Guitar monitoring - random short pops

[stefaniukmilosz]

Hello,

I am facing an issue when monitor my guitar in Ableton Live Suite 12.3.2. I have the guitar connected to Push 3 (controller) in input line 1, with preamp type „Instrument”. I run it on MacBook 14 M3 Pro (12 cores)/ 36GB RAM / 1TB SSD / GPU (18 cores). Monitoring in Audio track is set up to „In”. Generally everything seems to be fine, until I play more than a few minutes. Unfortunately time to time I can hear very short (like 1s) pops from my speakers/headphones. This comes only from guitar signal, I do not face any issue with monitoring MIDI instruments from Push 3.

I know that first answer should be „increase buffer size”, and that is the issue here. In fact, when I increased buffer size to 2048 samples it looks like the issue is gone (or at least I did not play long enough to hear it), but I can hear it even at 512 samples level. I am just wondering if this is normal in this setup as according to me it should not been an issue to monitor guitar with buffer size 256 samples or even 128 samples, especially when the current CPU usage looks the following:

32 samples: CPU usage ~30%
64 samples: CPU usage ~20%
128 samples: CPU usage ~11%
256 samples: CPU usage ~7%
512 samples: CPU usage ~4%
1024 samples: CPU usage ~3%
2048 samples: CPU usage ~2%

Sample rate: 44100

Obviously monitoring guitar with buffer size 2048 or 1024 samples is impossible due to latency, the highest acceptable level for me is 256 samples, so I am trying to understand if this is really buffer size issue or something else as CPU seems to be completely not overloaded.

This is almost brand new clean MacBook, I have installed on it just Ableton Live and maybe a few more apps as I use this laptop very rare. I have upgraded it to version 15.7.3 Sequoia.

My guitar is also brand new one, I tested in direct monitoring by connecting it via cable to speaker and everything was fine. I have tested also with two different cables and same issue in Ableton.

I was playing with wrapping options as I heard it can cause some audio artifacts but with no success.

I have also selected/deselected option „Delay compensation” and „Reduce latency when monitoring” - but same - no success.

I use two plugins, Amp and Hybrid Reverb, but disabling them do not resolve the issue.

Is it really then buffer size issue? If so, what computer I should have to handle this setup? Researching Internet I thought that this MacBook 14 M3 Pro will be enough to that, but maybe I was wrong.

Regards,
Miłosz

[stefaniukmilosz]

Hi All

Posting the answer because maybe it will help someone else.

Finally I have identified the root-cause of this issue. I have created aggregated device with Push 3 and FLX10 (my second audio interface) in Audio MIDI Setup and then selected as Clock Source Push 3 - it solved the issue. It is important to select Push 3 as Clock Source - otherwise during monitoring guitar we can face random short crackles even if we do not use aggregated device. Once it is setup as above described - everything is fine and I can use both audio interfaces simultaneously.

Now I can easily monitor guitar even with buffer size 32 samples with no issue.

Regards,
Milosz