Crackling on XITE-1 outputs

[Mr Arkadin]

Well I'm slightly worried about my XITE-1.

Over Christmas (of course) I started getting a nasty cracking sound on my output. It seems to mostly kick in on bass-low mid frequencies.

Are my DACs dying I wonder?

Some more details:

I checked all wiring, amps, speakers etc. Finally just had XITE XLR outputs going direct to mixer (checked on speakers and headphones) and the crackling is there, so I think I've isolated it to the XLR outputs. I have tried the XITE-1 headphone output and that sounds clean, so I think that eliminates any driver issue as it sounds OK there. I tried both ASIO drivers from Studio One and the wav drivers with sources like YouTube. Both crackle, which makes me think it isn't a DAW software issue (I thought it might be Studio One at first).

I tried reinstalling latest SCOPE from scratch, tried higher and lower ULLI settings and also tried turning the XITE of and on again

Anything else I can try to isolate the problem? I don't want to send this back to Germany (which is uber-expensive) and find out it's OK.

This is a new computer this year and has been fine.
Windows 11 (latest)
Studio One v6.5 (latest)
XITE SCOPE 7 (latest)

[valis]

Broken solder? Check the caps...?

[LunaMan]

Try it on another computer.

[garyb]

if it's only through the analog outs, then there would seem to be a hardware issue.
what happens when you use the headphone out to the monitors?

[Mr Arkadin]

Just tried the phones output to the same speakers. Headphone output gives no crackling, XLR output still crackling.

[valis]

Broken solder? Check the caps...?

[Mr Arkadin]

Haven't opened her up yet. Will do that in the new year.

[garyb]

of course, there's no pro vs. consumer level overdrive because this is a new development, no?

[Mr Arkadin]

Just started about a week and a half ago. New computer in March. All been fine up till now.

I assume that there is no warranty so there'll be no issue if I open it up?

[garyb]

no issue. don't make it worse!

definitely worth a look, it could easily be cracked solder...

[nebelfuerst]

If it's just a cracked solder, which is located close to the connector, applying force to the plug in different directions should make a difference.

Sometimes crackling also originated by dying amplifiers. In this case it sometimes makes a difference, how much amplitude you give and how warm the device currently is.

Unfortunately I never came accross a schematic of Xite, so it's hard to guess from remote.

[spacef]

just to eliminate other issues, I found that cables can be problematic. I had a lot of issues with cables in the past, especially some expensive ones that were supposed to be miraculous. No crackling, but weird sound coming back and forth like if the volume was modulated by a sine wave.

I also wanted to advise to check studio one's CPU monitor and check the higher buffers, but apparently it is not something like that if sound is clean on the other outputs.

[spacef]

and if you need to send it for repair, you should use something like DHL or UPS etc.
A few years back, I wanted to save money and sent it with a regular package through national post service (guaranteed etc) but the package was lost and took more than 6 months or so to arrive at SC... it's a very long story but they found that the package was intentionally sent to another country by some employee... they had to change the whole staff of that particular post office because it was not the first time.
Anyway, this could have costed me an xite...

[astroman]

it‘s almost a miracle that you got it back at all

cheers and happy new year, Tom

[spacef]

indeed, I became religious after that story

[valis]

[Mr Arkadin]

Well I've opened her up. Can't see anything obvious, but I'm only looking on the top board. It's a bit of a faff to look underneath tbh. Also getting the lid back on is proving more difficult than I thought it would.

[JuozasG]

Your problem seems like overload on low frequency. This can be cause of low or garbled feed voltage for output OP amps. First just try another power supply.

[Mr Arkadin]

I have a spare PSU I bought recently. I'll give it a try.