Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

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Jinsai
Posts: 166
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2004 6:05 pm

Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by Jinsai » Fri Feb 19, 2010 12:41 pm

so... I've tried this even with minimal mixes, and unfortunately the problem is not something I can reproduce in a reliable fashion. I'll even be running just two audio clips and audio will cut out occasionally (about once or twice over the span of a minute, and usually for about a second or less). It's not my audio interface, I've ruled that out.

I'm running on a Macbook Pro 2.2 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of ram, running OS 10.5.8

The thing is, according to Ableton, I'm using less than 9% of my system resources, and even when the audio cuts out I don't see a system spike. I'm currently running Live 8.1.1, but I've been encountering this problem since upgrading to version 8. However, with the earlier versions of 8, I was also getting occasional static noise, and sometimes I would get a strange metronome-like click that would cut in.

I've been using Live since near the beginning, and I've never encountered this sort of problem before. I play with a live band, so this throws off the whole group.

The thing is, I've reset my computer or even just reset Ableton, and the problem will go away. This makes the program managable (but irritating) to use in the studio, but in a live situation, it's unreliable and threatening to screw up our live show. Luckily so far it hasn't happened during a live perfomance (knock on wood), but it pops up in practice about 50% of the time.

Surely I'm not the only one who has this problem?

Jinsai
Posts: 166
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2004 6:05 pm

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by Jinsai » Sun Feb 21, 2010 11:18 am

so, hi again.

Just thought I'd bump this thread to say that our show tonight was destroyed by a plethora of problems, thanks to these glitches we've been encountering in version 8...

First off, clips were all slower than the proper tempo. I tried speeding the overall tempo up to match where they should be (about 14 bpm faster), and then notice that everything was out of tune.

Great...

Then I restarted the program and audio started cutting out. Restarted again and was able to make it through 2 more songs before audio started cutting out again.

Fantastic. At first I tried to make light of it, and whatever... but after a while it was just depressing.

Can I just go back to version 7? This is absolutely unacceptable.

outershpongolia
Posts: 2230
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:40 am

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by outershpongolia » Sun Feb 21, 2010 5:57 pm

Have you tried adjusting your audio buffer size? turn off airport, all these other optimize tips that you can find easily?

I know Live 8 is giving lots of people trouble but I'm running it fairly fine with 12 tracks, about 30 effect devices, 12 ableton instruments, and about 600+ clips loading in on a MBP, so you just need to dig deep for what might be the problem in your setup..

Jinsai
Posts: 166
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2004 6:05 pm

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by Jinsai » Sun Feb 21, 2010 7:30 pm

outershpongolia wrote:Have you tried adjusting your audio buffer size? turn off airport, all these other optimize tips that you can find easily?

I know Live 8 is giving lots of people trouble but I'm running it fairly fine with 12 tracks, about 30 effect devices, 12 ableton instruments, and about 600+ clips loading in on a MBP, so you just need to dig deep for what might be the problem in your setup..
I shut off airport, and I after the problem persisted at 512, I increased the buffer to 1024. If anything, it's made things worse, but since this is a random problem that only happens when it wants to, there's no way to tell really. Last night, restarting Ableton fixed the problem (for a short period of time).

My system resources are never exceeding 10% for my live set.

outershpongolia
Posts: 2230
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:40 am

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by outershpongolia » Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:17 pm

That is strange that it's not going past 10% but you still have problems.

I do remember hearing that the meter in Live wasn't as accurate as the meter you could check on in your system, but I believe that was on PC.. What I'm trying to say is, maybe Live isn't seeing the CPU spike because it's a system problem, but I don't really know how these things work..

Theres a "D" in the corner, does that light go off at any point? I believe that is a hard disk indicator, so it would notify you of that problem if that's what it was.

Jinsai
Posts: 166
Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2004 6:05 pm

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by Jinsai » Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:27 am

nah, I'm not seeing the red disk tab light up at all... And, to add to the frustration, it's a dice throw: sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. I could be running a web browser, chatting on IM, watching a video, and messing around in Ableton at the same time, and it will run fine.

Then, every once in a while (like that nightmare set last night), it'll be the only app open, and it will start to freak out.... usually restarting Ableton will fix the problem, though in a live setting, that's already too late... and then again, during that show last night, I had to restart Ableton three times.

:(

jamesbarrett
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Joined: Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:05 am
Location: berlin
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Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by jamesbarrett » Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:43 am

Since installing a couple of new freebie vst's yesterday and loading them on a session, my audio now cuts out all the time, even after taking the new vst's out of the equation. Reloading doesn't seem to work anymore.. Will let you know if I stumble across an answer

woodygun
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:19 am

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by woodygun » Sat Sep 17, 2011 8:40 am

I've got the exact same problem and it ruined a concert (at Hard Rock Cafe in Prague)! I was using Live 8 on a brand new top of the range Sony Vaio (i5, 6G, Windows 7 64 bit) through an M-Audio Fast Track Pro interface as electronic backing for a live band - the playback kept glitching, cutting out and then seemed to lose the time scaling somehow - We had to stop the song in the middle! NIGHTMARE! CPU meter never got to above 2% as I was just playing one piece if audio at a time in session view. Buffer size is set to 512 samples. The only thing I can think of is that 32bit Ableton just doesn't like Windows 7 64 bit, although on forums I've read that this shouldn't be a problem. Please, please someone help!!! We've got another big gig in 5 weeks and I have to fix this problem. - Ian

mackflynn
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Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 1:23 am

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by mackflynn » Mon Feb 13, 2012 10:30 am

I am having the exact same problem. I am running Ableton Live 8.04 on Windows Vista. The computer is virtually blank, with Ableton as the only piece of software on it.
When the audio cuts out, there is no spike in CPU usage, etc etc... everything that has been said in this form already, so please enough about asking if my computer is getting over filled. It is most definitely a glitch in the software...it has happened on a few different computers for me!

The audio will cut out for a second or 2...sometimes more. It is totally unpredictable. Happens at totally random times. This is totally unacceptable, as it is the backbone for my band's live performances.

The weirdest thing about it is that if you run the tracks through a few times, the glitching happens less often, as if it gets warmed up.

WHY HAS ABLETON NOT ADDRESSED THIS ISSUE YET! Is there not a patch, or an official solution?

HELP!!!

mackflynn
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 1:23 am

Re: Audio Cutting Out Sporadically?

Post by mackflynn » Mon Mar 19, 2012 2:40 am

I can not believe no one has posted an answer to this yet, given that the answer appears to be in the software itself.

I don't know for sure if this is the ultimate solution or not, but after many hours of searching the web, reading forums, and messing around with the software, I discovered a few things.

1. Hard drive speed is a factor. If your computer's hard drive has low RPM's, it can get bogged down while trying to play multiple samples at once, and the audio cuts out while it tries to catch up. I understand that 7200RPM is probably the lowest you would want to go. I don't know about the validity of this number, but it's a start.

2. Here's the part that I'm shocked didn't get explained. In Ableton, when you click on a clip, down at the bottom, there are some buttons labeled "FADE" and "RAM" etc... and some others. If you hold your cursor over RAM, the suggestion box says "Click RAM when experiencing drop-outs while playing multiple clips in real-time".

What this does, is it uploads the track to MEMORY (buffered) so that it doesn't have to run the clip (or several at once) off of the hard drive directly.

There is of course a draw-back. Your computer must have a lot of memory (RAM) to carry all these clips, and if a lot are selected, it can bog down the software. This is ok for just play-back, for live shows or whatever, but if you want to start making edits, and working with effects etc...it is probably a good idea to disable the RAM button while working with the software. The beauty is, you don't have to activate the RAM buffer on every clip, just some and can enable and disable it as you please.

After some tinkering, I was able to select the bare minimum number of clips to be uploaded to RAM in order to have flawless playback, and still be able to use the program without freezes or glitches either.

I wish I had known this simple trick months ago, but alas I have finally found a solution that seems to work!!

Give it a shot. Hopefully this will work for you.

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