I use pd for a sound installation in Taiwan right now, but a loud noise happended a few time. I want to fix this problem very quiclky but I don't know what could be the origin.

I use a lot of pan~ object, freeverb~, throw~/catch~, and, granule~ from the LyonPotPourri library.

Do you have any experience to share about that?
I am using a TERRATEC DMX 6Fire USB audio card on winXP with 6 channels, but this problem olso happended on a Motu MK2...

Thank you very much!

is the loud noise a click noise?

if so, then make sure you don't send new values instantly to the pan~, and throw~/catch~ objects. you need to use [line~] with pan~ to smooth the audio, and also if you are changing the destination of a throw~ signal with a message, then make sure you use [line~] to ramp the audio down to zero before you change the throw~ destination.

if that's not your problem, then please explain more about the 'loud noise' you get.

good luck!

Thank you hardoff.

Actually, it's not a click. I use a lot of line~ to avoid those already. It's a very loud continuous noizy sound about 5sec long. It happends only something like 1 time every 3hours.

I don't think it comes from the sound card but maybe one of the external I am using.

I hope I can find the problem, maybe try to make a patch that Cut the sound if it go above a certain level using [>~] ? (hmm...the last resort)

Hi,
I'm currently scavenging the net to find an answer to a problem I've encountered in a couple of patches recently. This thread is one of the closest similar things I can find to what I'm experiencing. My particular unwanted noise seems to manifest as a sort of bitcrush style 'effect'.

I'm still looking into it but I think this might be to do with feeding nan (not a number) or audio multiplied by zero into freeverb~, or multiple freeverbs. After a few seconds of this it freaks out and noise comes from the freeverb~, and seemingly other objects in a slightly irrational manner. It can be alleviated by feeding non-zero into freeverb~ again. So a workaround would be to have very low noise constantly > freeverb.

Sounds like it's the same thing. Going to test it this evening and hopefully post a bug report. I think it'll be specific to the version we're using (can't remember which one) and it seems that 'nan' handling is specified at compiler level, so possibly just a bad compiled release of freeverb.

I think I remember reading about this issue with [freeverb~] before (can't remember where, though). If I remember right, the problem has to do with Intels and denormals, where almost zero levels cause the CPU to spike. Pumping in a little bit of noise should help solve it.

Yes it seems that way. Ironically noise is the solution to counteract the noise. Found some details via the PD mailing list:
http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2009-07/070992.html

that is so poetry. I love it!