Pops in Live 8 with Maudio fast track ultra - but not Live 7

[solitarypartygroover]

I'm having some really annoying popping sounds whilst using my new m-audio Fast Track Ultra in Live 8.

The sounds don't *appear* to be related to my laptop performance, as they occur in new projects with absolutely nothing recorded. They are not related to DPC latency, as I have used the DPC latency checker tool and switched off those devices whose drivers were causing some problems (my DVD drive and Wireless), yet the problem remains. It does not matter how high or low the buffer setting is.

If I tell Ableton to send audio out of my inbuilt laptop speakers, there is no problem. When the popping occurs, the both the 1 and 2 input level meters go into the red. Therefore, the fault seems to lie with the Fast Track Ultra ?

Except, in Live 7 I have no problems at all. Which implies it is some sort of incompatibility between Live 8 and the Fast Track...maybe.

Any suggestions ?

[jok]

Hi,

do you use the latest update, Live 8.1.4? Which operating system do you use? Which buffer size setting do you use? Does a larger buffer size already fiox the problem?

Best,
Jörg

[solitarypartygroover]

Hi Jorg

I've just installed 8.1.4 and it has the same problems.

I'm using XP SP2.

As I stated before, the buffer size has no effect on this. Obviously if I have a very small buffer then eventually I will get glitching going on, but not the same type as this, which is more popping/crackling and causes red peaks to occur on the volume input level meters. I can only *hear* the pops/crackles when an audio track is armed, though unarmed audio tracks still have red peaks occuring on the small input channel chooser volume meters, above the in/auto/off monitoring buttons.

Thanks

Matt

[solitarypartygroover]

They occur with a regular pattern: roughly 15 seconds of no noise, followed by roughly 10 seconds of pops/crackles. Also, despite what I said before, it is worse with smaller buffers, but only in terms of intensity: with a buffer size of 4096 samples, there's about 10-14 pops in each period of noise, whereas with 128 samples it's about 4x as many. But both are completely unworkable for recording audio.

[solitarypartygroover]

Oh...I think I've solved it!

If I switch off the "sync" next to the Output of the Fast Track in the MIDI ports bit in Ableton's preferences, the popping stops. The reason I've not had this issue in Live 7 is because I've always had this switched off. Switching it on in 7 causes the same problem.

I guess this still implies there is something odd going on with the Fast Track, and that the MIDI output signals are somehow interfering with the audio channels ...is there anyone out there able to replicate this problem with their Fast Track (whether it's a pro or ultra or whatever) so I can determine whether mine is simply faulty ?

Maybe this will cause me problems in the future, but for the time being at least it means I'll be able to record audio. Hoorah!