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I'm using the Presonus AudioBox USB with the packaged microphone and headphones (AudioBox Studio Bundle with M7 High-Definition Condenser Microphone and HD7 Professional Monitoring Headphones).

I get a lot of feedback and loud crackle in my headphones during audio playback after about 10-20 seconds. It seems to happen at points in songs where the music suddenly becomes louder or the bass becomes more prevalent.

I checked connections and the same setup works fine in Windows 7. If there is any kind of tweaking I can do with my settings to fix this problem please let me know.

Thanks, MD

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To get you started: For recording there is an extra forum called linuxmusicians.com if you haven't already stumbled up on this. – LiveWireBT Oct 1 '12 at 11:42
AudioBox has trouble working correctly immediately on ANY Linux distro because there aren't AudioBox drivers for Linux. I've tried muting both input channels (though I only use the mic channel) and I've unplugged the microphone physically and had no luck with it. – Micah Drago Oct 1 '12 at 19:35
And what I mean by the music beginning to crackle is, for example, if I'm listening to a song with a soft intro, then 20 seconds in or whatever it brings heavy drums in and AS SOON as those louder sounds come in my headphones instantly sound like the speakers are blown. Before that, though, they have crystal clear sound quality. – Micah Drago Oct 1 '12 at 19:37
You seem to mix things up. If there were no drivers for this audio interface then it wouldn't work at all, unless you installed them by yourself. Which will bring up the next questions: how and from where? Keep in mind that drivers don't have to be funny installers. I suppose you are using the default setup and playing 16bit/44.1kHz content on the default music player? – LiveWireBT Oct 2 '12 at 7:40

1 Answer

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I have a similar problem with the Presonus Audiobox 1818. With Ubuntu 12.10 I had the issue appear often, but turning the card off and on (often a few times) would eventually fix it. With Ubuntu 13.04 I found no way of doing this. I installed Ubuntu 12.04.2 and it seems to work well all the time. I don't know exactly what the problem is with later versions.

Other things which may be affecting the behaviour of your card:

  • In Ivy Bridge machines, try using a USB 2.0 port, if available, instead of a USB 3.0 port. Your computer may have an option in the BIOS to switch the ports to USB 2.0 compatibility mode, which should do the trick too.
  • There are reports of Wi-Fi cards and other USB devices causing crackling in USB audio devices, so you may want to disable them temporarily to diagnose the problem.
  • There are reports that disabling Pulseaudio may work around crackling problems with USB audio.
  • Some bits of the set-up for real-time sound recording may be applicable here.

As for the driver stuff you mention in the comments: the Audiobox is a class-compliant USB audio device, which the Linux kernel supports without the need for any third-party drivers. Bear in mind that there are several reports of crackling problems with USB soundcards in the Presonus forums, even with Windows and OS X, so this issue is likely to be hardware-related in some obscure way.

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