Garage band playback scratch

[Irish Pennant]

I need some ideas on how to solve an issue I'm having when using garage band to record music I'm working on, I'm getting a scratch sound on the recording. It happens in random places.

Mixer - Zed 60-14 fx
Apple Mac Book Pro

This sample recording, the signal chain is Guitar-> Zoom A3 -> JamMan Solo Looper -> Mixer -> Laptop. The scratch sound starts at the 4:06 mark.

What I've tried so far has been:
By pass the pedal board and plug the guitar directly into the mixer.
Use another mixer, a Zed 10 fx
Turn the WIFI off on the laptop
Turn the lights off in the room I'm in
Plug into a different wall wart
Use a different guitar
There's no cell phone in the room
There's no other electronic devices on other than the guitar, pedalboard, mixer and lap top

Right now all I have to record on is my laptop, it does need more RAM and I have some on the way. The only recording software I have on it is Garage Band. My recordings are mainly for my own use, a tool to improve my playing and to smooth out new pieces.

I can use some ideas or another direction to pursue in order to clear up this problem

Thanks

[muscmp]

possibly a buffer problem. set the buffer low when recording, maybe at 128 and then you can raise it to 512 when listening back. otherwise, it may be the levels you are using need to be turned down.

play music!

[Rudy4]

Sounds like possible digital artifact noise, but if you have bypassed everything it pretty much eliminates that. It's NOT classic analog or digital distrortion so that's why I say artifact noise. I've heard this complaint about loopers in the past, but that's no longer in your signal chain, a larger possibility is connector oxidation.

It does sound to me like the typical noise introduced by poor quality and/or very slightly tarnished 1/4" plugs or jacks. You might try cleaning all these up, possibly using a de-oxidizing spray on your plug ends and inserting them repeatidy to clean the connections. After you clean your inter-connections up then try recording the piece again (at least as close as you can) by bypassing your entire signal chain and listen for the same noise along the track length.

[Irish Pennant]

I fixed it. I downloaded Audacity and it worked flawlessly. This told me it's a software issue. I uninstalled garageband and then installed a clean version. It's working as it's suppose to. What caused the problem has been the OS upgrades. Thanks for taking the time to read this thread and offering the suggestions.

Now for the hard part, recording over and over and over until I can play this without a bunch of flubs. Recording does force me to have to play with more attention to detail, this is a good and frustrating thing.

EDIT: It was more than just installing a clean version of GB, it was installing an older version, 6.0.5. The newer version 10.1.4 still has the scratch and pop errors when recording.

[muscmp]

Originally Posted by Irish Pennant

I fixed it. I downloaded Audacity and it worked flawlessly. This told me it's a software issue. I uninstalled garageband and then installed a clean version. It's working as it's suppose to. What caused the problem has been the OS upgrades. Thanks for taking the time to read this thread and offering the suggestions.

Now for the hard part, recording over and over and over until I can play this without a bunch of flubs. Recording does force me to have to play with more attention to detail, this is a good and frustrating thing.

concentration is the name of the game. good playing, tho!!

play music!