LoopStationZebra wrote: But I did put it through it's paces. Hours dude. HOURS.
Honestly, EVERYONE runs into mental bottlenecks, no exceptions. I've searched, documented and found solid reproducible bugs where the cause was obvious.
I've had other bugs that remained unreproducible, and unsolvable (Logic 7.0 did me in, updates fixed it).
You can mess around with problem solving for hours easy, and still miss the issue. Case in point, I sincerely didn't think a mouse driver could hose Ableoton Live in regards to Sync, and mostly leave DP and Logic alone, just didn't seem possible but it was the issue.
You get major problems like you're talking about with the SoftStep and it's EASY hours to find the culprit. Tell me you did ALL OF THESE THINGS, and then say you spent enough time testing it out.
Remove all MIDI drivers except the SoftStep ones. (mostly these are in Library/Audio/MIDI Drivers, but it's possible that some company threw one as an extension, System/Library/Extensions. I have a MOTU midi driver kext in there as well as a Guitar Rig kext, both could possibly be a problem with a particular piece of software.
Same with USB derivers in general, I'm assuming the SoftStep is USB? FYI all of these you don't actually trash, just put them in a folder on your desktop, and restart teh computer to "remove" the driver from the system.
Same with any third party software you have installed that runs all the time. For instance I have a CPU and hard drive meter plu an easy access audio app in my menu bar, and a little app called Mouse Locator that always run, no CPU hit to speak of, but a possible conflict.
Make a Folder for VSTs called "VST disabled" same with Audio Units Put all your VSTs and Audio Units in their respective folder, make sure to pair repeats ie kontakt AU and kontakt VST at the same time. Test, if it works put 1/2 of the one in the disabled folder back, if it messes up the SoftStep software somehow, put 1/2 of the ones you just put back back into disabled etc. <-- this is a long shot sure, but it's been an issue before some AU or VST causes problems by it's very presence in your instance of Live without being called up.
Audio cards, make sure you only have the one for your hardware installed. If I recall right logic and MOTU both would automatically instal an audio driver along with MIDI drivers in case you bought one of their cards.
USB cable and/or MIDI cable replace them before writing it off as software.
This is a short list off the top of my head, other things include trashing Preferences and doing "clean" instals to make sure the driver for the device is properly writing over what could be a corrupted instal. All that stuff though adds up to a lot more than a weekend without tech support help.
And talk about drama: You register at the Ableton forum for the sole purpose of trying to dress me down. omfg.
That's insane. I've only got 2GB of RAM, ffs. That doesn't leave me with a lot of wiggle room. 