Sample buffering issues...

[freelobotomy]

Hey, so I'm using a pretty large set comprised of 200 samples (each one representing a full length song) for DJing. Sometimes when I load the set, Live slowly buffers each sample in my entire set, which takes like 20 minutes. Other times, the buffering is instant. Is there a way to keep the songs analyzed in the set and avoid having this sample buffering occur every time I open this set? It's as if I'm adding the songs into the set for the first time EVERY time.

Also, I've recently encountered a problem where when the samples are finished buffering, Live freezes, playback stops, and my APC40 locks up. This forces me to quit Live.

Things to consider: I'm using an external HD where I store all of my songs daisy-chained into my audio interface. Not sure how this affects this... or if I should have some kind of directory that stores analysis files on the HD... or if I should move my samples/analysis files onto my computer's internal drive

Thanks for any advice!

[Ableton_David]

It could help to speed up the buffering process, if you connected your external HD directly to your computer. Otherwise, Live needs to so this in order to play audio clips - you should be able to start playing a clip as soon as it is buffered, regardless of whether other clips are still buffering.

as to the crash with the APC40, what kind of CPU levels are you getting in Live when this happens? And, do you have any plug-ins running?

[freelobotomy]

When I DJ, i usually have 15-20% CPU usage consistently. I use a somewhat large rack of effects mainly comprised of ableton plug-ins. The only 3rd party plug-in I have running is guitar rig for additional effects. I turn them on and off with knobs on the APC40, so the majority of my plugins are turned off all of the time aside from my simple master channel effects (EQ... limiter...). I would be surprised if my effects caused the problem... Like I said, it only freezes RIGHT when the last sample buffer is completed, right at 100% samples buffered.

The option for connecting my hard drive directly to my laptop (macbook) seems somewhat limited, seeing as I need my audio interface connected to the one and only firewire port. Would it be any different to daisy-chain my interface through my HD to the computer, instead of the other way around?

[antandra]

I'm having a very similar issue with the external drive chained into the audio interface. My set also takes forever to buffer all the samples. Sometimes I have live freeze up when samples are buffering. Would it be better to plug the HD directly into the computer, and plug the audio interface into the HD? I will try that, and see if that fixes it.

My APC40 doesn't crash much anymore. I had a point one or two versions back that it would stop responding even though live was running smoothly.

I have 2 Gigs of ram, running 10.4.11, and am wondering how much upgrading the ram and OS would help too?

[Ableton_David]

Hi, for any of you who are experiencing crashes or audio dropouts, please get in touch directly with Ableton technical support: http://www.ableton.com/support

[antandra]

Changing the order of my FireWire chain to have the hard drive connected first solved my buffering issue.

Thanks!

[CivicRydr]

Hey, so I'm using a pretty large set comprised of 200 samples (each one representing a full length song) for DJing. Sometimes when I load the set, Live slowly buffers each sample in my entire set, which takes like 20 minutes. Other times, the buffering is instant.

I have the same issue. In fact, as I am writing this, Live is going through and buffering all my (200+) samples. It looks just like when you put a new song in to Live and it does it's analysis...except it's doing it to the whole project. When it goes through this process, takes about 10mins to get through all the clips.

Other times, the whole project will just load in a matter of seconds.

Gotta love intermittent issues...

Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks guys.

[OBD]

I to have the same issue as Civicryder - anyone out there who can help me understand what is causing this ?
Cheers

[CivicRydr]

Still having this issue. I'm finding out that it happens intermittently. For example, I'm working between 2 copies of basically the same project - a new version (A) and an old version (B) - containing 500 clips. When go from version B to A it always takes 20mins to "buffering samples", but when I go back to A it normally will load up quickly (status bar shows # samples remaining and counts down through them 10 at a time). Unfortunately, just a minute ago, I went from B to A and it is taking time (~20 mins) to buffering samples again.

ugh...

[CivicRydr]

One thought that came to mind...

This could be related to the cache that Live keeps for all the samples used in the project. Might be due to the disk size or number of files causing Live to rebuffer/decode all the samples again.

I just tired moving my cache folder to another (larger) hard drive. Let's hope the problem goes away.

[CivicRydr]

OK...another round of waiting, and another update on this issue.

Some screen shots:


normal loading of a project


buffering samples for 25+mins

So using the larger hard drive to store the cache worked well for about two days, then just now when I tried to open an older project, Live is having to rebuffer all the samples (even though many of them are the same ones from every file that I work with). I took a look at the cache/decoding folder, and it went down from 40GB to 5GB, so I'm guessing some process caused the cache to be cleared, and Live is decompressing every the sample again.

Any idea on how to prevent this from happening?

[florian_bl]

Maybe your project uses nearly all of the cache. And whenever you open another project, the previous files in the cache have to be removed to make room for the new ones. When you go back to your "big" project they have to be calculated again. That's the first thing that pops up in my mind. It could also be an explanation why with the new harddrive everything was fine the first two days. Until the cache was full with the "big" project plus other stuff again. Is your maximum cache size set to the highest possible value?

[audiovoid]

I seem to be having the same problem and its extremely annoying.
I have a live set filled with mostly mp3's (about 44 altogether). And every time I re open the live set it go's through and has to re buffer certain ones. Not ALL of them. Just certain ones. The same ones every time too. From looking at these files I cannot see Any difference between them and any of the other mp3's.
Anybody have an update on this?
I have been using live for many years and this is Not supposed to happen.

[CivicRydr]

Maybe your project uses nearly all of the cache.

"Maximum Cache Size" is set at off, and "Minimum Free Space" is set at 1GB. My hard drive has 200+GB of free space, so there should be sufficient room for all the cache files.

[smythology]

Live 8, OS X 10.4.11

I just started using an external hard drive and I'm having confusing buffering issues.

every time I open the same DJ set it RE-BUFFERS all the tracks into the same Decoding Cache on my local drive. it makes duplicate names like file.mp3, file-1.mp3, file-2.mp3

why is it buffering them again? I need to open the mac, boot live and start my set in 5 minutes sometimes, on stage. 100+ songs can take 20 minutes to buffer, as you know

anybody know how to make Ableton recognize the buffered tracks?
should I put a decoding cache folder on the external drive, or something?

thanx