OP-Z as Audio Interface, Audio badly breaking up

Hey my people,

I’ve been using my op-z as an audio interface for itself and my op-1 by routing the op-1 output through the Digdug TRRS splitter input to the Z, then all audio heads to Ableton via the OP-Z usb-c cable.

I’ve noticed that I can get great audio quality when the OP-Z USB charging is off and I use a feedback loop isolator between the OP-1 and the TRRS splitter. All that said my problem is:

After some play time the audio starts to break up pretty badly, to the point where any incoming audio is met with tons of pops and cracks. Sometimes it even continues after I’ve stopped playing and just crackles on it’s own.

My solutions thus far have been: restart the OP-Z or wait like 5-10 minutes and it just kinda goes away.
I’ve also tried lots of different combos in terms of levels/settings/gain staging, etc and since it is clear in the beginning i’m not sure that’s the issue.

Any ideas? anyone else experience this?

yes. I’ve had the same issue some weeks ago and I thought oh boy the pops&crackles are real!

but I’ve never experienced anything like that and it’s due to the “compressor” setting on the master page, the dial with the blue pulse… it was stealing the notes from the tracks for some kind of compressor pumping and that often leads to crackling or breaking up the overall sound when overloading the tracks!

if you turn it completely down you’ll then experience a new HI-FI OP-Z.

no crackling, no stealing

3 Likes

Duh! Thanks so much dude!

Between the mixer and master page I feel like one little setting always slips by. I’ve turned it down as a solution before but without knowing that it was the real cause.

You da man Johnny

Actually, it’s back? compressor all the way down, levels in check. hmmm…

i was gunna say maybe its your audio settings in ableton?
whats your sample rate, bit depth set at?
u wanna match this to your Z (not sure what the specs are)
mismatching these can cause these types of problems

whats your buffer size set at? maybe try increasing that?
that can also cause pops and crackles if its too low for your CPU to handle

ps hope u are enjoying your TRRS SPLIT I/O
thanks again :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey @docshermsticks!

Yeah I love your stuff dude :smiley:

I came back here to write that i think the culprit was buffer size, I’m going to give it some time, but it looks like plugging the Z in for the first time and trying to get everything to line up I must have defaulted those settings and never changed buffer size, so it was probably too small!

I’ll write back with an update. Thanks Doc + Johnny