hmmmmm Apc40

[djwack]

No. APC working nicely here too, latency at 2.45ms. Hmm, actually haven't tested yet with my audiointerface, gotta test that..

Not understanding this statement. How do you run live without your audio interface? External midi instruments only?

coreaudio - built-in sounds (MBP 2007 model)

I usually only hook Saffire up to do "real" work - Most of the time I'm wackin' off with some wackhness that I want to forget about tomorrow :p

Internal sound also gives me a "consumer" perspective for tracking, jamming and arranging (and surprisingly often the sound can be "fixed" quite ok with proper speakers), and for some reason, it usually handles low latencies quite politely.

[pbajzek]

I heard back from Akai tech support, and they basically confirmed my solution- delete manual MIDI maps and disable any unnecessary Control Surface ports. I guess my Remote SL was conflicting with the APC. I'm hoping this doesn't mean ALL other control surface or manual assignments are forbidden. Thus far my Trigger Finger seems to work OK with drum racks. I haven't tried manually assigning the Remote SL controls yet.

[Tone Deft]

I've heard conflicting reports on this, but my startup ritual is this:

everything's off.
turn on the computer, let it bootup and settle.
turn on the APC
turn on the BCR
turn on the SL
launch Live
have the APC at the top of the list on Control Surfaces.

people have told me I don't need to worry about the order I turn things on. I haven't heard others' experiences on putting the APC at the top of the list. I had some problems the first night I used mine, this was the list of things I found to work. it's been smooth sailing ever since.

[next]

It seems to me there is definitely a design flaw in the device and/or the software that talks to it. I've tried on two very different machines in different configurations and the APC causes pops and clicks on both. After much troubleshooting I can only conclude that there is something about the communication between the APC 40 and Live that interferes with the audio stream. At higher latencies this seems to not affect the audible quality of the audio coming from Live. But at lower latencies audible glitches and hiccups occur when pressing certain buttons on the APC, even though Live is otherwise running without a hitch at those lower latencies and at low CPU consumption.

Ableton/Akai is apparently looking at this issue, but I have little confidence they will be able to properly resolve it. They used a standard USB Audio CODEC driver to communicate with the device instead of writing proprietary device-specific drivers. It seems to me an "Audio" driver and, even worse, an "Audio CODEC (compression/decompression)" driver is not what you need to efficiently communicate with what is essentially a non-Audio MIDI device. All of my other USB Midi devices come with drivers designed by the manufacturer of the device. And none of them cause audio glitches when in use.

For those considering the APC 40, I wouldnt say you should rule it out. Its a great tool conceptually and if you dont need ultra-low latency audio then you will be able to use it to great effect. Its only those of us monitoring live audio sources through Ableton or playing virtual instruments that need the lowest possible latency. And, unfortunately, low latency and the APC 40 dont play nice together.... at least not for me and several others that have posted here.

My guess is that its a software issue with input devices in specific scenarios. I remember the aggravation and unexplained pops and clicks I had when I first got the device. Even just using the mouse to select scenes would cause pops and clicks. Just having the APC control surface setting enabled caused the problem, even with the device turned off, so that cant be anything else but software.

Once my problem was solved though everything has been rock solid at 8ms with plenty of live stuff going on, so there is at least hope for everyone still having the issue.

I've tried the apc40 with 4 different soundcards but on the same setup, so here my experience with those annoying audio hiccups:

1. Internal crap Realtek AC'97 card - Lots of audio hiccups
2. ESI Quatafire 610 - Also some hiccups
3. Alessis M1 320 USB speakers - no problems at all
4. Edirol UA 1EX - no problems at all


The first two audiocards also have built in midi ports so I'm thinking that may have something to do with the audiostream conflict. I've tried disabling/ removing the card's midiports from windows (korg midi driver tool) but that didn't help.

If the card's built in midi ports have nothing to do with the case, then maybe it's just that some cards conflicts while other doesn't, which means I just need to get me a new main soundcard.

It would be great if someone could (dis)confirm my guess.

[LesC]

next,

I've suspected that the midi ports on my Aardvark Q10 could be related to the problem. I'll bet you're right but cant test it myself. I was going to return the APC 40 yesterday but the GC guy offered to exchange. So I did just to see if maybe I had a bad unit. But as I figured, the new APC 40 causes the same glitches. So, its going back to the store tomorrow. If they get this figured out, I'll buy another.

[LesC]

Just went down to Best Buy and picked up a cheap M-audio Fasttrack USB Audio interface that does not have Midi ports. Installed the Asio drivers and it runs flawlessly with the APC 40. No glitches, hiccups at the lowest available latency (5 ms output latency). So, perhaps there is something to next's theory. Anyone using APC 40 with an audio interface that includes built-in midi ports at low latency and glitch-free?

I hope the Abe's are listening as this may help in troubleshooting the issue. Too bad I must return my apc due to 30 day return policy

[next]

well, I just bought myself a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 card. This runs with no audioglithes. So far i've only use it for one day though (but i've stressed it quite a bit now )
This card's got built in midi, so I guess it's just some audiocards have confilcts with the Apc40 and others doesn't. (probably because the Apc40's driver is poorly made as some suggested.)

Maybe the conflict makes Live unable to downprioritize the (APC40's) midi communication as Live normally should when the audiostream is threatened by alot of midi activity. (try looking at windows Task manager, performace tab when abusing the apc40, to see what i mean)

Anyway, I'm just hoping the saffirecard will stand it's ground agains the Apc40.

[Donnie]

Just went down to Best Buy and picked up a cheap M-audio Fasttrack USB Audio interface that does not have Midi ports. Installed the Asio drivers and it runs flawlessly with the APC 40. No glitches, hiccups at the lowest available latency (5 ms output latency). So, perhaps there is something to next's theory. Anyone using APC 40 with an audio interface that includes built-in midi ports at low latency and glitch-free?

I hope the Abe's are listening as this may help in troubleshooting the issue. Too bad I must return my apc due to 30 day return policy

I use my APC 40 with an EMU 1820m gitch free at 5ms. I had pops and glitches like crazy when I first bought it, but deleting my ableton preferences file fixed the issue.

[next]

With my old audiocard (esi quatafire 610, lot of glithes) I tried deleting the preference.cfg when I just got he apc40 with no succes.

At that time I also tried removing/uninstalling everything else but the audiocard and the apc40 with no luck.

[Donnie]

Yeah its not a fix that works for everyone unfortunately, but for me it was night and day as soon as I deleted my prefs.

IMO the problem I had was purely a software issue and has nothing to do with the hardware itself, becasue when I was having the problem just enabling the APC40 control surface would cause Ableton to glitch out during any interaction with the mouse (whether the APC was on/off or connected/disconnected)

[veil]

Hi peeps-
I have rectified the pops & glitches when hitting shift key or track select problem recently ( after having severe glitching issues that only backed off up around a buffer of 3000 +) & now running at buffer of 64 samples with ASIO drivers-
I'm using the apc as a live performance tool but have the need for low latency due to triggering vst's in the live setting.

my setup is-

toshiba dual core laptop 3gb ram 5400rpm HDD
XP service pack 3
M-audio firewire 410
Live 7.0.18
Reason 4
& using absynth 3 , battery 3 + albino vsts for live triggering.
also running a wifi internet connection dosent seem to affect it.

midi controllers-
APC40
novation remote SL 25
evolution MK-449c

I have the APC 40 selected as 1st device on top of control surface list & no other control surfaces selected in this area.


..................
fix I used was to disable unused midi ports in ableton preferences midi sync tab.
( but dont think this had much to do with it)

then made sure that all active midi ports were set to "mme" rather than "direct music" setting ( click the drop down arrow beside the port to access )this seemed to be the main fix.

takeover mode is set to value scaling ( unsure if this has any impact either).

I didnt need to delete the preference file or muck about with the registry.
......................

hope this helps

Veil

http://mutated.biz/node/22
http://www.myspace.com/throbgoblinmusic

[originbreaks]

Just to say I have just bought APC and had the glitch problem and cpu spike. I was well annoyed as I have a brand spanking new copy of ableton live 8 and nothing I did with latencies etc sorted it.

Changed to MME ports (not direct music) and it was heaven baby!!!

Many thanks Ableton and Akai for an amzing piece of kit!

Nick