Glitches in Live set.. any ideas?

elemental · Post by **elemental** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:46 pm

I am currently practicing for a live set on 24th feb. All is going well, but I get occasional glitches and sometimes long clips randomly turn into digital noise. They are off my laptop internal HD. I have just defragmented the disk, but still getting a few glitches into the set. I'd really like to find a way of preventing as it would be bad to have it happen on the night. And painful for the listeners.

Any help much appreciated!

no_barcode · Post by **no_barcode** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:17 pm

Not sure what you mean by digital noise. I sometimes (at least once per session) get what sounds like the entire audio engine going into a fast buffer repeat, for like a split second. (sort of a "drrrrr" sound) I've seen in mentioned elsewhere, but nobody can explain it in detail enough or provide the steps to reproduce it, to really allow anyone to get to the bottom of it. It's too random, and I'm almost certain it's something to do with Live. But as long as it doesn't do that when I render, it's not a big problem for me.

For someone performing live, would be an issue for sure. Though the crowd might just think you're getting a little creative with your mix...

Sorry, no help, just moral support here.

Voodu · Post by **Voodu** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 8:27 pm

I have the same problem from time to time, seems to be totally random. My hard disk indicator light never lights up when this happens. I thought maybe it had something to do with the latency settings on my soundcard, but I set it up step by step with the ableton lesson included with Live and played with the settings as well, without it fixing it.

elemental · Post by **elemental** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:40 pm

Hmmm .. I sent an email to Abeleton support, maybe they have some advice. The "drrr" glitch is one thing, but the random digital noise is really bad .. happens rarely but has happened a couple of times when practicing - i've had this happen when a disk gets disconected, but this was off an internal HD, so I dont know what it could be.

Voodu · Post by **Voodu** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 11:50 pm

yeah I've never gotten the "digital noise" you speak of, that's a new one. Let me know how you make out.

loreamon · Post by **loreamon** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 6:27 am

Hei elemental,

Only once i performed in public with abelton 5.0 - and it was really horrible. I've got exactly kind of a random digital noise but so much loud that the engineer on stage turned the entire vollume down.
During playing I realized it happens only in one channel (track) - but on random loops.
So after this bad experience i returned to the good ol 4.1.4 which never done me this before..
Also my set at this time was really full of loops and the 5.0 was unable to load it completely....
please post if you get reply from the support team..

elemental · Post by **elemental** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 12:46 pm

I may well go back to 4.14 for my live set then. Would be a shame coz i'm using saturator and beat repeat, but they're not totally essential.

I'd also have to ask the peeps at ableton to convert my 5.03 set to 4.14

billpayer2005 · Post by **billpayer2005** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:47 am

I also get this is low sample rate style digital noise.
It occurs after about 20min using 5.03 / XP / Audiophile.
The play button also disables.

I think it's an Ableton bug as it's completely repeatable and new to v5

kineticUk · Post by **kineticUk** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:26 am

I have had th play button disable quite a few times.
It normally happens when I edit a file in my Ext editor.
For some reason sometimes the soundcard seems to disengage
The play button stps responding as does live until I restart
Buggy

Jonny · Post by **Jonny** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:45 am

Hey elemental,
I've been suffering through these exact same issues ever since I upgraded to Live 5. I've posted several topics on this matter and I've sent a total of roughly 10 emails to Ableton covering every possible variable that could cause these 'glitches' and digital 'grrrrr' sounds. (I've spent hours and hours just typing all these emails) The answer I keep hearing is to wait for the next bug fix. So I have waited patiently (keep in mind I bought this in November and I still can't use it!) through several bug fixes, only to have absolutely no improvement. The last email I recieved told me to try the new 5.2 whenever it's released to see if that solves the problem.

It's a joke really. So much that I've stop using Live completely. I make soundtracks and fortunately I own cubase as well so I can use that, but for some this is not an option. So I'll paraphrase what the horse's mouth has told me repeatedly...'just keep waiting and maybe one day it will work'

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the people who complain of this problem are using an M-Audio sound cards... are you? I would be interested to see if upgrading (not that I should have to) to a superior card like a MOTU would fix the problem. Has anyone with this issue tried this and did it work?

Jonny

5.0.3 /XP/ Audiophile
3gh p4 Alienware 2GB ram

Cache · Post by **Cache** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:50 am

i would suggest consolidating some of your clips.
the glitch may be caused by disk overload. (when it happens how many clips are playing at once?)
loading some into ram will help, as well consolidating them.

also, maybe clean out your 3rd party plugin list - esp Waves plugins.

after that, if you're still having probs, use 4.xx
it is very rock solid and didnt have the glitches that 5.xx has.

hope that helps.

xone: · Post by **xone:** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:30 am

I have some gliches even when I play 15% to 24% of CPU load.
It happened even after formated external hard disks. (copied anotehr external HDD, then, format, and copied back original again. Only 20% of the capacity is used. )

Glitch happen when I only play 2 or 3 clips, ( total track number is 5+ 2 send/return) Effects are 3 eq. on each track. Mastering chain device on a master track.

I berely hear bad things about Echo dj. My powerbook has another 28GB capacity to use. Live is run at 2nd external HDD.

How often you guys have gliches? and Any solutions?

djshiva · Post by **djshiva** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 5:58 am

played my first ableton dj sets last week (2 of em) and encountered this very problem. i am not using an external harddrive, and my suondcard is the echo indigo dj. it happened when i was playing one clip or 4...didn't seem to matter. sometimes it would be when i triggered a new clip, but at no point was i ever really taxing the CPU.

i run 5.2 as well...

made me want to tear my hair out. >:(

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 10:45 pm

Well look at this. I just posted a thread about this.

I narrowed MY problem down to the crossfader with MAudio Firewire Audiophile. Crap.

gel-sol · Post by **gel-sol** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:58 am

you could freeze yer tracks and convert some of yer stereo tracks to mono....I have been getting these glitches, but the freeze track function in the edit menu has been easing up on the load.

the only problem with the freeze mode it that it puts a blue hue over yer track, so you cant really tell what a clips color is....if there was an option for choosing yer own color/opacity, that would be sweet as nutz.

Yer Pal,
Gel-Sol
www.gel-sol.com
www.myspace.com/gelsol