4.0.4 PB 667 - M Audio FW410 Ext FW HD DRAMA!

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mrT
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:34 am

4.0.4 PB 667 - M Audio FW410 Ext FW HD DRAMA!

Post by mrT » Mon Oct 25, 2004 2:21 am

I have been having drama after drama with my rig.. while DJing

I have a new mother board in my G4 667 Powerbook
I am running 10.3.5
I have a brand new M Audio Firewire 410
I am using a Sarotech Ext Firewire case with Oxford 911
I have 700 Meg of Ram
I run with the highest (meaning easiest for the machine) latency setting
I run most of my tracks in Ram mode.. (only dont if I forget to hit the switch)
I have 2 filters set up on each channel (I run 2 channels only)
I run X Session controller on the USB Bus
My rig is kept cool and suspended on foam from vibration
There is no other software on my Mac except for Peak

The machine quite often gives an audio breakup like the audio connectors are cutting in and out..
And occasionaly sounds like a skipping CD..
The CPU usage never goes above 14 - 15%

Sometimes it will last 40 mins, other times 10 mins..

Any ideas?
I will send cash to the genious that sorts this out.

bensuthers
Posts: 760
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2003 4:51 am

Post by bensuthers » Mon Oct 25, 2004 2:38 am

try replacing your firewire cables. you may be losing sync.

you may also have data corruption on your hard disk.


but you also may be running out of bandwidth on the firewire bus.
how many tracks are you running?
how many output channels are you using?
what bitrate are you using?

400mbps gets chewed up pretty quickly when you do your sums.

jamief
Posts: 1856
Joined: Sun Dec 08, 2002 1:50 pm
Location: Awakend

Post by jamief » Mon Oct 25, 2004 10:09 am

I remeber there were some issues with powerbook g4 firewire busses some 2-3 years ago. Namely fireweire busses burning out.

My G4 550 was sent back a couple of times to have this checked out ( amongst other things - it wasnt just for firewire issues). If you go to www.apple.com and go to the knowledge base you may find some issues relating to this subject.

Also go to www.xlr8yourmac.com see if they list anything regarding " G4 powerbook firewire buss problems in their search engine".

Ps try removing the song that you have problems with and putting that onto your powerbook hardrive and taking your external drive out of the loop. Any better ? this will atleast give an indication as to where this is an overload problem as suggested by the previous poster. I myself dont think that this is the problem as the band width should be plenty ( obviously dependant upon what you are requesting of it ) plus you have an oxford 911 bridgset on you drive interface.

Any

Good Luck

mrT
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:34 am

Post by mrT » Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:12 pm

Hi Guys..
I am only running 2 stereo tracks out 2 outs only..
I have had the same drama on the internal and external drive..
It crashed on the weekend when I told the clip to load in to RAM

bensuthers
Posts: 760
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2003 4:51 am

Post by bensuthers » Mon Oct 25, 2004 11:16 pm

does it only happen with this clips? or does it happen with ANY live set?

if it happens with ANY live set.....well....

pseudonyme
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Oct 19, 2002 5:36 pm
Location: freiburg, germany

same issues here...

Post by pseudonyme » Tue Oct 26, 2004 8:56 am

hi mrT,

i'm having the same problems. cut-outs in the output stream including loose of sync for 1/2 second or 3/4 second... occuring sometimes, several times a day.

it is driving me nuts!

i'm using:

pb800 (should be nearly the same hardware, right?)
1024MB RAM (problem exists also after upgrading from 768MB to 1024MB)
Motu 828 mk2
NO EXTERNAL HD USED - internal 7200rpm hitachi 60GB...

we both use firewire! and nearly the same laptop!

MY ASSUMPTIONS:
ableton Live still has a large problem with allocating memory on Mac OS X and with audio drivers in general. Just make a try and let your liveset play several hours and then look what the activity monitor tells you about free, active and inactive RAM!

I owned a EMI 6-2 before, which was EXACTLY THE SAME mess. suddenly audio dropouts and distortion... UNUSABLE.

Compared to Windows XP, the same live set needs WAY more RAM on OS X (and don't tell me it is the OS itself eating up ram. that's not true) than on Windows...

I don't have any problem at all with Logic Pro, iTunes and so on. It's only ableton Live. really really annoying.


hopefully we get an answer from a teckie at ableton?

greets from germany,
alex

bensuthers
Posts: 760
Joined: Wed Oct 01, 2003 4:51 am

Post by bensuthers » Tue Oct 26, 2004 11:35 pm

i can get 14 tracks with 9 x audio + impulse (2) w/ 6 associated MIDI tracks / simpler (2) / moog modular (1) / delay (1) / reverb (1) + compressors and eq's on my

400MHz G4 Laptop
640MB Ram
internal HD
internal sound or MOTU828

with no drops outs or issues.

continuously. every day.

EnjoyRC
Posts: 693
Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:02 am
Location: USA

Post by EnjoyRC » Wed Oct 27, 2004 4:13 am

I'm kinda blown away that this is still an issue. I started pointing out the audio dropouts during 4 beta. I still get um. Not as often since I increased the audio buffers. I do believe this is an Ableton issue. No other software on my PowerBook (1Ghz 768MB Ram) does this.
MacBook Pro (MacOS 13.0.1) i9 Processor, 32gb RAM, 4tb SSD
(STUDIO I/O) MOTU UltraLite mk5 (w/ADA8200), (LIVE I/O) Behringer X Air XR18
Ableton Live Suite 11 (Live performances), Studio One 5 (Studio Stem Creation)

SinisterDexter
Posts: 32
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:26 am
Location: NW England - Sunny Burnley

Post by SinisterDexter » Wed Oct 27, 2004 6:02 pm

Hi mrT.

Try these and see if they help...

1 - Remove the 410 from your setup and try again. It's always easy to assume that because something's new it won't be the problem.

2 - Run DiskWarrior on all drives. Chances are if you've never used it, it will find a whole bunch of drive problems. And then fix them...

3 - Download and run either Control Freak or Onyx from http://www.versiontracker.com. Flush out all system and user caches including the virtual memory file. Also check disk permissions while you're at it.

4 - Try running your samples from disk, not ram. I know it's tempting to use up your free ram by loading up samples but see what happens if you don't. I found on a recent set of mine that memory usage had rocketed to around 664MB and that's with only Live running and no samples in memory. There is also the issue of virtual memory being swapped out while the set is playing but thats something to talk about another day.

If your 'Book is a DVI 667 then the firewire issues that plagued earlier 'Books won't affect yours as Apple finally installed firewire surge/short protection from the DVI models onwards.

Apart from my extra 256MB ram we use very similar rigs, and mine copes with much more than the basic set you describe so a solution will be there somewhere. Particularly the loading samples into ram - I never do it even though it can improve performance in certain situations. Running samples off disk (even the "slow" internal drive) is reliable and glitch-free, which is what I need when gigging...

Hope this helps :)

pseudonyme
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Oct 19, 2002 5:36 pm
Location: freiburg, germany

Post by pseudonyme » Thu Oct 28, 2004 10:52 am

hi SinisterDexter,

have you had that kind of problem with the audio holes? half of a second complete silence?

and if, did you find out what it is?

what do you mean with 'thats something to talk about another day' concerning the swap memory? don't you think this could be the reason for our problem? you see, I have less than 10mb (megabytes) of free ram according to activity monitor when my set is opened, so swapping is quite well an issue... see my other post in this thread.

thank you very much,

greets!
alex

Friedemann
Posts: 425
Joined: Mon Jun 28, 2004 10:47 am
Location: Ableton Headquarter

Post by Friedemann » Thu Oct 28, 2004 12:01 pm

Hi pseudonyme,

if 'real' memory is close to being full, it should be much better not
to use the RAM-mode for a number of clips.
If Live plays samples from disk it usually can load them
well in advance, while if the OS decided to swap a part of
memory containing some sample data, a delay will occur
when the program accesses this data.

Kind regards, Friedemann
Friedemann Schautz
schautz@ableton.com

mrT
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:34 am

Post by mrT » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:49 am

Thanks for your responces guys..
Its a very hard problem to fix..
I dont run all my clips from Ram, and I get the same drama reading from internal 5400 RPM drive or Ext Firewire Drive that is partitioned in to 3 x 50 gig particians..
Regarding the 410.. I have had 2 do the same thing..
I am trying my friends MBox tonight on my rig.. I have DJ'd with no drama at all on his rig and the only difference is that he has a little more Ram than me.. but also he has an MBox..
Please dont tell me USB is going to be more solid than Firewire..

SinisterDexter
Posts: 32
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:26 am
Location: NW England - Sunny Burnley

Post by SinisterDexter » Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:10 pm

pseudonyme wrote:hi SinisterDexter,

have you had that kind of problem with the audio holes? half of a second complete silence?

and if, did you find out what it is?

what do you mean with 'thats something to talk about another day' concerning the swap memory? don't you think this could be the reason for our problem? you see, I have less than 10mb (megabytes) of free ram according to activity monitor when my set is opened, so swapping is quite well an issue... see my other post in this thread.

thank you very much,
Ok,

In response, no I haven't had any problems with "audio holes"/dropouts. Here's an exact breakdown of my rig that I use when gigging.

- TiBook 667, 1GB Crucial/Micron PC133 SDRAM (identical SODIMMs)
- stock internal IBM 30GB 4300rpm hard disk
- OS X 10.3.5
- M-Audio FireWire Audiophile
- Evo UC-33e

All samples and tracks run from disk, nil by ram. Currently running Live 4.0.3, using Apple audiounits and Ableton FX. Only 3rd party FX is TC Works Compressor/DeEsser.

The "something to talk about another day" concerning virtual memory WILL affect those with a minimum of ram and probably those filling their ram with samples. Hugely simplified, the OS will transfer contents of ram to disk when physical ram is getting low. This swapping process takes time and will cause dropouts as Live becomes starved of incoming data from disk. Loading samples into ram won't help if ram is low because your samples will then become part of the ram contents that are being written to the swap file. Like I say, a hugely simplified explanation but hopefully you get the point. If you say you are only showing 10MB free ram then I would expect you to run into problems with any sort of streamed media. I would suggest 512MB as an absolute minimum, ideally 768MB or the full GigB. This is the only way to address the swapping problem as there is no real control over VM under OSX. BTW have you tried running Live under OS 9?

Finally, for everyone reading this thread, check out MenuMeters at http://www.versiontracker.com. Its a great utility that shows various system info on the menu bar. At any one time I can see free/used memory, network traffic and cpu loading. Right now I have Mail and Firefox as the only open apps and I can see 207MB has gone. You can see why more ram is essential with OS X...

Dex

SinisterDexter
Posts: 32
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:26 am
Location: NW England - Sunny Burnley

Post by SinisterDexter » Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:13 pm

Friedemann wrote:Hi pseudonyme,

if 'real' memory is close to being full, it should be much better not
to use the RAM-mode for a number of clips.
If Live plays samples from disk it usually can load them
well in advance, while if the OS decided to swap a part of
memory containing some sample data, a delay will occur
when the program accesses this data.

Kind regards, Friedemann
PS Sorry Friedemann for just regurgitating what you said about VM. Should have read all the replies...

pseudonyme
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Oct 19, 2002 5:36 pm
Location: freiburg, germany

have a look at...

Post by pseudonyme » Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:29 am

hello hello,

probably interesting:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13771


greetings,
alex

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