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Re: iMic noise

Subject: Re: iMic noise
From: Jeremiah Moore <>
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 13:04:35 -0700
Nick:  You might search around for audio problems on mac OSX.  I seem 
to recall reading somewhere that there were system problems with 
audio playback on certain versions of OSX in which there were random 
volume fluctuations or something of the sort.

I tried searching apple knowledge base and didn't find anything...
http://www.info.apple.com/

Maybe I read about it on http://www.macintouch.com ?

Can't be much more helpful I'm afraid, but thought I'd mention it in 
case it turns out to be something.

-jeremiah



>Nick Gordon wrote:
>>  Hi,
>>
>>  I use the iMic to transfer an MD recording to my cube G4. The iMic i
>>  think is picking up a sorts of disturbance and shielding it whit
>>  alluminium foil does not help anything. After packing it and moving it
>>  around a bit it picks up just the same level of noise as before.
>>  When I listen sound back from the minidisk it sounds acceptable to me,
>>  using a pair of SoundMan binaurals the sound has tremendous space and
>>  fairly natural sound where the low selfnoise is acceptable to me for
>>  now.
>>  But I can't get it into the cube. Also I use Macromedia soundEdit to
>>  record it to disk. This program has some trouble under OSX.2 as it is
>>  producing al sorts of dips to the speakers where these dips are not
>>  really in the SoundEdit file for as I play it back whit QuickTime there
>>  are no dips.
>
>I've not used one of the cubes. It sounds to me like you may be getting
>interference from other events going on in the cube. You can try
>shutting down all other programs and processes you can. But I'm not sure
>that's going to entirely do it. I've noticed with some sound playing
>software on my regular G4 that disk accesses and such like can create
>something like what you describe. My regular sound editing programs,
>Peak and Spark XL do fine, but some of the CD playing software exhibits
>this. And I'm running OS 9.2, unix (which is what OSX is) can create
>more interrupts than the mac OS does.
>
>As you noted QuickTime does better, probably because it's processes have
>a higher priority suppressing the interrupts. If stopping all the
>processes you can does not do it, you may simply have to give up on
>SoundEdit for playback. Or check with the company and see if they have
>any suggestions.
>
>Part of the problem seems to be that the main processor is involved more
>in sound playing than it used to be. It used to be you could crash a AV
>mac and the sound would keep right on playing because it was not going
>through the processor. Not true anymore. And probably especially so with
>the cube, which is a cut down form of a mac.
>
>  > Can anyone confirm these issues? I figured that if the recording was
>  > okee it would not be such a big step anymore to get the sound on the
>>  road, but I guess i'm wrong. How can I bypass and overcome these
>>  obstacles.
>
>If the problem is in input, then the use of a external A/D in the form
>of one of the USB devices may help. And the use of a regular sound
>program instead of iMic may help too. Peak is what a lot of mac folks
>use, including myself. I'm currently transferring digitally from my
>Portadisc via a Roland UA-30, so don't know the current issues with
>analog transfers. I have done analog inputs with my G4 in the past using
>Peak with no problems.
>
>Walt
>
>
>
>
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-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
jeremiah lyman moore | san francisco | sound+media | 
http://babyjane.com/timeweb/
http://northstation.net/ organic, mechanized, organized sound


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