Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Stromkraft
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Stromkraft » Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:11 pm

designwebuk wrote: I'm on a MacBook Pro with 16gb ram, ssd and Yosemite. I have no issues with Reaper or Pro Tools and can normally run large projects at 128 buffer with no issues.
With Live 9.5 even 4 or more tracks can spin my cpu into overdrive.
Come on Ableton pull your finger out and give us a stable product.
While these are real problems they hardly began with 9.5. If anything 9.5 has given me better performance as did 9.2.

I also think all issues of this kind should be rooted out, at least if there are no clear heavy CPU usage either in Live or in CPU analysis tools. If you're using up a core however then you need a faster computer or stay in PT.
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maky355
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by maky355 » Thu Dec 31, 2015 6:01 am

Stromkraft wrote:
designwebuk wrote: I'm on a MacBook Pro with 16gb ram, ssd and Yosemite. I have no issues with Reaper or Pro Tools and can normally run large projects at 128 buffer with no issues.
With Live 9.5 even 4 or more tracks can spin my cpu into overdrive.
Come on Ableton pull your finger out and give us a stable product.
While these are real problems they hardly began with 9.5. If anything 9.5 has given me better performance as did 9.2.

I also think all issues of this kind should be rooted out, at least if there are no clear heavy CPU usage either in Live or in CPU analysis tools. If you're using up a core however then you need a faster computer or stay in PT.
You are completely wrong there. All of my problems started the same moment i upgraded to 9.5. That very same moment. I had to do all sort of unusual things to make 9.5 works as 9.2 did and still it does not work as stable as 9.2 did. If you read this thread you will see quite a lot of people reported same scenario so it really can't be that all of us did some sort of internal error that same day we upgraded (and really i upgraded it in the same way as everyone else and there is no way you can break upgrade - you just upgrade or Ableton upgrade by itself.).


Add to that that i have latest i7 - 8 core. My computer is acting super stable and slick fast for other apps even other DAW applications. It's just that live 9.5 is kinda nightmare for me...

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Dec 31, 2015 7:16 am

maky355 wrote:

Add to that that i have latest i7 - 8 core. My computer is acting super stable and slick fast for other apps even other DAW applications. It's just that live 9.5 is kinda nightmare for me...
So go back to 9.2. I maintain that 9.5 massively increased my performance on my old core2duo and causes no issues whatssoever on a quad core 17 system. If 9.5 generally gives better performance on some computers there must be a reason why it doesn't do this on yours.

9.5 experience vary and neither of us can draw definite conclusions from posts. Generally people without issues tend to not read about problems nor post about them. As I've already said, I agree these kind of issues need to be fixed.

You don't seem to have analyzed CPU usage in your case. If you do that you can see if that's something likely to be behind these issues of yours that can be fixed with OS downgrade/upgrade or throw more CPU on it.

All of the following may appear to be outside of specific issues with 9.5, but I think it's likely to be related to crackle and glitches problems. Of the three OS X machines I've operated 9.5 on, none have gotten worse because of 9.5 and definitely better in one at least.

Different types of issues
What I and several have noticed as severe issues are of two types, that might not be exclusive.

One being, crackles, glitches or both when CPU does not appear to be taxed in analysis tools, nor does increased latency help much, if at all. In my case it typically gets worse at higher settings and I need to stay at 128-512 samples. This issue cannot be solved with more CPU power, unless it's spikes in one system that does not occur in another. I suppose this is the most likely with your machine. Noticing something in the description?

The other being when CPU is indeed under heavy use, at least in one core, either from Live and/or from other processes running on the machine. Other processes can affect the first type of issue too, especially with CPU spikes. A symptom here will be that increased latency does help as do throwing more CPU on the problem. This is where you have to decide to either get a faster machine or change DAW. In your case a faster machine may not seem to make sense, but remember to investigate all aspects of your system.

Third party plug-ins and multi-core
Typically problems like these can come at certain parts of a song and involves certain plug-in use. These could be an indicator with issues connected to these plug-ins. In my case it's Native Instruments. This can possibly be explained by CPU spikes caused by these plug-ins that takes an individual core trough the roof, which is bound to cause crackles. Possible solutions could be to either turn off multicore support or turn it on in the specific plug-in.

Other DAWs doing better could be because of being better with multicore support overall or for catering for multicore use of used plug-ins.

CPU Spikes
CPU spikes may be behind a lot of these issues and that will vary with different models of CPU. Intel Speedstep switching may be behind such spikes in some cases. Unfortunately I have yet to hear about a way to analyze these well in OS X.

Possibly you can use Intel® Power Gadget for Mac and get some info. I haven't had the reason to use this on a supported system. In Windows this should be easier to analyze, so maybe it's very useful for all users if Windows users do this type of analysis of common third party VSTs as well as with Live.
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Treshell
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Treshell » Thu Dec 31, 2015 1:47 pm

Scanning plugins folder (on start-up or in settings) crashes Live every time.

I've tried resetting Live as suggested on here: https://www.ableton.com/en/help/article ... snt-start/

However, that doesn't fix the actual scan crash in any way.

I haven't changed my folder settings (Programfiles>Steinberg>VSTPlugins), and I haven't installed any weird plugins (except updating Dune to 2.5).

What do? Literally cannot use any of my (legal) plugins as it stands. :x

edit: Nevermind. So apparently it was Spire 1.1 that needed to be updated to 1.1.1. Which is fucking weird, because it worked fine after I installed it.
Last edited by Treshell on Thu Dec 31, 2015 2:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:14 pm

Treshell wrote: apparently it was Spire 1.1 that needed to be updated to 1.1.1. Which is fucking weird, because it worked fine after I installed it
Weird or not it illustrates the very real need of checking full compatibility of all your plug-ins, drivers and hardware before updating your DAW. Music Production studios are delicate, which is one reason why many people, myself included, drag their feet at updating. There are many things that can go wrong.
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beats me
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by beats me » Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:27 pm

Spire is the only plugin I’ve had problems with out the gate and I have a lot of plugins, constant stuck notes, stuck notes without ever playing a note – just change a preset and BAM! note on, changing presets just hovering the cursor over the selection arrows without clicking, and sometimes just randomly changing presets. So not surprised at all that there are other bugs because the ones I’m having are pretty stellar.

Treshell
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Treshell » Fri Jan 01, 2016 11:29 am

Stromkraft wrote:
Treshell wrote: apparently it was Spire 1.1 that needed to be updated to 1.1.1. Which is fucking weird, because it worked fine after I installed it
Weird or not it illustrates the very real need of checking full compatibility of all your plug-ins, drivers and hardware before updating your DAW. Music Production studios are delicate, which is one reason why many people, myself included, drag their feet at updating. There are many things that can go wrong.
I didn't update Live. I installed Spire while running 9.5 and it worked (until it didn't), hence the confusion.

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Stromkraft » Fri Jan 01, 2016 4:55 pm

Treshell wrote: I didn't update Live. I installed Spire while running 9.5 and it worked (until it didn't), hence the confusion.
Hmm, botched preferences perhaps? I've had the odd install konk out once in a while, but it's a rare event.
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jbone1313
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by jbone1313 » Sat Jan 02, 2016 5:14 pm

Well, it's a total crash fest here. Seems like it's related to using some stock M4L devices, e.g., Expression Control and MultiMap. I just sent a boatload of crash reports.

Push 2. Windows 10 latest updates. NO 3rd party plugins. Live 9.5 AND Live 9.5.1 betas. Updated Max to 7.1. Cleared Max preferences. Tried compatibility mode. Also tried running with Push 2 turned off.

Nothing helps.

Very frustrating.

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Stromkraft » Sun Jan 03, 2016 10:07 am

jbone1313 wrote:Well, it's a total crash fest here. Seems like it's related to using some stock M4L devices, e.g., Expression Control and MultiMap. I just sent a boatload of crash reports.…

Nothing helps.

Very frustrating.
Yeah, it is frustrating when crashes comes from nowhere. If you don't use MFL devices, there are no crashes? Have you tried problem projects on another computer?

Do all projects with those devices crash or just some?
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Stromkraft
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Stromkraft » Sun Jan 03, 2016 10:23 am

Stromkraft wrote:
Treshell wrote: I didn't update Live. I installed Spire while running 9.5 and it worked (until it didn't), hence the confusion.
Hmm, botched preferences perhaps? I've had the odd install konk out once in a while, but it's a rare event.
Did you do a reinstallation of Spire and it didn't help? I'm not familiar with Spire myself. What are other Spire users saying?
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jbone1313
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by jbone1313 » Sun Jan 03, 2016 6:55 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
jbone1313 wrote:Well, it's a total crash fest here. Seems like it's related to using some stock M4L devices, e.g., Expression Control and MultiMap. I just sent a boatload of crash reports.…

Nothing helps.

Very frustrating.
Yeah, it is frustrating when crashes comes from nowhere. If you don't use MFL devices, there are no crashes? Have you tried problem projects on another computer?

Do all projects with those devices crash or just some?
All projects with MFL devices and only projects with MFL devices. Tried on a different machine with Win 7. No issues there. I've tried unplugging, uninstalling and eliminating issues until I was blue in the face. Nothing helps.

I went ahead and submitted a case to Ableton support.

Noxoreos
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Noxoreos » Mon Jan 04, 2016 2:10 am

I had got some crash issues on Live 9.5 x64 as well.

I'm working on a remix project with a group of 15 stem files with a length of about 4 minutes. Every stem track has a lot of headroom and does not clip in the sum. Also there are activated, but blank EQ Eight devices on all of those tracks with default preset (no cuts, no boosts, four eq points). Only this EQ Eight, nothing else.
I work on my version on additional tracks beneath it, having the group track with the original song muted.
Now every time that I open up the project and hit play in the arrangement view, as soon as the play marker hits the start, or any other point after placing the play marker anywhere in the track, Live just crashes.
I don't have any of those tracks selected, nor do I anything else with it.
This happens every time when I open up the project.

Now I noticed, that unmuting and muting any of those stem-tracks stopped Live from crashing (no matter which). But only for the active session. If I close Live and open it up again, it crashes on hitting any of the stem files again.

Now I've removed all EQ Eight devices from the stem tracks only and the problem was gone (I saved the project and restarted Live, playback worked fine).
As a test I added all the EQ Eight devices on those 15 audio tracks again. I saved the project, restarted Live and there were the crashes again.
Then I started Live, deactivated all those 15 EQ Eight devices and no crash anymore. Then I activated all of them again (using Push), saved the project, restarted Live and no more crashes (which somehow can't be). So I removed them and put a blank one there, copied it over 13 times (making it one less), saved the project, restarted Live and the crashes started again. After removing only one, making it a max of 13 tracks with longer audio material in it having an active EQ Eight worked just fine.

Strangely, when I tried to create a small cut out of the project to post it here, consolidating a small bit also made Live crash.

I could not reproduce this in a new project but when I save the project as a new file it still crashes.
Has anyone else have similar kinds of problems? And may know how to work around it per se? I know how to "make it work", but nut after having it crash first, so that's a bit of annoying.

However I'll send those crash reports to Ableton. Hopefully they will be fixed in the next bugfix release.

BTW: I'm using Windows 10 x64, but I don't think it has anything to do with drivers or so.
Running Ableton Live 9.x and Push

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Guillermo Barrancos
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Guillermo Barrancos » Mon Jan 04, 2016 8:07 am

I am having a lot of crashes as well with 9.5 x64 on Windows, while working on the exact same tracks in 9.5 x64 on my MacBook Pro on OSX does´t cause crashes at all.

The windows x64 version of Ableton 9.5 is buggy as hell currently and I hope they put out a stability update soon, as it´s driving me nuts at the moment. :evil:

Same with the Push 2 on windows. Have to often turn off / turn on the Push controller as it either hangs on logo or a blank screen, when loading a project.

Stromkraft
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Re: Live 9.5 crashes/issues

Post by Stromkraft » Mon Jan 04, 2016 12:03 pm

Guillermo Barrancos wrote:I am having a lot of crashes as well with 9.5 x64 on Windows, while working on the exact same tracks in 9.5 x64 on my MacBook Pro on OSX does´t cause crashes at all.

The windows x64 version of Ableton 9.5 is buggy as hell currently and I hope they put out a stability update soon, as it´s driving me nuts at the moment. :evil:

Same with the Push 2 on windows. Have to often turn off / turn on the Push controller as it either hangs on logo or a blank screen, when loading a project.
Is it possible these instabilities in Windows are due to Max For Live problems? For Max 6 and max 7 alike? Is this so in every version of Windows? Does the version of java installed affect stability?
Also, if you install multiple versions of Live, like 9.1, 9.2 and 9.5, does simply switching between these change the proneness to crash or is it about the same?

That's what I'd like to know.
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