Sound distorted

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Nuno
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:47 pm

Sound distorted

Post by Nuno » Mon Jun 27, 2022 5:50 pm

Hi.

One of my kids (10 years old) is learning drums and Aerodrums is his instrument at home.
He uses a small cheap windows 10 laptop (celeron, 2Gb RAM, SSD 64Gb) with very good latency.
The problem is that sometimes the sound is completely distorted. Any drum or cymbal he plays sounds very distorted.
At first I tried to reboot, didn't work.
After some trial and error, the solution I found is to go to latency menu, change to any level of expertise (beginner / intermediate / advanced) and apply the changes. After that, if I press the Test button and the "ding" sounds clear, it works.
The problem only happens with this laptop.

2 weeks ago he and his brother (who plays electric guitar) played at school 3 Ramones songs. I was considering using Aerodrums, it's easier to transport, but decided to use an acoustic drumset to avoid any sound problem.

This is probably a driver thing. Is there any log where I can search for an error?
Any clue to what is happening?

Thanks,
Nuno

Richard
Posts: 1012
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:45 am

Re: Sound distorted

Post by Richard » Wed Jun 29, 2022 12:32 pm

That's strange. Normally I would attribute distorted sound to a computer performance issue. In that case I would suggest trying to increase the 'Buffer size' slider on the Latency screen to see if the distortion goes away.

In your case it sounds like the problem might be something else. One possibility is that it's related to power saving. I'm curious if the problem happens when the laptop is plugged in to mains, or only when the it's running off battery.

Anyway, assuming you're using Windows, could you try to create a power plan with all power saving options disabled and see if the problem still occurs when playing Aerodrums while using this plan.

(The thinking here is that some power saving feature may have kicked in which results in the distorted sound and by clicking 'Apply', the audio device gets re-initialised which disables the power saving feature.)

Nuno
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:47 pm

Re: Sound distorted

Post by Nuno » Wed Jun 29, 2022 4:15 pm

Richard,

Thank you for your quick answer.

I am using windows 10 with the laptop plugged to the power, not just battery.
Although with very few hopes, I'll try with a new power plan as you suggested, to assure there are no power savings configured.
It's a strange behavior, I agree. I can try to make a small video next time the problem occurs, with the workaround to fix it.

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