Random sharp "pops" heard over my monitors...?

I've got two JBL 6" monitors attached to my computer for all sound playback purposes.

Lately, I've started hearing medium-loud "pops" coming from them... which also show up in my digital recordings.

As they have a very similar profile each time they pop, they can be easily identified and removed in any WAV file.

Still, they are undesirable, of course.

They occur about 20 seconds apart, randomly, in either speaker... never both speakers simultaneously, though...

Any guesses what these are and how to fix 'em?

My guess is they're coming in over the electricity lines; I get the odd one too, they happen at almost the same time of day every day ( between 5 and 6 PM).

Have you noticed if they happen only at certain times of day?

Are you running any shareware? Some plugins may give an audio deletion as nagware to get you to buy their product. You may also want to run your

Task Manager and see what processes are running that may be interfering with your audio programs. I know when I boot my computer I get a POP when my audio drivers load but not during a session. I keep my computer on a Isolation Transformer Type Power filter. Keeps my setup isolated from the

AC line. Great for removing any noise. I have a $2000 Power filter on my Mastering computer. It will run on those lead acid batteries for a day fully charged.

Another possibility is incorrect clock settings, and when something goes out of sync, there's a pop.

Here are some Windows XP optimizations that might help.

Give priority to ASIO: Right-click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click on the Advanced tab. Click on Performance Settings. Click on Advanced. Under Processor Scheduling, click on Background Services. Click on OK.

Turn off indexing: To prevent excessive drive searching, double-click on My Computer to show the disk drives in your computer. Right-click on a disk drive icon and select Properties. Click on the General tab. Toward the bottom of the window, uncheck Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching. Click on OK.

Remove unneeded startup items: Click on Start then click on Run. In the Run box, type "msconfig" (without the quotes). Click on OK. Click on the Startup tab. Uncheck anything you don't think you need, including performance degraders like Microsoft Fast Find, RealPlayer, iTunes Helper, and the like. After unchecking what's not needed, click on OK.

Turn off system restore: You don't need to have it on all the time, as you can always set a restore point manually if needed. Right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Click on the System Restore tab. Check the Turn off System Restore on all drives box. Click on OK.

Word clock. See Craig's post above.

One other thing I had to deal with was additional hum in my monitors on my recording computer, and a click through my amps when on. All the equipment is on a power conditioner [monster pro 3500]

The clicks were from when a frige turned on, and the hum was from when the frige was running.

The frige is on a different circuit, but I havent checked if its on the same phase - never really checked, as I just deal with it. When it comes time to record something I just unplug the frige for an hour or so.

~Matt

Also go to one of many tweak sites and tweak the services running. Many of them can be set for manual start. If theyre needed they'll turn on. Hany of them autostart and just suck memory dry. Many time you can double memory and CPU resources that are put to better use recording than having them run for no good reason at all.

There are more like going into system properties advanced and setting it for optimal performance, and on another tab is virtual memory, set it for system useage. Sometimes a program or update will set the memory for a predefined amount. Definately a problem for large wave file recordings. Theres are some more tweaks but some get into editing the registry which is trickey.

Going for the tweaks is sorta hard core -- and a long shot. It's probably something stupid simple. Like the fridge thing.

(I called the power company complaining of "dirty power". They found out it was a short in my water bed heater (shame shame)).

I think we need to do some more diagnostics here to properly zero in on an answer.

Do the pops occur with any audio source or only when the source is the computer?

Do they occur with all software sources (media players, Youtube audio, etc) or only your DAW?

We need to know what kind of audio device or devices you're using and whether or not it occures with each.

It's possible, as noted above that your audio device might be set to, say, 48 kHz sample rate but your software is trying to feed it 44.1 kHz. (This could also result in a variation of the chipmunk effect.)

If you were using more than one converter in tandem (yoked together to form combined device with more inputs and/or outputs) you would need to use some variation of wordclock synchronization to keep the two in time. Problems with that could cause the kind of regular pops you're getting.

The fact they're somewhat regular would point toward those sorts of clocking/sync issues.

But another source of glitches and pops, as has been pointed out, as well -- and an extraordinarily common one -- is simply having either hardware or software monitoring buffers that are too small for the amount of strain you're putting on your computer. (Buffers are smallish amounts of memory set aside to provide some "slack" when the computer takes longer to do something than expected. If your computer is poorly optimized or you buffers are simply set too small, you can end up with glitches and pops. (They would tend to be less 'regular' than you describe, sometimes tending to occur in the same place in a DAW file as the processing overhead slows things to the point where there is a buffer underrun -- though not necessarily, since there are a lot of different aspects tot he issue.)

This is really reaching, but a long time ago, I was getting random pops in my stereo system. I tracked it down to my graphic equalizer. There was one IC in it that was socket mounted, the rest were soldered to the board. I don't remember how I did it, but I determined the problem was that socket mounted IC. I pulled it out, cleaned the pins, reinserted it, and the pops were gone.

I've often mentioned the "I live in LA, I have products with ICs in sockets, I took them out and put them back in and now, everything works fine" issue...I actually saw crystals growing between the pins of a filter chip and its socket in an OB-8. Ah, the perils of dissimilar metals....

I've tried all the optimizations you've sugfgested, guys... We'll see if it helps. Many thanks!

Dave