OSX + Live Audio Performance

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Stromkraft
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Oct 30, 2014 12:39 am

M-bition wrote:
Out of experience. Because it happened to me. I have seen other people complaining about this to. Less tracks and removing those stop buttons helped a lot.
Can you present me with a project that displays these issues? PM if you can.
Make some music!

ansolas
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by ansolas » Thu Oct 30, 2014 10:10 am

Stromkraft wrote:
M-bition wrote:
Out of experience. Because it happened to me. I have seen other people complaining about this to. Less tracks and removing those stop buttons helped a lot.
Can you present me with a project that displays these issues? PM if you can.
For this yopu would need exactly the same Plugins as I used in the Project:
u-he Zebra
Line 6 Podfarm Platinum 2
X-Fer Serum
...
got all?

––

I try to create a generic project which outline the issue, the next step to explore what "M-bition" highlighted, –– the amount of clips lauchend in one scene.

What I have learned so far:
Max For Life MIDI Plufgins have a high impact of the performance and even the speed of the GUI.

M-bition
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by M-bition » Fri Oct 31, 2014 1:09 pm

No I do not have those plug-ins.

But is it really a big problem for you ? Are you having these problems while performing live or will these clicks show up while arranging a track in the end ?
I myself can live with an occasional click as long as I can avoid them while finishing/arranging a track or during live performance.

ansolas
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by ansolas » Fri Oct 31, 2014 1:53 pm

M-bition wrote:No I do not have those plug-ins.

But is it really a big problem for you ? Are you having these problems while performing live or will these clicks show up while arranging a track in the end ?
I myself can live with an occasional click as long as I can avoid them while finishing/arranging a track or during live performance.
The question regarding the Plugins was the answer to Stromkraft question.

Stromkraft
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by Stromkraft » Fri Oct 31, 2014 4:19 pm

ansolas wrote:
Stromkraft wrote: Can you present me with a project that displays these issues? PM if you can.
For this yopu would need exactly the same Plugins as I used in the Project:
u-he Zebra
Line 6 Podfarm Platinum 2
X-Fer Serum
...
got all?
As I've already said it looks like I could use the demos, unless you must use out of demo functions to get these clicks. I have a full Zebra available in the studio, not on my own machine though, so I'd have to use demos for the other two.
Make some music!

ansolas
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by ansolas » Fri Oct 31, 2014 5:06 pm

Thank you Stromkraft for the offer, probably I get you you back later, but by now I try to narropw things down on my machine.

At the moment i am resampling all Serum patches as Sampler patch and I have removed all max things. Now the CPU is beneath 20% and I do not get clicks so far.

Stromkraft
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by Stromkraft » Sat Nov 01, 2014 1:12 am

ansolas wrote:Thank you Stromkraft for the offer, probably I get you you back later, but by now I try to narropw things down on my machine.

At the moment i am resampling all Serum patches as Sampler patch and I have removed all max things.
OK! I hope it's not Max causing clicks because I love Max MIDI devices.

Maybe resampling my heavy duty synths is something I should try too instead of just freezing the tracks. That would make it possible to play and develop parts with Sampler and then render or re-record with the original synth patch. Thanks for the idea.
Make some music!

Machinesworking
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by Machinesworking » Sat Nov 01, 2014 3:12 am

Why is anyone surprised that he's having problems? He's running OSX on a machine it wasn't designed for. Apple consider it theft, and IMO his problems have nothing to do with OSX and Live Audio Performance, but more to do with OSX on an unsupported platform, running a hacked bios/efi extension.

fishmonkey
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by fishmonkey » Sat Nov 01, 2014 4:23 am

Stromkraft wrote:
M-bition wrote:Like I said, I am thinking launching too many tracks in one scene is causing these clicks. Try less tracks and remove stop buttons in scenes with no clips in it.
Why would that even be if the CPU load is low?

It's still unclear to me if the dropouts, the crackles and these short clicks supplied by Ansolas are actually symptoms of the same or related issues.
CPU load is not a reliable indicator of audio system performance. of course if the overall CPU load is high, then dropouts will occur.

however, a machine with 100 cores all running at 10 GHz can still easily glitch under light overall load. the issue is that the audio system has real-time processing constraints; it depends on a consistent flow of processing. all it takes is one low-level driver to interrupt the operating system for a tiny amount too long, and you get a glitch.

that's why audio glitches can be very tricky to pin down. it's actually easier to diagnose on Windows machines, as there are readily available tools that can help you find out what is causing the system latency spikes (DPC latency checkers)...

for sure it will trickier to configure a reliable Hackintosh system for audio use...

alltomorrowsparties
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by alltomorrowsparties » Sat Nov 01, 2014 4:46 am

ansolas wrote:Hi,
I have the following setup (Custom Mac):

RME Multiface II
OS 10.10
Intel I7-4770k
32 GIG RAM

I have a Project which induce 30% CPU.

Anything works fine at 512 samples which results in 13.2ms latency which is way to high to play Push with joy.

When I lower the latency to 256 Sampler , I keep getting clicks.
I even get clicks when I have a loop enable and the playbacks jumps to the start or
when I launch a scene on Push ?

In other DAWs I can even get stable audio up to >80% CPU load !

Disabling EIST in BIOS doesn't help

Playing Live @ 13,2ms latency is frustrating.

Any idea ?
Are you playing/recording from Ableton's session view? It can be weird under certain conditions (this is not a bug but a feature as Abe needs to be "primed" for you to trigger any clip at any given time. this is especially true of sequences that are one shot or unsynced)

As a test, record your project onto the arrangement view, delete all scenes and clips from session view, un-arm all tracks and see what happens.

I reckon you might be pleasantly surprised!

M-bition
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by M-bition » Sat Nov 01, 2014 7:24 am

ansolas wrote:
At the moment i am resampling all Serum patches as Sampler patch and I have removed all max things. Now the CPU is beneath 20% and I do not get clicks so far.
:-) I told you so. "Maybe you are using a plugin or some device that can be a part of the problem. Try figuring out which one causes problems."


This happens quite often. Mostly its a case of deleting/replacing devices to narrow down the problem.
At first it looked like you had a pretty simple project. But in fact it is pretty large, lots of vst's, effects and max 4 live devices. It only takes one to mess it up.

ansolas
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by ansolas » Sat Nov 01, 2014 7:42 am

Machinesworking wrote:Why is anyone surprised that he's having problems? He's running OSX on a machine it wasn't designed for. Apple consider it theft, and IMO his problems have nothing to do with OSX and Live Audio Performance, but more to do with OSX on an unsupported platform, running a hacked bios/efi extension.
Bogus, in Germany it is totally legal to run OS X on a non Apple Machine.
There is even a business around this here in Germany , http://pearc.de for years...
besides that I own a MBP which allows me to download OS X.
ages ago I bought the biggest Apple G5 just to be able to run Logic which ran less stable than my custom build... But thats another story.
Besides that, I think I mentioned somewhere above tht I only had issues with LIVE not Other DAWs such as Apple Logic where as I can run up to 90% CPU load without any System overload Messages.
and regarding Hacking, I am running 100% untouched OSX or BIOS , there is nothing hacked.

ansolas
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by ansolas » Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:18 am


Stromkraft
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by Stromkraft » Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:07 am

fishmonkey wrote:
Stromkraft wrote:
M-bition wrote:Like I said, I am thinking launching too many tracks in one scene is causing these clicks. Try less tracks and remove stop buttons in scenes with no clips in it.
Why would that even be if the CPU load is low?

It's still unclear to me if the dropouts, the crackles and these short clicks supplied by Ansolas are actually symptoms of the same or related issues.
CPU load is not a reliable indicator of audio system performance. of course if the overall CPU load is high, then dropouts will occur.

however, a machine with 100 cores all running at 10 GHz can still easily glitch under light overall load. the issue is that the audio system has real-time processing constraints; it depends on a consistent flow of processing. all it takes is one low-level driver to interrupt the operating system for a tiny amount too long, and you get a glitch.

that's why audio glitches can be very tricky to pin down.
How is it relevant for the "audio system" that several scenes are launched? Sounds more like a bug to me than something to expect. If you load the CPU too much, OK, but if not? I acknowledge the real time factor, but what is the difference starting up tracks or playing them, you mean?


That's good thinking on analyzing latency. But you've heard of OS X Developer Tools and Instruments (that Ansolas just mentioned), right? There's some interesting thoughts on this area here in the Ableton Tech Resource blog.
Make some music!

Stromkraft
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Re: OSX + Live Audio Performance

Post by Stromkraft » Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:11 am

ansolas wrote:Anyone got experience with :
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac ... ction.html

?
No, but time to get busy. I want to get my 5ms latency back. I had that with Snow Leopard and Echo Indigo. I'm at 7-12ms now when recording. When mixing I can be forced to max out latency and if it weren't for that non-compensated automation data that would be OK. But this is mainly because my machine is too old and therefore too slow for what I ask from it. If I freeze tracks before mixdown I might learn to get around this issue.
Make some music!

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