CPU spike and stutter on scene launch

beateater · Post by **beateater** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 10:41 am

I know lot's of people have been having a similar problem with Live 4.1. I was just wondering if there was any news on this issue.

Gear:
IBM Pentium M 1.5, 60gig HD, Novation Remote 25, M-Audio Firewire 410
Never this problem with previous version of Live on this system.

Here's my symtoms:

open Live

load set

launch scene (occurs with as little as two clips sometimes)

live pauses for about a 10th of a second as the CPU meter jumps 20 to 70% then settles back down. (disk indicator does not light up)

go to another part of the set, launch another scene, same thing.

launch first scene again- no problems.

Here's what I've tried:

Clean install of everthing including O.S. and optimised for audio.

Disabled ALL plugins- no difference

Installed 'Speedswitch' to ensure maximum CPU speed.

Increased ASIO buffer

Disabled all except 1 stereo output on my hardware

The manual says that you can expect timing problems if the disk can't cope (the 'd' light next to CPU meter) but with CPU peaks (and this ain't hitting %100, sometimes only 40 something%) can expect audio dropouts but not timing errors.

Does this sound familiar to anybody else? If so, have you solved the problem?

The whole reason I bought Live was to perform with it live. Untill I can sort this out the app is useless to me.

Cheers

[/list]

Post by **Alex** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 2:26 pm

Hi beateater,

does this happen only in a certain Live set of in each one you tried?
Do you use VST(i)s in the Live sets where it happens or does it happen also in Live sets without VST(i)s?

regards,
Alex

EnjoyRC · Post by **EnjoyRC** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 5:44 pm

Alex wrote:Do you use VST(i)s in the Live sets where it happens or does it happen also in Live sets without VST(i)s?

Alex, good question... I wonder if it's the same issue as Initializing the VSTi upon first notes.

beateater · Post by **beateater** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 11:09 pm

Hi fellas,
thanks for the response. I loaded up an old set (still many of the same audio files). No change.
I removed all midi tracks and all plugins (deleting not just turning off) and still the same problem. At one time I launched a scene contain 2 clips- CPU meter spiked to 64% then levelled out at 2%.

Then I disabled the VST folder in preferences and the problem still persisted.

The same set with an addition 16-20 plugins (some of them quite hungry) and a midi track containing a VSTi plays happily in Live 4.0

It does occur intermittently, and it seems more likely to happen when triggering a busier scene closer to the end of a bar (quantisation set to 1 bar), although it is not restricted to this (see above example).

I've run out of ideas to try. I'm led to beleive it's a 4.1 issue (or an issue it has with XP or my machine) so I'll probably just go back to 4.0 for a while unless anybody else can think of something to try.
Cheers

beateater · Post by **beateater** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:03 am

Downloading 4.1.1 now. Hope is good!

peeddrroo · Post by **peeddrroo** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 3:29 pm

i guess you have a laptop. have you put the power options on "maximum performances" or "always on", or something like that?
before i did so, the CPU meter used to jump to high values and then go down, but after i did, it became much more steady.
maybe your problem comes from the fact that the processor is low in cycles before you launch your live set...

beateater · Post by **beateater** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 12:39 am

Well, so far so good with 4.1.1.
I haven't had a chance to really put it through it's paces, but on the surface it seems to be running a lot smoother than 4.1.

And yes, disabled all power saving on the computer

CPU spike and stutter on scene launch

CPU spike and stutter on scene launch

YAY! (i think)