Dropouts with rme fire face and ableton live

[mzky]

My setup:

- Macbook pro I7, 2,9 ghz, 8 GB ram
- fireface UC
- Ableton live 9.1.6

I'm using very simple Live projects, with 2 audio tracks, 2 midi tracks to control electron octatrack midi program changes, 3 waves/elysia plugins on the master bus. Buffer latency set in ableton is 128, and the CPU indicator says always under 15%

Sometimes I have audio dropouts, yesterday, while playing, audio first stopped (I have to restart Fireface UC to make it work again), then it stopped again with a continuous, disturbing sound.

I can't reproduce the problem in a "scientific" way, it seems to appear randomly and with no particular reason, even if the project is very simple and the CPU load is very low.

I'd like to identify what is the problem, sound card? ableton? plugins?

[fishmonkey]

what version of OS X are you running? and are you using the latest drivers from RME?

[mzky]

OS X 10.9.5

Latest drivers on rme fireface

[PHY6]

I have the same with my focusrite saffire, it's driving me nuts... No fix since I use osx 10.9. The only thing I can do is go in abe's prefs and select the coreaudio driver, deselect it, and select it again, to get going again.
Made numerous bug reports, but nothing helps.
I have the idea that it's some plugs that are causing the drop-out. Because when I work with only audio, it doesn't occur.

[fishmonkey]

OS X 10.9.5

Latest drivers on rme fireface

latest drivers installed on your computer, and the latest firmware installed on the Fireface?

is the Fireface plugged directly into the computer, or into an external USB hub? maybe you have a bad USB cable. it is also possible that your Fireface is malfunctioning.

the symptoms suggest that the problem is not being caused by Live.

have you contacted RME support, or searched their forum?

[mzky]

latest drivers, latest firmware, no usb hub

I noticed that the dropouts are coming from the inputs of the fireface, as I'm using together external audio through a stereo input in the fireface in a stereo track in ableton: the dropouts are affecting only the input track, not the static ones playing in ableton

[chrk]

as I'm using together external audio through a stereo input in the fireface

What's a stereo input on the Fireface? - The analog inputs are all mono, you can attach a "stereo" jack, but that's for ballanced (mono) signals - you'd need two of these to make a stereo pair.

Or are you using the SPDIF input? - Then you might have a clock/synching problem.

[mzky]

Sorry I mean 2 mono jack inputs on the fireface

[mzky]

maybe a audio sample can help. There are two voices and some synth layer: every synth sound and the high voice is from electron Octatrack incoming audio in ableton, the low voice is reproduced by a ableton audio track. The distortion happens only on the incoming audio, the ableton audio tracks are unaffected

http://www.mizkeystudio.it/distort.wav

If it's a CPU problem (which I repeat stays always in ableton down the 15%) why only incoming audio is affected? Maybe a A/D converter problem?

[fishmonkey]

quite possibly a fault in the RME UC.

one thing you could try is running the UC in standalone mode (not connected to your computer at all), and see if the glitches still occur.

also, i would think that RME support would be able to narrow it down pretty quickly if you sent them that recording.

[chrk]

Just an idea...
What's the I/O sample rate in Live's Audio Preferences, and Bit Depth in the Record Preferences?

Are you using the UC as default audio device in your OS's audio setup, and if so (or perhaps even if not), are those sample rate and bit depth different from Live's?

Nevertheless I would contact RME support and Ableton support in parallel. For Ableton you should prepare a status report: goto Help > Support.

And...
Can you completely rule out the Octatrack? - Have you tried it anywhere else over some time? Have you tried other sources on that input?

[chrk]

...and another thing.

While you say your CPU indicator stays down, have you ever watched the D = disk indicator when this happens?

Though I'm pretty certain the results of overloading the disk or data transport sound different (more like a stuttering), you should give it some consideration as well.

[mzky]

I had the problem yesterday during a gig
this is the LOG:
18/04/15 02:16:37,000 kernel[0] IOAudioStream[0xffffff80191e2200]::clipIfNecessary() - Error: attempting to clip to a position more than one buffer ahead of last clip position (24bf,f8)->(24c2,2c8).
18/04/15 02:16:37,000 kernel[0] IOAudioStream[0xffffff80191e2200]::clipIfNecessary() - adjusting clipped position to (24c2,f8)
18/04/15 02:16:37,000 kernel[0] IOAudioStream[0xffffff801bcdfc00]::clipIfNecessary() - Error: attempting to clip to a position more than one buffer ahead of last clip position (24bf,f8)->(24c2,2c8).
18/04/15 02:16:37,000 kernel[0] IOAudioStream[0xffffff801bcdfc00]::clipIfNecessary() - adjusting clipped position to (24c2,f8)
18/04/15 02:16:37,000 kernel[0] IOAudioStream[0xffffff801bc3d400]::clipIfNecessary() - Error: attempting to clip to a position more than one buffer ahead of last clip position (24bf,f8)->(24c2,2c8).
18/04/15 02:16:37,000 kernel[0] IOAudioStream[0xffffff801bc3d400]::clipIfNecessary() - adjusting clipped position to (24c2,f8)

[Valiumdupeuple]

This is the same log that a lot of (me included) Motu interface users have to deal with; they still haven't fixed it. It appears with mavericks.
But you've just confirmed that's an osx problem in the first place.

[lapieuvre]

Maybe I have a silly idea... but what if the USB connections are loose?

Try a brand new USB cable?