Crackling / Popping / Clocking Issues with external gear

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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rektagon
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2021 2:51 am

Crackling / Popping / Clocking Issues with external gear

Post by rektagon » Wed Sep 08, 2021 3:05 am

I'm running an Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt and Live 11
Mojave 10.14.6 (18G9323)
2.3 GHz Intel Core i9
32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB
Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

I got an Ensemble Thunderbolt recently to make good use of the hardware effects I've been collecting for use in mixing. Everything runs very smoothly in ProTools and Logic but in Ableton I'm experiencing significant crackling/popping/etc even at the most minimal setups. This seems to happen no matter what I do when monitoring incoming audio and or recording. I can minimize the drop outs at hight buffer sizes but the lag generated makes tracking or using hardware effects like delays in real time impossible.

I set up a test session today to compare compressors with some spitfire piano. Running at 1024/48k I was experiencing a few drop outs, but nothing horrible. Moving down to even 512 the drop outs increase significantly. Using a static drum loop, I was able to go down to 256 where I started to experience problems. In both cases the CPU bar hovers around 16%. This seems like a bit much for a simple sampler plugin and a single external effect, but even so it seems bizarre to me that I would be experiencing any issues at all at such low CPU loads.

Similarly, when playing around on a hardware synth in an empty session I experience crackles and drop outs at 512, which even has too much latency to monitor in real time.

Has anyone else experienced issues like this? It's basically impossible for me to realistically do any recording or processing with hardware in real time now which is incredibly frustrating as Ableton has been my go to DAW for production for years. Both ProTools and Logic have zero issues with similar setups so it feels like there is some sort of issue regarding my new Apogee and Ableton.

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