Ableton CPU spike then no audio

[fastbacker]

I am having this terrible problem where, out of nowhere, I will see the CPU meter jump up high and little click noise will sound and then I have no sound at all. Ableton continues to play and the volume meters jump up an down, but no sound plays. The only way I know how to get the sound back is to toggle the sample rate between 44 and 48 (I tried to fix this problem before and found this trick somewhere on the web.)

I have had this issues with two separate audio interfaces - first a M-Audio Firewire Solo and now the same problem with a brand new PreSonus Firestudio Mobile.

I am using a Macbook with OS 10.4.11 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3 GB RAM, Ableton Live 7.0.12

The main plugins I am using are Guitar Rig, NI's Kore Player, Arts Acoustic Reverb

Please help!

[Warrior Bob]

This sounds like a problem I used to have in GarageBand long before I moved to Ableton. It would generally come up after something like 10 or 15 minutes of work. I never did figure out the cause of it, however the solution was the same: do something that forced Core Audio to reinitialize the buffers (at least, I think that's what was going on). In my case, it was changing the buffer size, but changing the sample rate should do the same thing.

Does this happen with any other software?

[fastbacker]

This sounds like a problem I used to have in GarageBand long before I moved to Ableton. It would generally come up after something like 10 or 15 minutes of work. I never did figure out the cause of it, however the solution was the same: do something that forced Core Audio to reinitialize the buffers (at least, I think that's what was going on). In my case, it was changing the buffer size, but changing the sample rate should do the same thing.

Does this happen with any other software?

No this only happens with Ableton...but Ableton is really the only thing I use through the audio interface. This problem does not happen if I use Apple's built in audio.

[PureData]

Same here. I used to have this dropouts every five minutes or less. After clean install of Snow Leopard and installing 10.6.5 combo update, repairing permissions after installing Solo's drivers makes dropouts less. 1 per night for example. But it's very uncomfortable if you making live performances.

Before the clean install sometimes problem occurs while using iTunes etc. So I don't think it's about Live. I tried a RME FF400 to check my FireWire port, but it was working perfect with Live.

I'm using MacBook Black C2D 2.0.

[Ableton_David]

Hi Fastbacker - try using another program with your interface, and see if you get the same issues?

[amt8probs]

What Plugins are loaded in the project when the spikes occur?

[vicz]

Check for system messages at the time of failure using the Console utility.