Audio slows down after power outtage.

[unowndanger]

Hi!

I built my crack around a year and half ago. Around 6 months ago I checked for some cold joints, found some, and properly fixed them. Those are the only changes I've committed to the crack, everything's stock.

Now, around a week ago, while the crack was one for around 5-6 hours, my power went out for 10 seconds, and then turned back on. I turned off the crack once the power came back on, and switched to different headphones w/o an amp for the night and resumed using the crack the day after.

Since then, every now and then, my audio will slow down. Think of a record player/turntable that's spinning and then you turn off the power and the audio starts to slow down until you power it back on.

It'll do this for maybe 4 or 5 seconds. Is there something I can do to fix this?

My audio chain is as follows: Headphones (Senn 6xx's) connect to Crack. Crack inputs go to my Scarlett 2i2. My 2i2 is then usb connected to my PC.

After the power went out, I turned the power switch off on the back of my desktop, unplugged it from the outlet, and held the power button to drain excess power from the desktop for safety measures. Aside from that, I didn't do anything I didn't mention already.

Thank you for your help

[Paul Birkeland]

The Crack itself cannot produce the symptoms you describe.  This has to come from your source. 

[unowndanger]

Gotcha. Thanks! Just wanted to see if the crack could have possibly been an issue. Nice to know it isn't this!

[LolNole]

May I make a suggestion. If your PC is running Windows 8/10, try restarting (not shutdown) your computer and see if that fixes your problem.

[unowndanger]

May I make a suggestion. If your PC is running Windows 8/10, try restarting (not shutdown) your computer and see if that fixes your problem.

LolNole, I gave that a shot with no success. I've been trying to Google the issue, but it's an odd thing to look up. I turned off fast boot at recommendation of a forum online and that didn't seem to help.

[Deke609]

What music player are you using on your PC?

Something similar happened to me about a year ago using HQPlayer. I'm not a techie by any means, but I think some of the filters can put a real strain on the processors.  If it's your player getting bogged down, you could try increasing the time buffer to allow your player to a get a head start. 

[Natural Sound]

Seems like a fairly common problem without a real fix. Here are a couple of things to try.

1. If your PC has an internal sound card make sure it's disabled.

2. Power everything down and unplug from the wall. Disconnect the USB cable. If using a laptop remove the battery. Let everything sit unplugged for at least 15 - 20 minutes. Then power up the 2i2 (with the USB still disconnected) and give it time to stabilize. Boot the PC and wait until everything is finished loading. Windows will give you a desktop before everything is loaded so be sure to wait a bit. If your computer has a hard drive LED indicator wait until it goes off and stays off. Then plug in the USB cable and try playing some music.

3. Try a different media player. I'd recommend VLC since it will play pretty much any codec in existence and it's free. Download a copy from "Major Geeks" or "File Hippo".

4. Try a different DAC. The power interruption may have damaged it.

[kgoss]

Finding the cause of this kind of thing is not easy, but here are a few things to try.

• Look at Windows task manager when this happens. Does the CPU, Memory, Disk. or Network spike?
• Are you streaming music, playing from an external hard drive, or internal hard drive?
• If streaming or using a network attached drive and the computer isn't maxed out look at the network, wireless router, etc.
• It's possible that your internet connection is overwhelmed.  That happened to me as devices were added to the network.

It seems to me that most of the time my Windows 10 computer is slow I find Windows patches being downloaded in the background.

Good hunting!
Ken

[unowndanger]

What music player are you using on your PC?

Something similar happened to me about a year ago using HQPlayer. I'm not a techie by any means, but I think some of the filters can put a real strain on the processors.  If it's your player getting bogged down, you could try increasing the time buffer to allow your player to a get a head start. 

I'm using MusicBee, but I'll also switch to Foobar2000. My issue is that audio slows down when watching YouTube or Discord or watching videos in VLC.

Seems like a fairly common problem without a real fix. Here are a couple of things to try.

1. If your PC has an internal sound card make sure it's disabled.

2. Power everything down and unplug from the wall. Disconnect the USB cable. If using a laptop remove the battery. Let everything sit unplugged for at least 15 - 20 minutes. Then power up the 2i2 (with the USB still disconnected) and give it time to stabilize. Boot the PC and wait until everything is finished loading. Windows will give you a desktop before everything is loaded so be sure to wait a bit. If your computer has a hard drive LED indicator wait until it goes off and stays off. Then plug in the USB cable and try playing some music.

3. Try a different media player. I'd recommend VLC since it will play pretty much any codec in existence and it's free. Download a copy from "Major Geeks" or "File Hippo".

4. Try a different DAC. The power interruption may have damaged it.

I'll give these a shot, but how do I power the 2i2 without the USB plugged in to it? As far as I knew, the Scarlett 2i2 gets power from the desktop in question.

Finding the cause of this kind of thing is not easy, but here are a few things to try.

• Look at Windows task manager when this happens. Does the CPU, Memory, Disk. or Network spike?
• Are you streaming music, playing from an external hard drive, or internal hard drive?
• If streaming or using a network attached drive and the computer isn't maxed out look at the network, wireless router, etc.
• It's possible that your internet connection is overwhelmed.  That happened to me as devices were added to the network.

It seems to me that most of the time my Windows 10 computer is slow I find Windows patches being downloaded in the background.

Good hunting!
Ken

Finding the cause of this kind of thing is not easy, but here are a few things to try.

• Look at Windows task manager when this happens. Does the CPU, Memory, Disk. or Network spike?
• Are you streaming music, playing from an external hard drive, or internal hard drive?
• If streaming or using a network attached drive and the computer isn't maxed out look at the network, wireless router, etc.
• It's possible that your internet connection is overwhelmed.  That happened to me as devices were added to the network.

It seems to me that most of the time my Windows 10 computer is slow I find Windows patches being downloaded in the background.

Good hunting!
Ken

There doesn't seem to be spikes. I'm playing music from an internal Hard drive, but I also stream via YouTube. I could check to see if the internet connection is overwhelmed.

[Deluk]

AFAIK, and I'm not well up with electronics, the only way to slow down a digital stream is to put it through a processor that will do this. In your case, it can be done on YouTube by selecting the playback speed. You might use it to slow down a time lapse for example or when the narrator speaks far too fast for you to comprehend properly. Very common! If you set it to a lower speed it will use that setting for subsequent views, which may be music. You have to set it back to "normal". Digital is on or off, off when it goes to buffer mode.
Are you able to use your phone to feed the crack? If so try it like that and then try with the DAC into the chain.

[Natural Sound]

unowndanger, most DAC's I've owned have a separate power supply. I'd still leave the 2i2 disconnected while the PC fully boots. At least for troubleshooting purposes anyway.

I'm curious as to why you are using an audio processor like a 2i2. Do you have a home studio or something?

[Julyan9]

unowndanger, most DAC's I've owned have a separate power supply. I'd still leave the 2i2 disconnected while the PC fully boots. At least for troubleshooting purposes anyway.

I'm curious as to why you are using an audio processor like a 2i2. Do you have a home studio or something?

When I owned one it was because it was relatively cheap option at the time as a dac/amp with possibility to drive phantom powered microphones. And it has decent output for HD600's

[unowndanger]

unowndanger, most DAC's I've owned have a separate power supply. I'd still leave the 2i2 disconnected while the PC fully boots. At least for troubleshooting purposes anyway.

I'm curious as to why you are using an audio processor like a 2i2. Do you have a home studio or something?

Exactly what Julyan9 said. I also do have a home studio that I record and produce with which i why I have the 2i2. I'm going to try all these recommendations tomorrow and report back. Thank you everyone.