Ironic clips to RAM bug...

[subsocials]

On two different machines (iMac & MacBook Pro both running High Sierra 10.13.6) running Ableton 10.0.0.5, I'm loading all clips in a live performance project into RAM, which totals about 2.8-3GB. When I do this, after a few minutes of launching clips, I get the "Disk Overload" light in Ableton, then audio begins to drop out and crackle, and the session devolves into digital audio chaos. I quit Ableton, reload the session, and things are back to normal again. Then it happens all over again after a few minutes - every single time.

The clips are all pretty long. 1 machine has 32GB and the other has 16GB of RAM, so the load is not nearing maximum. The MacBook Pro is a 2018, and the iMac isn't far behind, so the specs are up to date.

Here's the irony... when I load all the clips from disk instead (turn off the RAM option on clips), the problem goes away completely.

I probably don't need to have the clips loaded into RAM, as I've got SSD/flash storage on both machines, but this seems odd to me. I'm not sure why RAM would cause the project to grind to a halt. Is Ableton just not meant to hold that much audio in RAM? Is this RAM feature for clips only for small files? Whatever the explanation, if you're going to have a RAM option for clips, it should work no matter how you use it as long as you're not running out of RAM. Am I crazy for thinking this?

My hope is that this is a bug of some kind, and perhaps someone else can verify that this happens to them also. We've got all this RAM these days, so why not use it right?

[[jur]]

This indeed sounds weird!
And I'm starting to wonder if that's not something I've already experienced, without suspecting what you've described.
If that's something that you can reliably (this is ironic too!) reproduce, then please report to [email protected]
I'll make sure to forward this too.

[subsocials]

Thanks for the reply. I will submit a bug report on this. Seems like it's pretty repeatable on my end of things anyway. Furthermore, it was happening with the included Ableton plugins only being used in the project - no 3rd party VST/AU plugins.

I'm going to try out other projects and see if I can get the same thing to happen.

[graeme_ncl]

On two different machines (iMac & MacBook Pro both running High Sierra 10.13.6) running Ableton 10.0.0.5, I'm loading all clips in a live performance project into RAM, which totals about 2.8-3GB. When I do this, after a few minutes of launching clips, I get the "Disk Overload" light in Ableton, then audio begins to drop out and crackle, and the session devolves into digital audio chaos. I quit Ableton, reload the session, and things are back to normal again. Then it happens all over again after a few minutes - every single time.

The clips are all pretty long. 1 machine has 32GB and the other has 16GB of RAM, so the load is not nearing maximum. The MacBook Pro is a 2018, and the iMac isn't far behind, so the specs are up to date.

Here's the irony... when I load all the clips from disk instead (turn off the RAM option on clips), the problem goes away completely.

I probably don't need to have the clips loaded into RAM, as I've got SSD/flash storage on both machines, but this seems odd to me. I'm not sure why RAM would cause the project to grind to a halt. Is Ableton just not meant to hold that much audio in RAM? Is this RAM feature for clips only for small files? Whatever the explanation, if you're going to have a RAM option for clips, it should work no matter how you use it as long as you're not running out of RAM. Am I crazy for thinking this?

My hope is that this is a bug of some kind, and perhaps someone else can verify that this happens to them also. We've got all this RAM these days, so why not use it right?

Got the same issue here exactly, 2018 MB Pro, 32Gb RAM. Pretty big live set, everything loaded to RAM (around 2Gb, same as you), and it goes crazy with disk overload and then sound starts to die.

I'm not too techie when it comes to OS X but i wonder if the Mac is swapping things that have been loaded into RAM out into virtual memory, i.e. back to the same SSD that they would have been read directly from had the RAM option not been ticked, and if so whether that causes some kind of bottleneck... anyway, just thought I'd shout up that its not just you! I've since stopped trying loading to RAM!

[subsocials]

Thanks for the input! I thought this was too repeatable to be just me! I was looking at my RAM and disk usage while the audio was crumbling and the disk overload light was on in Ableton. Everything "looked" fine to me, and I even ran a disk speed test at the same moment which showed me the disk was running perfectly.

So strange. I submitted a bug report, so maybe this is a real thing that gets squashed.

[H20nly]

it's your OS trying to manage your RAM. it's moving back and forth between temp/swap/page and RAM and interfering with Live tracking the location(s).

in Windows, the solution would be to set your page file to a larger size than your RAM... So 32 GB of RAM should be 34ish GB of page file. I'm not sure how Apple handles this, but I suspect it's very similar.

in short, it's an OS issue, not an Ableton issue.

[H20nly]

this might help you understand it

http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/08/mac-virtual-memory-swap/

i wouldn't recommend making the change though.

[subsocials]

Thanks for the input, but that's not the problem.

There's no swap file being used in this scenario on these machines, I checked that already to make sure that the OS wasn't doing that for some strange reason (which it shouldn't have). In any case, the available RAM on the machines far exceeds the needed RAM for the audio in the sessions here.

Your link goes to an article from 2010. Things have changed pretty drastically with RAM and hard drives since that time. I would posture that even if a swap was being used, it wouldn't be an issue, as the flash storage/ssd on these machines is more than fast enough to stream the audio direct from disk so there really wouldn't be a "glitch" when the hand off happens due to an old disk being so much slower than RAM.

Not trying to argue, but am pretty sure this is a software issue, or perhaps some kind of Mac core audio priority glitch or a problem between Ableton and the OS. I use lots of RAM (a lot more than 3GB) all the time with other, more demanding apps with no issues - if, and rarely, when there is swap space being used.

[H20nly]

i used the older article because SWAP is still SWAP so the date is irrelevant since all i was doing was attempting to make sure you understood how virtual memory gets involved.

RAM may be faster and hard drives may be faster, but the data hand-off still occurs and you can still bottleneck. it's not just the speed of the drive... it's also the speed of the bus.

anyway, you can see how much is in use if you run the following command in Terminal

ls -lh /private/var/vm

how are you determining the "2.8-3GB" number?

also, is the RAM factory installed... or did you upgrade yourself?


one other thought, is your drive a Fusion drive by any chance? if so, i've seen gripes about Fusion drives and High Sierra not playing nice... it might be a good avenue to explore if the shoe fits.

i feel as though loading the project into RAM is kind of a relic feature from when RAM was more expensive, drives were slow, and having 6 GB of RAM made everyone you know jealous... but maybe i just do not understand the feature from a practical use standpoint - since i've never had a need to use it.
at any rate, i hope you can get it nailed down and put behind you ASAP

[H20nly]

does it still happen if you turn off 'auto-warp long samples' in Live's preferences???

[subsocials]

Thanks. In communication with Ableton support now, and I'll see what happens.

[[jur]]

Thanks. In communication with Ableton support now, and I'll see what happens.

Please let us know your findings.