Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
DunedinDragon
Posts: 104
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:46 pm

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by DunedinDragon » Tue May 17, 2022 6:17 pm

kebabman wrote:
Tue May 17, 2022 8:17 am
DunedinDragon wrote:
Thu May 12, 2022 8:41 pm
This sounds far more like your processor is busy doing something and can't get around to launching the next scene for a moment. The question in my mind is what's in each of your scenes? It's entirely possible if you're using MIDI with some of the instruments it's trying to load the instrument plugin because they've been flushed out of memory after the laptop's been shut down and turned off.

I don't every use anything but WAV files in my scenes for exactly that reason. There's nothing to load because the WAV is preloaded with all the scenes and there's nothing they depend on to be loaded in order for the scene to start playing and it's very low cost in terms of memory or processing.
Surely though when I boot up my mac and boot up Ableton it does its thing and loads all wavs and any midi data? The only midi is a 303 plugin (ABL 3) on a couple of songs. Whenever you boot up the live set before a gig you accept its going to take 30 seconds loading wavs and any midi. Once Ableton has loaded all this when I open the live set it's there?
I'm not totally sure whether Ableton loads all effects and instruments that are actively being used in your project or not when you launch the project. I know they're listed on the interface, but I also know there's a slight lag when you include certain things in a project before you can actually use it. That wouldn't be unusual as that's how most vendors do it in order to not waste resources on things that aren't being actively used, but it may be treated differently if you're using scenes. Because you only intermittently get the lag it suggests that there's a likely jam up with some underlying competition for resources occasionally. Whether that's from Ableton or from the OS is anyone's guess without some deeper performance analysis on the machine.

That's why I'm careful to use only a dedicated, very clean laptop with not much else on it for performance and only use simple WAVs to avoid such things.

Vance
Posts: 356
Joined: Mon Aug 30, 2004 10:35 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by Vance » Wed May 18, 2022 8:15 am

If it's only happening on-stage, power issues could be the culprit. On-stage power is often glitchy and problematic, and power issues can cause all kinds of weird stuff like this. Having a power conditioner in your live performance rack and making sure everything runs off that would be a possible solution to try.

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Thu May 19, 2022 2:40 pm

Hi there

My mbp was connected toi the internet in the studio but I made sure it was disconnected from any wifi at venues. No externals, it's just a 1TB internal ssd. There's about 50 gig spare. One of the reasons for disconnecting the internet was to stop it trying to communicate with Icloud which I've previously had problems with -thinking I had loads of space on my old 550 gig ssd etc when I had 30mb etc! These issues caused me to upgrade to 1TB and I now leave it disconnected from the internet!
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

fishmonkey
Posts: 4478
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:50 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by fishmonkey » Thu May 19, 2022 10:06 pm

kebabman wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 2:40 pm
Hi there

My mbp was connected toi the internet in the studio but I made sure it was disconnected from any wifi at venues. No externals, it's just a 1TB internal ssd. There's about 50 gig spare. One of the reasons for disconnecting the internet was to stop it trying to communicate with Icloud which I've previously had problems with -thinking I had loads of space on my old 550 gig ssd etc when I had 30mb etc! These issues caused me to upgrade to 1TB and I now leave it disconnected from the internet!
there is an excellent guide about live Mac prep here:

https://qlab.app/docs/v4/general/preparing-your-mac/

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Fri May 20, 2022 11:57 am

fishmonkey wrote:
Tue May 17, 2022 8:26 am
out of curiosity is your laptop connected to the internet when it's in the studio?

do you use Time Machine?

and any external drives?
Hi there

Thanks for getting back.

My mbp is usually connected to the net in the studio but I recently disconnected it as it was continually trying to upload/download from icloud. Knowing that I had gigs coming up, it seemed like a good idea to disconnect it from the internet!

I don't use any external drives other than using Time Machine with an rpm HD drive. Has this done something? Otherwise, it's just my 1TB internal SSD which has about 50 gig free.

Many thanks
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Fri May 20, 2022 12:22 pm

DunedinDragon wrote:
Tue May 17, 2022 6:17 pm
kebabman wrote:
Tue May 17, 2022 8:17 am
DunedinDragon wrote:
Thu May 12, 2022 8:41 pm
This sounds far more like your processor is busy doing something and can't get around to launching the next scene for a moment. The question in my mind is what's in each of your scenes? It's entirely possible if you're using MIDI with some of the instruments it's trying to load the instrument plugin because they've been flushed out of memory after the laptop's been shut down and turned off.

I don't every use anything but WAV files in my scenes for exactly that reason. There's nothing to load because the WAV is preloaded with all the scenes and there's nothing they depend on to be loaded in order for the scene to start playing and it's very low cost in terms of memory or processing.
Surely though when I boot up my mac and boot up Ableton it does its thing and loads all wavs and any midi data? The only midi is a 303 plugin (ABL 3) on a couple of songs. Whenever you boot up the live set before a gig you accept its going to take 30 seconds loading wavs and any midi. Once Ableton has loaded all this when I open the live set it's there?
I'm not totally sure whether Ableton loads all effects and instruments that are actively being used in your project or not when you launch the project. I know they're listed on the interface, but I also know there's a slight lag when you include certain things in a project before you can actually use it. That wouldn't be unusual as that's how most vendors do it in order to not waste resources on things that aren't being actively used, but it may be treated differently if you're using scenes. Because you only intermittently get the lag it suggests that there's a likely jam up with some underlying competition for resources occasionally. Whether that's from Ableton or from the OS is anyone's guess without some deeper performance analysis on the machine.

That's why I'm careful to use only a dedicated, very clean laptop with not much else on it for performance and only use simple WAVs to avoid such things.
Thanks for this info. Yes it may be that Ableton is looking ahead to load some midi or something. I'm wondering if this is caused by vibrations and motion sensers because I don't remember it ever happening in the studio. It's certainly a very clean laptop literally just Live 9, The Arturia V collection and Isotope. Yes everything is rendered to audio. The only midi is some midi notes which is sent to my hardware Roland TB03. The cpu doesn't seem to be spiking at all - I managed to have a glance at it during the gig and it seemed to be around 10%.
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Fri May 20, 2022 12:29 pm

fishmonkey wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 10:06 pm
kebabman wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 2:40 pm
Hi there

My mbp was connected toi the internet in the studio but I made sure it was disconnected from any wifi at venues. No externals, it's just a 1TB internal ssd. There's about 50 gig spare. One of the reasons for disconnecting the internet was to stop it trying to communicate with Icloud which I've previously had problems with -thinking I had loads of space on my old 550 gig ssd etc when I had 30mb etc! These issues caused me to upgrade to 1TB and I now leave it disconnected from the internet!
there is an excellent guide about live Mac prep here:

https://qlab.app/docs/v4/general/preparing-your-mac/
Thanks for this - this looks really useful. I don't need to download anything? That's just for Q Lab users is it? Is it just a case of working through the list and going into Terminal and manually switching things off etc. I'm wondering if my mac is trying to do something in the background. When I'm running through my 80 minute set in the studio this may not be long enough for certain processes to start running in the background. When I did a gig recently, my mac was sat for 2 hours, open (plugged into the mains) so it could have been open for 3 hours and some scheduled tasks happened? Going through that list is certainly going to benefit perforance I guess. None of these settings are going to mess anything up really if I need to do a Time Machine at some point or register a plugin online etc? (I don't really use the internet at all on it!)
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

fishmonkey
Posts: 4478
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:50 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by fishmonkey » Fri May 20, 2022 3:13 pm

kebabman wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 12:29 pm
fishmonkey wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 10:06 pm
kebabman wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 2:40 pm
Hi there

My mbp was connected toi the internet in the studio but I made sure it was disconnected from any wifi at venues. No externals, it's just a 1TB internal ssd. There's about 50 gig spare. One of the reasons for disconnecting the internet was to stop it trying to communicate with Icloud which I've previously had problems with -thinking I had loads of space on my old 550 gig ssd etc when I had 30mb etc! These issues caused me to upgrade to 1TB and I now leave it disconnected from the internet!
there is an excellent guide about live Mac prep here:

https://qlab.app/docs/v4/general/preparing-your-mac/
Thanks for this - this looks really useful. I don't need to download anything? That's just for Q Lab users is it? Is it just a case of working through the list and going into Terminal and manually switching things off etc. I'm wondering if my mac is trying to do something in the background. When I'm running through my 80 minute set in the studio this may not be long enough for certain processes to start running in the background. When I did a gig recently, my mac was sat for 2 hours, open (plugged into the mains) so it could have been open for 3 hours and some scheduled tasks happened? Going through that list is certainly going to benefit perforance I guess. None of these settings are going to mess anything up really if I need to do a Time Machine at some point or register a plugin online etc? (I don't really use the internet at all on it!)
you don't need to download anything.

the guide more or less applies to any Mac being used for live performance. everything that gets turned off can be turned back on again by a similar command.

the way i do it is to have the off/on commands collected in a couple of text files, and i copy and paste them into Terminal windows when needed.

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Sat May 21, 2022 9:42 am

fishmonkey wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 3:13 pm
kebabman wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 12:29 pm
fishmonkey wrote:
Thu May 19, 2022 10:06 pm


there is an excellent guide about live Mac prep here:

https://qlab.app/docs/v4/general/preparing-your-mac/
Thanks for this - this looks really useful. I don't need to download anything? That's just for Q Lab users is it? Is it just a case of working through the list and going into Terminal and manually switching things off etc. I'm wondering if my mac is trying to do something in the background. When I'm running through my 80 minute set in the studio this may not be long enough for certain processes to start running in the background. When I did a gig recently, my mac was sat for 2 hours, open (plugged into the mains) so it could have been open for 3 hours and some scheduled tasks happened? Going through that list is certainly going to benefit perforance I guess. None of these settings are going to mess anything up really if I need to do a Time Machine at some point or register a plugin online etc? (I don't really use the internet at all on it!)
you don't need to download anything.

the guide more or less applies to any Mac being used for live performance. everything that gets turned off can be turned back on again by a similar command.

the way i do it is to have the off/on commands collected in a couple of text files, and i copy and paste them into Terminal windows when needed.
That's great. I'll give all this a go thanks. I don't suppose you know but if I did a Time Machine back up before making changes via Terminal, would I be able to revert my mac back to its previous state before I made the changes if there was a problem? Not sure what Time Machine keeps or changes?

Many thanks
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Sat May 21, 2022 9:49 am

Vance wrote:
Wed May 18, 2022 8:15 am
If it's only happening on-stage, power issues could be the culprit. On-stage power is often glitchy and problematic, and power issues can cause all kinds of weird stuff like this. Having a power conditioner in your live performance rack and making sure everything runs off that would be a possible solution to try.
Hi thanks for this info Vance. I always make sure my mbp is on 100% charge before a gig. If unplugged, this would typically go down to 30- 40% at the end of a 90 minute performance. I can't really remember if I leave it plugged in or not... Is it possible that all though I'm running on a reasonable charge, surges, dropouts may be travelling through the plug that could effect things? It's a 2012 mbp with one of those old style power supplies which does get rather hot during the charging process. For this reason, I prefer to leave it unplugged as the heat on the charger tends to be a worry.
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Sun Jun 26, 2022 2:49 pm

Thank you everyone for all your help with this. I don't want to speak too soon and need to do further tests but I may have solved it.

The other day I had the same problem of the launch pad being sluggish when launching scenes. I glanced at the CPU and it was only 10% (no spikes) which is no problem so I don't think there's anything hogging resources...

The problem continued into a couple of songs for about 5 minutes and it was very sluggish at points....

I noticed that the power was on 100% so I unplugged the charger as it can get a bit hot... the problem seemed to be solved....no more sluggish triggering of scenes.

I've done some further practising today and my unplugged mbp had been working fine for an hour on my live set. I noticed it was down to 20% power so I plugged it in and sure enough after a minute or so the old problem was back.

Does having a mbp plugged in cause power surges which upset performance? Does this sound feasible?

It's an old 2012 mbp with one of those old chargers that does get hot during the charging process - this heat also seems to get transfered to the computer itself.

I originally mentioned that this problem never happened in the studio - only when I did live gigs. The one thing I have done so far is have it plugged in at gigs for fear of it losing power. In the studio I usually have it unplugged!

I can certainly get 2 - 3 hours use from it once fully charged (my set is only half that time) so I'm going to do this at gigs.

Does all this seem like a possibility? I don't know enough about charging to know why this is happening :)

Many thanks
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

Tarekith
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Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by Tarekith » Sun Jun 26, 2022 11:26 pm

Heat and vibrations are the two biggest enemies of laptops when it comes to a performance, so yes it's entirely feasible that was your issue. If nothing else buying a new power supply is a relatively cheap thing to try too.
Tarekith
Ableton Forum Administrator
https://tarekith.com

kebabman
Posts: 152
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 6:29 am

Re: Help! Live 9 glitched during gigs!

Post by kebabman » Mon Jun 27, 2022 5:18 pm

Hi Tarekith

Thank you for this info. Yes the mbp is fairly warm and this problem seems to not be down to vibrations. I haven't noticed the fan kicking in but I'll listen out. The thing is when it's plugged in, I'll get the problem for 30 seconds or so but that in all seems to be fine again.

I'm wondering if there are power surges from my old power supply which are doing this?

Cheers

Steve
If I'm not there I'll cut my hair...

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