Audio drop out on large live set with SSD. MacBook Pro 2007

[Rajstah]

Hello,
I'm programming my live set that I need to play on a gig the 19 January.

Everything is almost ready, clips edited and so on.

I was playing and practicing/testing my set and suddenly, during the mixing of tracks, the audio dropped out for a very long time.
I waited a while, tryed to play again and the same drop occur again...

The "D" led, on the top right corner of Ableton Live start to blink and I know that is the "Disk overload" led.
I use stems for the set, which are quite big sized files, especially if played in many instances/tracks.

I did buy a Samsung SSD 830 256gb and replaced the HD of my late 2007 MacBook Pro (which support SATA 1.5gb).

I wander if there's any configuration I can set up to avoid overload on IO of my SSD and the drop out of audio.
I cannot load my files on RAM, as I have only 4gb ram (the maximum upgrade for this machine)

[beats me]

A 6-year-old computer with only 4G of RAM.

[Rajstah]

A 6-year-old computer with only 4G of RAM.

I know...
I can't afford to buy a new one...
It works great!
Just gives this issue... Any help?

[beats me]

I would think RAM might be the issue but if you can't put in more than 4 then I don't know what to do about that.

[fishmonkey]

if you are getting a big dropout then that suggests that your system is having some kind of trouble with the SSD.

do a search on the internets for compatibility issues with your model of MBP, whatever version of Mac OS X you are running, and the SSD.

[lapieuvre]

First, optimize you programming. Are there loop clips (thus warped clips) that you could transform into a unwarped follow action that repeats itself(Play again)? Warped clips are hard on disk streaming.

second, I am not sure if you can do this, but when you format your SSD, try to make 128k or 256k clusters. it helps on disk streaming. the default is 4k clusters, wich is not the best for audio playback.

I also remove all the empty audio clips in my set.

Hope this helps.

[Rajstah]

First, optimize you programming. Are there loop clips (thus warped clips) that you could transform into a unwarped follow action that repeats itself(Play again)? Warped clips are hard on disk streaming.

second, I am not sure if you can do this, but when you format your SSD, try to make 128k or 256k clusters. it helps on disk streaming. the default is 4k clusters, wich is not the best for audio playback.

I also remove all the empty audio clips in my set.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for reply.
What is that cluster? Can I set up after the formatting? I wouldn't really spend hours on trasfer data if it's possible...

I did already actrivate also the T.R.I.M. option of my ssd

[fishmonkey]

do you get beachballs doing other stuff on your machine?

[Rajstah]

do you get beachballs doing other stuff on your machine?

No dude, everything works exceptionally smooth since I've installed the SSD.
Even the CPU percentage while performing my live set doesn't go over 30%...

But, as I think that is the classic example of a bottle neck problem, I've given up for now and ordered a new MacBook Pro for the gig. Even thoug I did preferre to buy the i7 iMac 27" for the same price...

[lapieuvre]

Thanks for reply.
What is that cluster? Can I set up after the formatting? I wouldn't really spend hours on trasfer data if it's possible...

I did already actrivate also the T.R.I.M. option of my ssd

Forget about that, it's for RAID drives. I'd start with the other tips and see if it fixes your problem.

[Rajstah]

Just to give a quick update for who can be interested to the topic.
I've tried a different setting on Live for the Plug-in Buffer size, on the preferences of the CPU, (which is not the audio latency Buffer size!)and I've increased to 512 samples.

For the moment it seems to don't give problems.
I've played for almost 4 hours my set and the audio didn't drop even once...
I hope that was the problem and it's been sorted out.

Will confirm on next days after other trials.

If it works, I will be so proud of my old MacBook!