Audiio dropouts ONLY on stage

thedeadsea · Post by **thedeadsea** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 7:55 pm

Hey people,

I've racked my brain over this one, done hours of searches through these and other forums, but I remain clueless!

The issue I'm having is that when I use Live on stage I get audio dropouts that NEVER occur in my home setup. This occurs with 7.0.16 and 8.0.4, seemingly non version specific...
I use a MOTU Traveler as my soundcard to which I have guitars and a mic plugged in and the sound is output to a stereo master and two guitar amps. The only difference between my setup at home and on stage is that the amps and the PA are plugged into the outputs and there is obviously a lot more volume going on... The dropouts seem to occur in the more CPU/hard drive intensive parts of songs (i.e. multiple triggered clips, recording clips simultaneously) but never effect the timing of the song (i.e. the audio drops out for maybe a second or two, but when back in, the song is still in time!). They don't occur in the same places, and like I said I can run it at home for hours, make the machine as hot as can possibly be, run other apps in the background and it will NEVER fail at home...

I've read about vibration issues being a cause, but it just doesn't seem right as it's only just started happening and I've been using this setup in live venues for years...

Any ideas???

thedeadsea · Post by **thedeadsea** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:13 pm

Anyone?

8O · Post by 8O » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:29 pm

Hi, did you check this thread already - http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=110256 - ?

thedeadsea · Post by **thedeadsea** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:33 pm

Yeah thanks, I dd read that one... some ideas but not really any definitive conclusions!

ark · Post by **ark** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:34 pm

I have a Windows XP laptop and I have found that when the machine is disconnected from the network, I get lots of dropouts unless I disable the network adapter. I do this as follows:

1) Right-click "My Network Places" and select "Properties"

2) Locate the icon that corresponds to the network adapter currently in use (probably something like "Local Area Connection")

3) Right-click that icon and select "Disable."

Apparently unless you do this, the system keeps checking whether a cable has been connected, and causes dropouts in the process.

thedeadsea · Post by **thedeadsea** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:39 pm

forgot to mention that I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33Ghz 17" circa Nov 2006...

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 9:41 pm

over time dust can build up in your laptop. take a vacuum cleaner hose to the fan outlet and suck that stuff out.

other than that I was gonna suggest vibration.

disk defrag time? but that would affect home use.

do you genuinely drive your set as hard at home as you do on stage?

maybe it's a network thing, it can find the network at home, on the stage it keeps searching?

are all the connections and devices identical in both setups?

seems like you've thought about these things, just had to ask.

thedeadsea · Post by **thedeadsea** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 10:12 pm

hey tone deft - i appreciated the suggestions!

Hadn't thought of cleaning the dust out, but that wouldn't explain the difference between home and stage, nice tip though...
The set IS identical home/stage because every song runs in a pre-determined order from a Behringer FCB1010 and it's just a matter of triggering commands sequentially, oh, and playing every now and then!

Anyone else? Anyone actually got first-hand experience of their hard drive not running as well because of high volume vibrations? It seems to be often handed around as a theory, but rarely actually substantiated...

The only other things I keep wondering are if there is some kind of interference going on with the AC typical of larger venues which is affecting how the MBP runs or if there could be some kind of weird earthing issue with the guitars/amps/MOTU which are creating some kind of interference which impact on the hard drive...

Can anyone enlighten me on the probability of either of these things?

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:08 pm

I can tell you first hand that vibrations will do this.

I played a show in Leipzig once on a wooden stage that vibrated like crazy whenever there was a lot of bass. My drive would lock up for a second or 2 when it was really bad and cause a dropout. Not something that would ever happen in the studio or at home.

This also explains why it happens to you only during intense CPU/Disk times. Vibration+heavy IO = dropout.

Next time you play put something under your lappy to absorb vibration and see if you get any dropouts.

djsynchro · Post by **djsynchro** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:23 pm

Vibrations! Making your hard disk drives skip. Use an external drive and put it on something shock absorbing, similar to anti feedback cushions for record players.

Walkingmachine · Post by **Walkingmachine** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 12:08 am

when else would you expect to have audio dropouts? of course its only gonna happen live...welcome to the world of an electronic musician, when things only go wrong at the worst time possible! hahah, its soo true tho....sorry not sure what the issue is though, my advice would be to do anything you can to decrease your cpu load and if u don't have one already get a stand for your computer to keep it off the table so it cools better

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 3:14 am

I'm looking at this thread and thinking 'didn't this just get all sorted?' but it happens to everybody especially *the first time they play out*

Like was said ^ when the subs kick in in the live environment they knock your hard disk drive head off the disk, and it has to recover.

Get some foam rubber about 2" thick, cut a couple of strips to go around the edges of your notebook/laptop, or use squares at the corners, or you can use tennis balls cut in half at the cornes. Pad it making sure not to block the vents or fans and you are ok.

fishmonkey · Post by **fishmonkey** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 3:53 am

thedeadsea wrote:forgot to mention that I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33Ghz 17" circa Nov 2006...

hey, vibrations are the most likely cause...

you can actually disable the Sudden Motion Sensor in your MBP so that it doesn't react so much to the vibrations, but you should really look into isolating your setup from the shocks if possible, because it's really not good for your hard drive in the long run...

here's the info on disabling the SMS:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1934

thedeadsea · Post by **thedeadsea** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 8:11 am

Cheers for the feedback people! I'll try and find a way to get the MBP cushioned a bit more and see if that's the answer... Strange though, cause I have done plenty of really loud gigs in the past where it's been smooth sailing...

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 9:28 am

Agree - likely to be vibrations triggering the shock sensor.

BTW - careful what kind of cushioning you use, you could end up replacing dropouts caused by vibrations with dropouts caused by overheating and associated CPU throttling, so make sure you keep good airflow around the laptop, so make sure the bottom of the the laptop still gets air to it.

Audiio dropouts ONLY on stage

Audiio dropouts ONLY on stage

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