drop outs when triggering clips

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mrboni
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:29 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

drop outs when triggering clips

Post by mrboni » Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:27 pm

Hi

I quite frequently get drop outs when djing tracks in live. The drop outs happen only when triggering a new clip, and the clip begins playing.

Are there any system tweaks beyond increasing the audio buffer that may help?

I'm using a newish macbook pro and an edirol fa101


cheers

Wunjo
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon Jun 28, 2010 2:40 pm
Location: Missouri

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by Wunjo » Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:05 pm

Before you trigger the clip be sure to look at the upper right section by your cpu percentage meter and you will see an icon with the letter "D". If this button lights up as you trigger the clip which results in the clip not playing back on time whenever you hit play then that means that your hard-drive is not responding quickly enough. I think one of the ways to remedy this is to go to file, "collect all and save" which will put all external files into that project so that your cpu doesn't have to look all around for those different samples. I don't know why this would doing that on a new macbook so that might not be the issue but either way if the "D" button lights up then you know what it is.
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mrboni
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:29 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by mrboni » Wed Aug 03, 2011 11:03 am

Hi. It does seem to be a hard drive problem.

I'm only djing whole mp3 files though, and they're all in the same folder. I don;t see how that could be stressing the disk, unless it's really fragmented.

Wunjo
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon Jun 28, 2010 2:40 pm
Location: Missouri

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by Wunjo » Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:08 pm

Yeah that's what I figured. I've got a Seagate Momentus XT hyrbrid drive and that shit still gives me the hard=drive button. But it only does it when I have say a clip that i've warped and I didn't crop the rest of the song out. I.E. I'm only using 30 seconds of a 5 minute song so when I delete the unused part it usually responds quicker because I'm guessing it has a smaller file to locate on the drive. Good luck in getting that to work!
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mrboni
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:29 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by mrboni » Thu Aug 04, 2011 12:40 pm

Hah, crazy.

Surely thousands of people use Ableton Live to dj mp3s on a macbook pro... I can't believe everyone gets this problem, or has to have the buffer set really high...

luddy
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Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by luddy » Thu Aug 04, 2011 12:45 pm

You might experiment with converting some of those mp3s to wave or aiff and see if it helps. It might be a disk problem, but it might also be that the mp3 decoder is having a hard time catching up with the first bit of audio that comes out of the file...
-Luddy

lapieuvre
Posts: 758
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2007 9:29 pm

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by lapieuvre » Fri Aug 05, 2011 6:47 am

Really seems like a disk problem...

Just a trick when you setup your latency: make sure your number is one of these:

64
128
256
512
1024, etc...

never set the latency to something different: other numbers than 2^x can make your CPU/soundcard crazy.
MBP 2018, 16 GB Ram, OSX 10.15.7
MBP M1 Max 64 GB Ram, OSX 14.3.1
Live 10.1.43 Suite
Live 11.3.21
Live 12 Beta
Interface : Apollo Twin duo

mrboni
Posts: 49
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:29 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by mrboni » Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:49 pm

@ luddy

I though the point of Ableton decoding the clips on import was that then are then stored as temporary wave files in a cache?!

ie no decoding after

catsandwich
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2010 7:14 am

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by catsandwich » Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:44 pm

That's not true at all.
lapieuvre wrote:Really seems like a disk problem...

Just a trick when you setup your latency: make sure your number is one of these:

64
128
256
512
1024, etc...

never set the latency to something different: other numbers than 2^x can make your CPU/soundcard crazy.

lapieuvre
Posts: 758
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2007 9:29 pm

Re: drop outs when triggering clips

Post by lapieuvre » Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:52 pm

mrboni wrote:@ luddy

I though the point of Ableton decoding the clips on import was that then are then stored as temporary wave files in a cache?!

ie no decoding after
More a question of how many tracks you run...
catsandwih wrote:That's not true at all.

lapieuvre wrote:
Really seems like a disk problem...

Just a trick when you setup your latency: make sure your number is one of these:

64
128
256
512
1024, etc...

never set the latency to something different: other numbers than 2^x can make your CPU/soundcard crazy.
I made the test and it worked for me...
MBP 2018, 16 GB Ram, OSX 10.15.7
MBP M1 Max 64 GB Ram, OSX 14.3.1
Live 10.1.43 Suite
Live 11.3.21
Live 12 Beta
Interface : Apollo Twin duo

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