Amberwolf

My brother says it's Depeche Mode meets Amberwolf meets some other band he doesn't remember the name of.... I started out just messing around with sounds, as usual, and ended up with this. I'ts now undergone extensive editing, recomoposition, mix, added vocal tracks, accents, environmental fx and transitions added, reworked percussion, mix, etc. and is definitely ready for public listening and feedback is desired. https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/even-if-i-could-tell-you I'd guess I have about 24-26 hours total into editing this one, over the last three days. Not as much as I've spent on some good tracks, but this one has turned out pretty good. Might still be some changes coming here and there, but probably only tweaks to timing of certain bits of percussion and adjsutments to some note volumes here and there. For those interested in the process: There's almost none of hte orignal clips I started with left intact in there. Most of them have been seriously chopped up, stretched, squeezed, pitch shifted, processed, etc. The "weird" bassline sound at the beginning was from some Neurofunk collection at BlackOctopus that came free with something else. I can't stand the NF stuff in there, but the sound was interesteing, so I cut out all the glitches and wierd stuff, and reassembled the pieces into my own bassline starter. Some of the wierder short bits ended up as tiny "distortion guitar" hits, though it isn't a guitar, you can hear them quietly in the background of the slower part of the intro a couple of times. They also underlay a couple of points in the early vocals to help with the character. The early vocals, especially the middle-deeper phrases just over a minute and a quarter in, are not male vocals, they're some operatic-style stuff from I tImage Sounds - Cinematic Choir, chopped up and pitch shifted down almost two octaves, with other pieces less shifted in parallel with them on a different more reverbed track. The super shifted stuff sounds AWFUL and completely unvocal like on it's own, but it sounds exactly like I wanted it to in the mix...wierd. The rest of the parts were only shifted down a few notes after being chopped/stretched/squished. The later vocals are from antoehr Ghosthack bundle, Origin - Arabic - Kit 06 - Ghosts Of The Past, again hacked and chopped and shfited etc. The end vocals are from a different set, I think some of them are from a Ghosthack bundle "Alley" in the adlibs part. Some of the really deep almsot growly throat hums that start it all off were also from Ghosthack bundle, Origin - Arabic but were from the "male vocals low throats" section. I prefer using Ghosthack stuff because they provide wet and dry for most things, so I can use the dry ones to chop up cleanly for pitch/etc changes. The ones with fx already in them are really hard to do this convincingly, so there are a lot of especially vocal bits in other companies' libraries that I eitehr have to use as-is, or hide the transitions in changes with a lot of other stuff going on, etc. Some I can't use at all unless I use them whole. I think most fo the orchestral percussion started out as a loop in one of the Shymer packs from Ghosthack, but it didnt' fit any of the bassline I ended up creating, so it's completely chopped up and rebuilt to fit the various parts of the song, so it changes a lot throughout. Some other parts I used for pieces of the bassline were from Ghosthack's Cinematic Essentials. The main pulse bassline that begins maybe halfway thru startted from there, then was run thru Bifilter2 with various automation to help it fit around the other parts I'd already made. Same with some of hte other background "synth" parts chopped up into bits to stick behind things to give me the sound and notes I wanted. The main "arp lead" is actually an ostinato string part from Ghosthack's Cinematic Essentials, that was made for a lower tempo, so when I stretched it to fit this project's 140bpm it ended up grainy and wierd, but it fit the style. To get rid of the worst of the high end harshness from that process, I fed it to the bass2 buss that isn't filtered as heavly as the main bass buss, which results in the sound you hear in the first half. In the second half I copied it to another track that feeds a "normal" bus but has all the bass filtered out with Sonitus Multiband compressor by turning off the bottom two bands. (becuase these are the bands left audible in the other track). Then I crossfade between the two, neither going completely in or out, to change the sound for various parts of the last half of the song without having to recreate the part in a different instrument. The secondary intertwining bits that sometimes sound like pizzicato strings, sometimes like banjos or whatever, are celli pizz string bits from the same bundle as the above. There's quite a few little sounds and transition FX that came from various parts of the SampleTraxx bundles, though none of them were used as the original clip; they were either mangled or thye were overlaid with others from other places, or other sounds I had or made. There are some muted-sounding sections, like under the intro...those came because when you solo a track, it also has to open up any busses that it feeds to the mains thru, and when I soloed one track to hear it, I found that sound,w hcih was perfect for those places. I just left the track soloed, muted it's clips temporarly, and exported the whole project as just that mostly-muted and quiet to a wave file to keep as a "knocks and ticks" track to bring in for certian parts of the whole thing. Then improted it into a new track that feeds the master bus as-is, though I also put an eq on it to filter some bits out in places, and automated volume eerywhere to turn it on and off and fade it as needed. Orignal version (just a sketch of the idea from a couple hours into the process) still over at: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=15064964 For the cover art, my trusty "AI" image creation tools failed me completely on this one, so I resorted to the ancient paintshop pro 6 to first make very dark one of the oldest of the orignal AI images I had made sometime last year, that didn't make the cut for anything else because it was totally wrong for whate I was doing then, especially since the "wolves" it made for the stage performers were weird versions of humans with sort of screwed up wolf like heads and extra limbs and whatnot. It's still wrong now, but darkened more than 90%, then erasing all the stuff in the top third, and the sides, leaving just bare outlines so you can't see all the wierdness then I used lots of dodging, burning, selections, hue-to-target, etc, to eventually get the image you see above. So this one has at least a couple of hours of actual art creation in it. If I'd had time I would have done a much better job, but it will be seen at the size above for most viewers looking at the bandcamp page, or even smaller, so the detail didn't really matter. The fullsize version can be seen by clickign on the alburm art whiel on the bandcamp page for the song itself. When I figure out what to call the present track, :oops: I'll add a title in a similar style at the bottom across the audience, but instead of glowing fire it will be shadow just back-edge-lit by the blue stage lights and fiery Amberwolf sign over the stage. . Edit: now has a title, so updated artwork below It also potentially has lyrics, if the rest of the story can be coaxed out of my brain. What I have so far (not much): I could tell you everything xxand it still wouldn't matterxx xxwouldn't matter at allxx i could tell you everything and it just wouldn't matter even if i could tell you I wouldn't know how even if i could tell you wouldn't believe me anyway even if i could tell you I would never get it right even if i could tell you tell you tell you tell you tell you tell you tell you even if i could tell you the difference would be slight in how you would see me in whether you would care in how that you'd treat me in how that I would fare I could tell you everything and it still wouldn't matter even if i could tell you there still be nothing there If I could just keep you in the dark If you didn't know the things I do then maybe i could join you there and peace could come to me Even if i could tell you I'd still just walk the line between life and death that lies between us between me and the rest of you even if i could tell you how would i achieve anything of value because i know you see you see you see you see you see nothing in this face nothing in these eyes nothing that is me reflects in your mind your mind your mind your mind your mind )

Exactly....that is the kind of problem I run into everytime I use virtually anything. I just used PSP6 to create this, and when trying to create the Amberwolf "sign" on the stage, I started out trying to do it by vector on a separate layer, but it simply wouldn't do anything (other than create an outline, in black, never taking the color I assigned it); I guess I've forgotten how to do that. So I just used the regular tool on the actual image layer to create a selection mask, then inverted the selection and used dodge, burn, hue to target, gamma, etc until I got what you see there. The spotlights were done the same way, but no selections were made for those, I just kept using the tools in dots and streaks until they gave the right impression, and idd some dodge on each of the players I'd darkened to hide all the wierdness, etc. (see below). The line in the middle was a hue-to-target with the brick wall texture, to try to look like a really dim bank of lights behind everything. I was going to detail it with stuff but you couldn't've seen that in the result anyway., so I didn't waste the time. Summary from my "variety mix" thread over here (which is really for the song the cover art is for). The idea was to get across the start of the song as the completely dark stage below the sign begins to be lit as the deep sounds come up, then as the beat begins, some of the other backing lights would slightly light with the pulse, and everything begins to brighten as the song continues, lighting each player more as their parts come in, etc. (you know, a typical show). But, like the song, kept a little on the dark side.... It's still wrong now, but darkened more than 90%, then erasing all the stuff in the top third, and the sides, leaving just bare outlines so you can't see all the wierdness then I used lots of dodging, burning, selections, hue-to-target, etc, to eventually get the image you see above. So this one has at least a couple of hours of actual art creation in it. If I'd had time I would have done a much better job, but it will be seen at the size above for most viewers looking at the bandcamp page, or even smaller, so the detail didn't really matter. The fullsize version can be seen by clickign on the alburm art whiel on the bandcamp page for the song itself. When I figure out what to call the present track, :oops: I'll add a title in a similar style at the bottom across the audience, but instead of glowing fire it will be shadow just back-edge-lit by the blue stage lights and fiery Amberwolf sign over the stage. .

Does changing the preset to something different on the Breverb help with the noise? I have occasionally had various plugins over the years suddenly develop some wierd sound that they shouldn't be able to generate....saving my preset as a new one, then changing to some other preset makes the noise go away, and then changing back tot he saved preset still works. Once or twice I've had to actually remove the plugin from the fx bin then reinsert it instead.

Easy to fix in the Keybindings in preferences.

Best guess is WU changed how windows works so the driver for it doesn't work with your version of windows anymore, or WU automatically updated the motu driver to a different version that doesn't work right. Or WU updated some other driver for something else that is now interfering. Or WU resurrected some previously uninstalled or disabled driver for something else that is now interfering. Etc. You can try going into device manager and reverting relevant things there, or if your version of Windows allows it you can try rolling back the update(s). (but any of those things could break the system, possibly to the point it won't boot, if something goes wrong, so backup your stuff first just like you would (should) before any updates are done). Stuff like that is why nothing on my systems and devices is allowed to update itself, ever, if it's working it's working. (if it's a program that doesn't disallow this, I won't use it).

If you need accents, environmental sounds, stuff for trailers or game music, or even movie / video effects, this is a really good deal. If you're like me and experiment in sound, some of the stuff they've got is quite interesting. If I hadn't gotten an even better deal a while back (probably thru APD) on ST's "MASSIVE 3-IN-1 BUNDLE" https://sampletraxx.com/release/massive-3-in-1-bundle/ that is probably half of their catalog (maybe more?) I might be interested in this everything deal...but for the few things I don't already have, it's not worth the $99. for what I might actually use out of them. I do use pieces of them; there are a handful scattered within my present untitled WIP, from various parts of the M3/1 bundle Most of them are used as subtle percussive highlights, some are obvious transition elements but I don't like most of them on their own, so I stack them up wiht other things and mutate them in time / pitch / etc. (give it a listen, you'll like the evolving beat and interplay with lead and the tension building vocals.) https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-072425-000001 Orignal version still over at: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=15064964 There are a number of Volta bits in No Bigger Than The Space Of Time, mostly effects chopped up and used percussively. https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/no-bigger-than-the-space-of-time There are also bits of various things from them, primarily Old Broken Piano, in Aftermath of Sunlight and Pre-Cast Shadows https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/aftermath-of-sunlight https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/pre-cast-shadows-aftermath-of-sunlight-pt-2

EDIT: Gave this one it's own thread Depeche Mode meets...Amberwolf? The last track above (still untitled) has now undergone extensive editing, recomoposition, mix, added vocal tracks, accents, environmental fx and transitions added, reworked percussion, mix, etc. and is definitely ready for public listening and feedback is desired. Now over on bancamp as 073425 000001 100096q edit: 072725: 072425 000001 100107r -- Reworked intro, assorted minor edits throughout You'll like the evolving beat and interplay with lead and the tension building vocals. https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-072425-000001 Orignal version still over at: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=15064964 My trusty "AI" image creation tools failed me completely on this one, so I resorted to the ancient paintshop pro 6 to first make very dark one of the oldest of the orignal AI images I had made sometime last year, that didn't make the cut for anything else because it was totally wrong for whate I was doing then, especially since the "wolves" it made for the stage performers were weird versions of humans with sort of screwed up wolf like heads and extra limbs and whatnot. It's still wrong now, but darkened more than 90%, then erasing all the stuff in the top third, and the sides, leaving just bare outlines so you can't see all the wierdness then I used lots of dodging, burning, selections, hue-to-target, etc, to eventually get the image you see above. So this one has at least a couple of hours of actual art creation in it. If I'd had time I would have done a much better job, but it will be seen at the size above for most viewers looking at the bandcamp page, or even smaller, so the detail didn't really matter. The fullsize version can be seen by clickign on the alburm art whiel on the bandcamp page for the song itself. When I figure out what to call the present track, :oops: I'll add a title in a similar style at the bottom across the audience, but instead of glowing fire it will be shadow just back-edge-lit by the blue stage lights and fiery Amberwolf sign over the stage. .

I think I've seen the vector message in PSP6 now and then, but only if I am drawing something using the limited vector stuff it has, and flattening layers or exporting, not if I am just blending / layering / compositing pixel images (like when I make my album art). Regarding the "programmer syndrome" i suppose it would be better called "engineering syndrome", as it happens in mechanical and electrical / etc. UI design as much as software. EG: Mechanically, sometimes it's something as simple as button placement, like buttons on the opposing sides of a device that if used in combination perform some function different from using them separately, but is not normally desirable to happen randomly...but the device has to be held by both sides in one hand, and pressing one button requires squeezing the hand and the fingers naturally fall on all the buttons...with sometimes no natural way to hold it without this problem happening. Software equivalent: dialogs that appear one after another, where cancel on one dialog is in the same place as OK or continue on the next, etc. So many examples...but I don't want to drag the thread even further OT. 😊

Thanks to both of you for listening! I"m glad it still works after having added all the environmental sounds (which werent' there when @Kevin Walsh listened and commented.

Is that the same as this? https://pypi.org/project/BS-RoFormer/

FWIW, I think the point Jim Stamper is trying to make is that it isn't about a workaround (which he already has at least one of)...it's about finding the root cause so that the problem causing it can be fixed. (edit: for some reason it doesnt' show any of the stuff I quoted in the quote, maybe the forum just doesnt' do nested quotes?)

Still using an ancient PaintShop Pro 6...tried GIMP but every version so far has had wierd problems, or works in ways that can't do what I want without immense gyrations of user input. PSP6 just works, and is "obvious" how things work, and it does almost everything I want it to, even if most of it is manual tedious work. GIMP (and lots of other software) has too much "programmer syndrome", which means that the designers of things get this idea in their head of how something works internally and then do that with the UI, instead of making the UI (user interface) for the *user*, which is going to be completely different from how the internal stuff works. But many programmers don't see that, and can't be pushed to do so by users; they just push back and say "no, *this* is how it works" instead of letting their userbase show them how it *should* work to actually be useful to most users. Maybe it's improved in recent years, but I doubt it....

Could be, but if the same cable is used on the noisy and non noisy system tests, it's much less likely (it would mean that something esle is still different between thsoe two that allows it to cause the problem in one vs the other)

More variety: The most recent completed one, The Last Flight https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/the-last-flight Just before that one was No Bigger Than The Space Of Time https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/no-bigger-than-the-space-of-time And a pair, Aftermath of Sunlight and Pre-Cast-Shadows https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/aftermath-of-sunlight https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/pre-cast-shadows-aftermath-of-sunlight-pt-2 An ancient one I resurrected from an archived harddisk; made this back in the 1990s, IIRC https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/dinosaur-hunter The most recent one still in progress, just a sketch: https://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=15064964

(This post is broken, reposted in next post)

Are you using any demo versions of plugins? Some of them use a gap of silence at random times, and can cause this. It can also happen to a plugin you own that hasn't got it's activation or license or whatever correctly applied, etc., from some manufacturers that do that sort of thing.

Just for grins, if your non-noisy system has a two prong (at the wall end) cord, like this (note that I used USA plugs here, if you're not in the USA yours will probably look different) and your noisy system has a three prong cord (at the wall end), like this to the ac outlet on the wall, like this do you have a spare ac cord for the noisy system that you can break the round ground prong off of just to test how it works that way? Or if you have one of these laying around, u se it between that cord and the wall:

Wierd...somewhere in the last few edits leading up to the previous export/upload, *all* the busses were somehow set to feed the hardware out. I don't even know a way to do that on purpose except one by one, and I definitely didn't do that. Fixed by referring to a previous save version easily enough, but...weird. Also fixed the awkward placment of hte cliff jump / start of flight effects. I thought I had it down, but when i listened to it today, it sounded terrible, where i had had to alter the music around it, especially the lute part. So I reverted that section back to original, and moved the jump back a few measures and it fits MUCH better there. So the new version: 07-24-25: 071825 000001 000109u -- Fixed program failure (all buses mysteriously set to hardware out instead of chains they had been in) and fixed awkward placement of cliffjump / start of flight. https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/the-last-flight

I looked up "brauer" and found this https://www.sonarworks.com/blog/learn/reaper-tip-michael-brauers-brauerize-mixing-technique (I quoted some of the article at the end of this post for later reference) which turns out that I apparently reinvented something that seems to be similar to this process for myself, cuz it's what I've been doing since at least Ookami no Kari no Yume (Wolf's Dream of the Hunt) since it was the only way to make things work...but I started the path to something like it back before even Neotenous Chordata, maybe as far back as Convocation of Lies and Just give Me A Voice. 😊 I don't usualy have "lead vocals" so the part in the diagram below the quote doesn't usually apply directly, and I don't parallel compress that when i do have one (I guess I should learn how since I'm beginning to do more vocal stuff now that I have libraries of samples to use). In the last several pieces I've started using many more sends to parallel process some tracks, but some things still just go to one bus (a lot of percussion stuff stil goes jsut to it's grouping bus, but some that have deep tones also send to the perc-subbass buss if I want to preserve them and have them help the beat of the whole submix).

I started experimenting with splitting the bass when I had a synthbass line in...I think it was Neotenous Chordata? that I didn't want to lose all the sound of at the highs, but I also wanted to seriously magnify the subbass parts without blasting out the mid/bass etc. I don't have a surgical EQ, just the Sonitus and other similar ones, and those didn't do what I wanted, so I thought...why not just nuke whole bands using the SMBC just as a "filter" (no compression/etc) and feed different busses that I could then do whatever with. I also had a separate subbass tone sound that was just used on the beats, and that also went into the subbass buss. That worked, and since I almost always do the next song using the previous one minus all the content / automation, to use it as a template (because how I set things up improves each time, and it's the easiest way....) then the busing has stayed that way. When I did Ookami no Kari no Yume (Wolf's Dream of the Hunt), I added a second main Bass bus (Bass2) and several additional percussion buses (hand perc, etc) to the "percussion" chain, most of them parallel to the main perc buss that feeds the Perc&Bass bus that feeds the master. There's a lot of different percussion and bass in that project, driving the "motion"? of hunter and prey, separately but together, (not sure it works, but it was the idea), and I couldn't get them to play nice wihtout doing it that way. I still know almost nothing about busing, mastering, and all that stuff...every project is a new learning experience, especially when it has a different feel and sound than the others before it.... So i experiement till it sounds like I want, and if I can't make that happen, I google articles about it and sometimes I actually understand something they're talking about.... :lol: I'll have to look up "Brauer"... I don't think I have anything that shows "LUFS". I use Elemental Audio Systems free version of "Inspector" set to "Moderate" to warn me of clips and stuff, but since I use Sonitus MBcompressor on the output in a modified version of one of the "master" presets, I don't normally get any. I tend to just push the final out stage on that (that shows 5.0db in the screenshot below) until it "sounds" as loud as the other stuff I did that I liked at that level, and that doesn't completely destroy the dynamics and turn it into a hedge. So +5 did it for The Last Flight. +2 did it for the one before that. Some don't get any. I almost always already start out with all the tracks and buses at the volumes I want for the kind of thing being put thru them, with minor tweaks at track output level for various things, so I almost never want to change relative volumes by adjsuting bus outputs. The simplest way, so far, that gets a sound I like, and final volume i want, is usually to just push that Out up on the SMBC. Someitmes I use the master bus input gain, but that often leads to clipping or problems because the other buses are already feeding it high enough. And using hte output gain on the MB can do the same thing, but the Out adjusts level *before* limiting (and maybe other stuff, not sure) so it then does limiting to ensure everything stays in bounds, if I don't push it too hard. For this project, I finally found a close-enough wind sound, and some footsteps to use for walking up to the cliff then running to the edge and jumping off, to start her dive and then soaring over the water. Had to modify the music itself for that specific bit, not sure I got the lute bit done "right" yet; I think the perc and the bass are ok (most of the perc taken out there to let the footsteps running up do their thing). 07-23-25: 071825 000001 000093q -- Added wind, walking and hten running footsteps in the clifftop gravel, the sound of flapping clothes, etc. https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/the-last-flight

Then if hockeyjx's NUC is the same, it means the computer that doesnt' have the noise issue also doesn't have a ground pin for it's power supply, so it wouldn't be creating any ground loops via the wall AC system. If the other system is a regualr desktop or tower, using a regular 3-prong cord, then it does ahve a ground pin for it's power supply, and so it could create ground loops via the wall AC system. So, assuming that the problem system is "new" and has never been used for audio before, so that hte problem and machine are both coincident, that would be the first place I'd check, doing the usual things to eliminate ground loops.

Thanks--I'm still looking for the right wind sound for that one lonely part just before the last section, and some others for accents earlier. The wind represents her flying; there's a fall first, as she jumps from the cliff, then swoops out and glides over the ocean in the rain. Lots of wind sounds out there...but hard to find one that sounds like these. What is "Mercer'? The core bass tone is from the sample itself; the rest is from this: The way I currently use basses in my tracks routes them thru three parallel buses and fx chains, besides whatever is on the track itself (in this case a subtle delay). FX chain included parenthetically below with each bus: --Bass (Sonitus Multiband Compressor, with the two highest bands (of five) muted entirely, so you don't get any of the highs just mids and lows, but very little actual compression unless it gets really loud, to just keep it from distorting). --Basshighs (SMBC again, with just the two highest bands *not* muted, and a reverb with a 1.5s decay, and most of the highs dampened, and "200% width" which takes the reverb part and spreads it out all the way to the left and right. ) --Subbass (EQ to cut off anything above 200hz, then Multiband Compressor wiht the top three (of five) bands muted, and the low-mid band gain cut by -10db and a knee starting at -34db, the low band below 60hz left alone, and a final output gain of 2.6db). Both the last two buses go directly to the master bus, while the Bass bus goes to a subbus that merges all percussion and bass together with a single Multiband Compressor set to just do limiting, so that it keeps all the "beat" together and damps really big peaks to prevent distortion. Oh, and I also have a separate track that I sometimes copy bits of the bassline to for accents on some beats, that uses LittleGreenAmp and a delay and Sonitus MBC. On htis piece, I only use this on the one part around two and a half minutes in for a few seconds, for the bass. (I also use it for the "lute solo" in the last section). I also use this on some of the beats and notes in Behind You Lie Many Unseen's last two sections to emphasize them, where I have the bass note play in both tracks for those notes, so you hear the bass tone and the harmonics from the distortion.

None of those things should cause any kind of noise in your monitors. That has to get there in the audio signal path, or the ground to the power or signal path. Ok, well, there's one more path: RF (radio). If you have wifi or bluetooth devices on the problem PC that are not on the other, *and* the monitors or something else in the signal path to the monitors is vulnerable to RF that can then get amplified by preamps, etc., to become noise in the audio signal, that can also cause it. This would also be more likely to sound like "data" or "modem" noise. Some thoughts from experience, and electrical principles and theory: A fan can make audible noise, but unless it's a brushed motor (not used in any computer or rack fans I've ever seen, even ancient ones from the 1960s), it won't make electrical or RF noise that would end up in your signal path like this. Most have tiny brushless motor controller chips in them, that do generate some RF noise, but it is tiny and would require some other system problem to allow this to be an issue. The noise would be a constant tone or buzz directly related to the RPM of the fan, so if touching a fan lightly to slow it down doesnt' change the tone of the noise, it's not coming from a fan. A PSU could fail to filter such noise from a power bus, but the computer would probably be unstable if the PSU were unable to filter noise to this degree; it would likely also require the motherboard filter caps to be bad as well, as they provide additional filtering on the power buses. PSU noise not on the power bus couldn't make it into the computer directly, so it would be RF noise, and be radiated the same regardless of what the comptuer was doing as long as it was powered on at all, so even if it wasn't connected to your monitors it would still make the noise and the monitors would still pick it up. It would also probably be a steady noise, not "data' sounding. Problems with data busses radiating RF can make the kind of noise you hear, but wouldn't be an issue unless the audio device is picking that up and pasing it on--all computers make a fair bit of this kind of RF, most of them shield it eitehr with the main casing having a metal lining or being all metal, or thru good grounding planes, etc. But good audio devices are shielded against it anyway...however, they may depend on a good ground for the audio cables and power to do that. Power cables for AC lines aren't the issue, unless they have grounding on one system and the other does not, so that either the ground is feeding the noise into the signal path or preventing it from getting there. If you've tried different AC power cables with no change, and swapped the cables between the problem system and the other one, with no change, then it's not those. AC-DC wallwarts that have no ground pin (very common) can generate RF that doesn't get grounded even if there is shielding, and can be re-radiated thru their output wires or the device they power. If their shield/negative connects thru the device they power and then a chain of connections to the primary system groudn that does get to the wall outlet ground, then it would *probably* be less radiated, or even prevented. Regarding the noise *after* opening a project, it is probably the audio driver not being opened and sending signal to the monitors until the project accesses the input or output of the audio device. Unlikely causes: Back in the 90s, before the OSes did IRQ management, I had a machine with a NIC that had to have a specific IRQ assigned in the BIOS for the PCI bus. If it wasn't on that one, it would cause wierd data noises in the SBLive audio in or out, even if the NIC wasn't plugged into a network cable. But this type of problem hasn't happened to me since, oh, at least WinXP, maybe Win2000. I had some other thoughts but JellyBeanThePerfectlyNormalSchmoo needed attentionals and I forgot what they were by the time I got back to the computer.... 🐶

It wouldn't (shouldn't, can't think of how) be software. This kind of thing is usually a ground loop, and most often caused by an ac adapter for something attached to the laptop, the sound device, the mixer, or something else in the audio path. Since you have a second computer, what is different between the two, in how they are connected to power from the wall? Including which outlets things are plugged into?

Finally got the artwork composited: Also updated the track itself 07-22-25: 071825 000001 000075m -- added environmental fx, widened part of the lute solo to fill space.