Freezes and Glitches - ran out of solutions SOLVED.

[CaptainU]

Any possible solutions welcome...

I've been suffering with poor performance from Live8 from a Vista laptop so I've spent quite some time tuning its performance (all the recommended tune up's and more - power/usb/cpu/bios/driver/ram/virtual memory/latency-mon etc etc). I have it to a point where it's performing really well (for a Vista laptop lol!).

There's one problem that I just can't solve - infrequent but major drop out's. I'm using an M-Audio Oxygen 49 via USB. Works beautifully for my very modest usage. Latency and response is fine. Every once in a while (usually when you least want it to happen) the playing audio clip or the triggered VST drops out, goes silent and then the VST catches up with itself but approx 1 second behind the triggers (until I reset the VST).

This happens even when one or two clips are playing - absolutely no major challenge for Live 8.

What the screen says:
CPU Load - no spikes (usually well below 30%)
Disk Overload - no indication at any point
Midi indicators - flash in time with the keyboard input (no delay)

I thought this was all about either disk read speed or CPU spikes. So I loaded the samples and even the VST samples into RAM to avoid the disk performance. Still getting the . Only every once in a while and I can't force the fault so I've no ideas left.

Any ideas or suggestions welcome

[Schmidi]

#1 info we need with these kinds of questions: what sound card are you using?

[CaptainU]

Hi Schmidi,
Soundcard:
Tascam US-144 USB 2.0, latest drivers installed. No Midi I/O used, soundcard only. Latency / buffers set up OK.

Thanks.

[Schmidi]

hmm, I had a lot of audio issues with my card (Focusrite USB 2.0 card) and I had really good/strange luck by placing it (AND ONLYIT) on a powered USB 2.0 hub.

No more audio crackles after that. Why, I couldn't say?

Schmidi

[CaptainU]

Thanks for the advice but no luck there with the powered hub either.

The wierd thing is, when it does glitch, when playing the vst, it drops out and then after a few seconds comes back in sustaining the last note/chord. This will go on indefinitely until I disarm the vst!

[CaptainU]

Update:

I've tried a few more fixes with no luck.
1) Created a copy set running off a USB flash to free up RAM. All clips & samples fed from the USB flash. Result - lots of RAM available, CPU meter not rising above 50%. Still getting freezes & drop out.

2) Running Laptop in stripped down basic mode with only essential drivers in place. Lots of RAM available and (as far as I can tell) no other programmes accessing the disk. Result - same problems.

Any ideas on these options please?
a) Buy a matched pair of 2GB RAM to replace my existing 2gb, bringing it up to 4GB OR
b) 7200 external eSATA and run OS and Ableton off that?

Thanks

[Schmidi]

what are the laptop specs?

I wouldn't buy a ton of upgrades, as it sounds like it works fine in L8 for you.

[CaptainU]

I managed to get it running pretty smoothly eventually by;
a) Running the midi controller keyboard midi into the soundcard input rather than direct USB/Midi into the laptop (my theory is that it reduces the load on the USB power and data transfer)
b) Doing a major strip down of running programs and services prior to running Ableton. I found a really nice utility called AlacrityPC which I posted here:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=199763

It stops all the services and programs you want with just one click (once you set it up to do so) AND turns them all back on again when you've finished!

Having said all this, I decided to get a cheap dedicated laptop which I'm using now stripped down for the purpose and it's working really nicely.