Strange crackling/popping after mastering

patz1ku

patz1ku

New Member
Joined
Jun 6, 2015
Hey folks!

After I've mastered one of my tracks I hear random crackling noise on the kick drums, but not every time it hits. But this crackling sound cannot be heard during playback in the DAW. Basically it comes when I choose "rock" eq setup on my phone, but I tried several different headphones-speakers etc and it is there all the time.
I already tried some techiques I know to get rid of it without any luck.
I changed midi track to audio for the kick drums in case I messed up the attack-release times, I tried not to use limiter at the end of the master chain, I set the soft clipper and limiter in a way where there's no gain reduction at all, I tried not to master in ableton, but in a different software and ofcourse I played a bit with the sidechain compressor but none of them worked. I could only reduce the amount of kicks to have this glitch.
I'd like to emphasize that there's no problem with the premastered "dry" mix and that I'm not the kinda guy who pushes everything to the limit I only use a slight compression/softclipper/limiter to get higher volume levels.
Could anyone give me advice on working this out?

My master chain consists of the following VSTs:
iZotope Ozone 5 EQ (Mid/side)
REQ2
iZotope Ozone 5 Exciter
iZotope Ozone 5 Reverb
SSL Comp (only to remove peaks)
iZotope Ozone 5 Imager
LinMB (Multiband compressor)
T-Racks CS Classic clipper
L3 Multimaximizer
 
Unsure as to why this would be the case, however I personally have been noticing clicks appearing often at random when using a certain spectrum analyser on my master. I've had this a few years and never had the problem in the past until more recently on the laptop I currently use. I work within Cubase and have often had strange issues pop up from time to time which I can't explain, but this has been one of the newer oddities I experience. What's worse is that this distortion ends up in the bounced audio. Often I'll switch it off and only use it as an when I need to, but it's quite odd. I've had issues with it affecting specific audio tracks too and not others which baffles me even more.
I always turn it off when bouncing out audio as a rule now, and it doesn't always cause the issue, just sometimes. As a result though, I'm far more sensitive to the tiniest crackles that don't sound as though they are supposed to be there. I once also had a similar issue many years ago with Battery 1, but that was a known problem and caused the same sort of thing from time to time. They addressed this with Battery 2 and onwards.

Speaking of overload, I've had glitching occur during the drop out of the ASIO bar in the project. It happened recently to me and was actually down to the USB cable I was using with my soundcard. Replacing it got rid of the issue. This would tend to happen on a busier project and had caused some projects to stop playing back properly which previously worked fine before saving. Having a max cpu bar causes similar issues.

I don't think you'd be doing this at all, but of course any sort of clipping at any phase in the chain can cause issues, most notably the master, even if by a small amount. Ensure nothing is in the red and check across all channels and across all plugin chains one by one. It's easy to have one plugin maxing in the input and go on as though nothing it happening. Most of the time that isn't an issue due to the 32bit processing the DAW's use, but can cause issues with some plugins. The master will always be a problem above 0 and will definitely be an issue when bouncing down as it just chops off the top of the wave, bit by bit (literally).

A side note, but a curiosity is that I noticed you use a reverb in your master chain. Quite surprising because it's not something that's generally recommended as a global fx tool. You don't want to swamp the whole frequency spectrum in a wave of reverb ideally. Better being applied before hand and on specfic instrument channels, less so the low end.

Returning back to your original issue, you could maybe go back to the chain and eliminate them one by one and bounce out to see if the issue remains. Could be that it's the result of a particular plugin such as that clipper near the end of the chain.
 
Optimal Prime said:
Unsure as to why this would be the case, however I personally have been noticing clicks appearing often at random when using a certain spectrum analyser on my master. I've had this a few years and never had the problem in the past until more recently on the laptop I currently use. I work within Cubase and have often had strange issues pop up from time to time which I can't explain, but this has been one of the newer oddities I experience. What's worse is that this distortion ends up in the bounced audio. Often I'll switch it off and only use it as an when I need to, but it's quite odd. I've had issues with it affecting specific audio tracks too and not others which baffles me even more.
I always turn it off when bouncing out audio as a rule now, and it doesn't always cause the issue, just sometimes. As a result though, I'm far more sensitive to the tiniest crackles that don't sound as though they are supposed to be there. I once also had a similar issue many years ago with Battery 1, but that was a known problem and caused the same sort of thing from time to time. They addressed this with Battery 2 and onwards.

Speaking of overload, I've had glitching occur during the drop out of the ASIO bar in the project. It happened recently to me and was actually down to the USB cable I was using with my soundcard. Replacing it got rid of the issue. This would tend to happen on a busier project and had caused some projects to stop playing back properly which previously worked fine before saving. Having a max cpu bar causes similar issues.

I don't think you'd be doing this at all, but of course any sort of clipping at any phase in the chain can cause issues, most notably the master, even if by a small amount. Ensure nothing is in the red and check across all channels and across all plugin chains one by one. It's easy to have one plugin maxing in the input and go on as though nothing it happening. Most of the time that isn't an issue due to the 32bit processing the DAW's use, but can cause issues with some plugins. The master will always be a problem above 0 and will definitely be an issue when bouncing down as it just chops off the top of the wave, bit by bit (literally).

A side note, but a curiosity is that I noticed you use a reverb in your master chain. Quite surprising because it's not something that's generally recommended as a global fx tool. You don't want to swamp the whole frequency spectrum in a wave of reverb ideally. Better being applied before hand and on specfic instrument channels, less so the low end.

Returning back to your original issue, you could maybe go back to the chain and eliminate them one by one and bounce out to see if the issue remains. Could be that it's the result of a particular plugin such as that clipper near the end of the chain.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply man!
First, I only use a slight reverb on the higher frequencies in case I feel like hats and the top of the snares etc could use some more, but it is not always the case.

Back to the original problem, I've started to change my plugins to ableton ones just to make sure if it is one of the plugins, but without luck.
But now as you mentioned to try to keep everything below 0db in the chain, I've started to realize maybe the problem is not the master itself, but it can be somewhere in the original project. Every channel is set below 0db, but on those chains.. well for example there's an eq then a compressor, and if there's clipping after EQ I jsut reduce the input volumes to the compressor. Dunno if it is something you mentioned but if it is the case, I have to go back and go through the whole project step by step. In this case it will be a longer procedure as there's no crackling in the playback at all, neither when I'm mastering nor in the original project file.
Another important thing I maybe had to tell earlier, but my cpu/memory usuage is way below 100% and I usually make my masters in spearate projects by exporting the mix as an audio file.

Anyways, thank you again for your tips I am going to check it out with your approach!
 
Derelicts Of Tomorrow said:
I set my drums at minus 10 Db and balance the rest of my tune based on that. I have a few master chains I'd be willing to share if you wanna try them
Click to expand...
I'd be glad if you share a basic one with me to see if it works better than mine, tbh I'm not too good in masters neither have the proper equipment to do them, I saw a few techniques and tried to merge the best of them to have a proper sounding final song.
 
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