on your side?
I will try the old drivers during this week.

Thank you.

8
Quote from meeshaw:
Hi Cailan,

Is the problem still fixed on your side?
I will try the old drivers during this week.

Thank you.



As of now, I have not yet encountered any further issues which is great! Extending my thanks to David above for providing a fix, although would be nice of course to be able to utilise the latest drivers, hope to see a fix for that issue someday, however of course it'll be hard to keep track of whether this very specific issue has been resolved.

I'd say give the driver thing a go and make sure you fully uninstall your current drivers before attempting to install the older ones.

Regards,
Cailan
9
Quote:
As of now, I have not yet encountered any further issues which is great! Extending my thanks to David above for providing a fix, although would be nice of course to be able to utilise the latest drivers, hope to see a fix for that issue someday, however of course it'll be hard to keep track of whether this very specific issue has been resolved.

I'd say give the driver thing a go and make sure you fully uninstall your current drivers before attempting to install the older ones.


This sounds very promissing. Thank you for sharing this info.
I've installed the older driver since a few hours. No Problems so far. But still testing..

The only difference I noticed is that the khz/bit is easier to configure directly in the playback and recording device.
And you cannot change the buffer size directly (which is totaly fine for me). There are three options in the UAC2ControlPanel panel which I set to "BALANCED" (default).
The mic is still mono by default. Using the AT 2035 with Windows 10 (x64).

Regards
Meeshaw

[ Post last edited on 03/15/2017 at 00:29:12 ]

10
Hello there,

Thank you MedPackSnack for your post, we have almost the same PC (you have a 960 and I have a 970) and I have the same problems of popping and crackling sounds plus an extreme robotic voice on my VOIP applications (Mumble / Skype). I'm glad to see that's not an hardware issue, I just bought a Scarlet solo 2nd Gen to power a Rode Procaster and I was worried about any material issue.

Thank you David_Focusrite for your answers, I'll run the beta drivers after doing another check. For now I'm forced to unplug / replug my usb port every 15/30 minutes.



11
Just to let you know. I tested the new beta drivers Scarlett 2nd Gen 4.36.0 because the issue should solved with these drivers. Yes, it's definetely solved but... Now I get this issue with the microphone. All recorded files are distorted after a period of time.
I know it's beta but what is going on with these drivers? The "stable" 4.15 drivers are more unreliable.
For now I will stay with the 3.2.2 drivers which are the only working ones.


12
Hi guys, I know I'm late to this form but I am having the exact same issue with the
Scarlett 2i2 (Gen 2) rather then the solo.

Anyone know a driver that could fix this issue?

I am currently using the driver "4.36.5.612"

This problem has been going for 6 months now with over 40 hours of time trying to fix it myself so its very irritating for me. Any help would be very appreciated on nailing this audio glitch.

Many thanks :)
13
Use the 3.2.2 drivers. They are still working for me. The newest driver is still buggy. I get a crackling voice over time using my condensor mic and windows audio stack (ASIO is working so far) . This is not happening with the 3.2.2 drivers.

The only problem I have with the 3.2.2 drivers is that sometimes after a windows update the sound (input and output) sounds robotic. Like a built in sound mutator ;). Reinstalling the software is fixing this issue. As long as there is no fix I will stick with this driver. Newer driver is not equal "better".
14
Link to the drivers isn't working for me. Anyone able to post a new link?
Thanks
15
Is there someone that could help me, i have the same problem but the link to the older driver doesnt work for me?
16
Hi there!

I'm having the exact same issue here but, the thing is, I use Mac!...so, already from the beginning I didn't need to install any drivers to get my Scarlett working, just plug and play. I'm beating my head here and going crazy. At the beginning I thought the cable was the problem, as sometimes holding it tight around the connection with the mic would make the robotic buzz disappear, and so it worked like that for a long time. That reinforced the idea that the problem was with the cable...but now, there's no moving te cable whatsoever that will fix the terrible cracking-robotic noise....It's really annoying.

Any help please?

Thanks!
17
Is the problem temporarily fixed when you unplug the cable and put it back in?
18
I have a Scarlett 2i2 2nd gen and I do get pops and crackles too. Supposedly, this happens at random times when I am using the microphone across platforms such as Discord or in my browser which is Chrome. Replugging the device temporarily solves the issue. I don't get this issue at all if I set a Virtual Audio Cable as the output device if I enable listening on the Focusrite device, and then use that VAC as my audio input device.

I have recently played around with using my Focusrite box as my audio output... but everything, while audible, has pops and crackles. I can confirm this has happened on multiple installations of Windows, buffer size is 1024 with the sample rate being 44.1 kHz, with the device plugged into a USB 2.0 port on my motherboard (the issue is consistent between all my USB ports - 3.1, 3.0 and 2.0 and neither present any further issues than what I already face).

I cannot really provide a recording of a crackly microphone input as it varies and may not occur for days or weeks at a time - VAC as a workaround is inexpensive so I'm overly not too fussed about that but as a playback device... with pops and crackles... undesirable.

Edit: forgot to mention - the pops and crackles during playback will be present all the time however doesn't seem to occur when playing back from Ableton which utilises the ASIO driver. Windows I guess uses a generic "Focusrite USB Audio" driver of sorts rather than ASIO which could be part of the problem. I'm not 100% sure on this though.

[ Post last edited on 10/04/2018 at 11:48:11 ]

19
Sounds exactly like the problem I have experienced with e.g. Discord, Teamspeak. Like I said, a "workaround" is to install an older driver (3.2.2).
If you want to try it (for Windows) just PM me. They removed this driver from the beta driver site and I don't know if I'm allowed to post this link public.
The problem on MAC sounds driver related too.
20
Quote from meeshaw:
Sounds exactly like the problem I have experienced with e.g. Discord, Teamspeak. Like I said, a "workaround" is to install an older driver (3.2.2).
If you want to try it (for Windows) just PM me. They removed this driver from the beta driver site and I don't know if I'm allowed to post this link public.
The problem on MAC sounds driver related too.


I need the 3.2.2 Driver aswell :( can U PM me with a link plz? I dont know how to send messages...
21
Just to let you know, the problem is still there with the newest driver. The 3.2.2 driver is working without crackle / distortion and I m using it since 2 years. In case a Focusrite member see this: Please talk with you development to rework this driver or at least put your 3.2.2 driver public again.
Thank you!
22
I'm running Windows 10, with driver version 4.36.0.400 installed. I have similar issues.
Would you recommend that I try installing driver version 3.2.2 as well, or will that not work with Windows 10?
If you do recommend I try ver. 3.2.2, can you please let me know where I can download it from?

Thanks!
23
I'm running Windows 10 as well. You can't download it because it's not offical available anymore. They removed it 2 years ago from the beta focusrite site. Seems that they want to force all Solo 2nd Gen users to use the 4.36 driver.
I will PM you.
24
Im also running into serious crackling issues if someone could please PM me a link? ive been trying to fix this for months!
25
Same issue for me. I'm on windows 10. Could I get a link as well?