LIVE 5.2- CPU SPIKES and AUDIO GLITCHES STILL PRESENT

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dpel
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LIVE 5.2- CPU SPIKES and AUDIO GLITCHES STILL PRESENT

Post by dpel » Mon Apr 10, 2006 7:02 pm

I'm still experiencing the spikes ans glitches. anyone else?

I would have thought that with all the feedback from
other users using 5.0.x Ableton would've fixed this by now.

-notice my system config in my signature, quite similar to most Live users here.

very trivial.
Dave Pelman Music
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martin808
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Post by martin808 » Mon Apr 10, 2006 9:16 pm

last week i would have agreed with you on this,

ableton, for me was glitching and the audio kept dropping out, CPU hitting a million percent etc. I was going mad cos i had a gig on the friday night.

I went down to my local pc shop and bought a few items. I only had 512mb ram so i added another 512 which is the maximum my laptop takes.This made everything much smoother but i was still getting occasional glitches. I know you already have 1mb of ram but maybe you need more for what you're doing?


I cant say this will be the same for you but i found the problem with mine to be overheating.

I took the casing off my laptop, and took the heatsink off my chip, I found the thermal paste had pretty much evaporated (either that or it was never there in the first place). so i bought good quality silver based thermal paste and put it all back together after cleaning the heatsnik itself completely.

Ialso bought a laptop cooler that plugs into a USB. basically two fans in a box, It's really neat and works well. it means you can sit your laptop anywhere.

anyway, ever since then ableton has been running the sweetest i've ever had it. played the gig at the weekend and it never fucked up once.
:D

Amaury
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Re: LIVE 5.2- CPU SPIKES and AUDIO GLITCHES STILL PRESENT

Post by Amaury » Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:47 am

dpel wrote:I'm still experiencing the spikes ans glitches. anyone else?

I would have thought that with all the feedback from
other users using 5.0.x Ableton would've fixed this by now.

-notice my system config in my signature, quite similar to most Live users here.

very trivial.
Hi Dpel,

The spikes issue is not a simple bug to iron, unfortunatelly. We do collect informations, but the thing is it is hard to reproduce, and we are still unable to nail down what is going on. One reason is that this seems to not be the same problem for anyone: some users were desperate and after turing off HyperThreading, they were more than happy.
Martin808 is another good example here.

Does it make a difference if you don't use the Lacie drive ? Also, I probably already asked you but can't remember: what soundcard do you use ?

Best,

Amaury
Ableton Product Team

huffcw
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Post by huffcw » Tue Apr 11, 2006 2:07 pm

In my experience - these type of issues have a lot to do with your computer configuration (including the quality of your hardware components) - and perhaps less to do with the programs you are using. That's probably why some people have major issues and others do not experience it at all.

(I not saying there is no issue with Live - but it may be that the bug is much more likely to come out in cases where you don't have quality hardware and don't have your system optimized for audio.)

In general, if you have a quality computer where all of the components work nicely together, then you don't run into as many issues.

For example, I used to have a HP laptop that was just awful for anything to do with audio. It had a Pentium 4 processor with lots of RAM, so I thought it would be great - but I never was able to get it to work very good for audio (even after optimizing my Windows XP settings as much as possible for audio). I switched to a Dell D600 - which actually had less RAM and not as powerful of CPU - but it performed great with audio.

After talking with a friend of mine who is a computer guru, his basic conclusion was that the components used in the HP were not quality and there were likely resource conflicts. He said everything from the motherboard settings to poor quality RAM to a network interface could be an issue - especially if they are sharing resources with your audio card.

One thing I would suggest is to disable any component in your computer you are not using (for example, definitely disable your network interface and modem - they really have no use on a audio production computer and can lead to conflicts with your audio card).

Another suggestion is to make sure your audio card is high-quality. Avoid USB interfaces because they will make your CPU work harder - especially at low latency settings. And never use the built in audio interface - that can almost be guaranteed to cause problems when trying to do anything demanding (these interfaces are basically good for playing back MP3 and things like that only).

justin
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Post by justin » Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:39 pm

i'm on a mac, and i had these problems with 5.02 / 03. However, since v5.2 i moved audio files to a firewire lacie drive and done a bit of OSX cleanup.
things have improved.

i say "improved" bcos they are not perfect. often, after loading a set and playing around with it for the first time, i get audio drop outs when using operator or sometimes just muting / unmuting trax.
basic stuff really.

fortunately, over time things get better and live warms up...

it just seems crazy how much more of a cpu / ram drain v5 is compared to v4 and its predecessors.

would really like to see some software optimisation so that live can make better use of the cpu and ram...

just a few thoughts,

justin

(PB g4 12 inch / 867mhz / 640 ram / FW lacie 400 drive)

dpel
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Re: LIVE 5.2- CPU SPIKES and AUDIO GLITCHES STILL PRESENT

Post by dpel » Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:01 pm

Amaury wrote:
dpel wrote:I'm still experiencing the spikes ans glitches. anyone else?

I would have thought that with all the feedback from
other users using 5.0.x Ableton would've fixed this by now.

-notice my system config in my signature, quite similar to most Live users here.

very trivial.
Hi Dpel,

The spikes issue is not a simple bug to iron, unfortunatelly. We do collect informations, but the thing is it is hard to reproduce, and we are still unable to nail down what is going on. One reason is that this seems to not be the same problem for anyone: some users were desperate and after turing off HyperThreading, they were more than happy.
Martin808 is another good example here.

Does it make a difference if you don't use the Lacie drive ? Also, I probably already asked you but can't remember: what soundcard do you use ?

Best,

Amaury
hi Amaury

i'm using an Echo Indigo DJ card. i have also tried using the internal laptop drive
instead of the lacie. no difference.

anyone interested in buying an HP laptop? ;-)
Dave Pelman Music
http://www.davepelman.com

martin808
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Post by martin808 » Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:07 pm

I don't mean to sound patronising here but are your power properties definetly set to "always on" and is hyper threading turned off. Just tell me to STFU if thats the first thing you did!!

what do you get in the live performance test? I get 38% with a 3.2ghz P4m and 1024mb ram

dpel
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Post by dpel » Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:37 pm

martin808 wrote:I don't mean to sound patronising here but are your power properties definetly set to "always on" and is hyper threading turned off. Just tell me to STFU if thats the first thing you did!!

what do you get in the live performance test? I get 38% with a 3.2ghz P4m and 1024mb ram
no worries martin808. i'm definetly set to "always on" i looked for hyper threading in bios. nothing there. then i read on a pc forum (i googled "how do i turn off hyperthreadin on a HP R4000) and i read a post from someone saying hyperthreading is only on Intel chips (not AMD, they have their own version and is apparently not accessable)

BUT...

i just turned off all of my networking (LAN and Wireless) services. so far sso good. i'll report back...

thanx martin808
thanx everybody.
Dave Pelman Music
http://www.davepelman.com

huffcw
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Post by huffcw » Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:50 pm

A good thing to invest in for a laptop is a 7200 RPM internal drive (assuming your built in drive is a slower model) - such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822146046

martin808
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Post by martin808 » Tue Apr 11, 2006 7:54 pm

I bought that very drive about a year ago when i bought my laptop because i was getting the D button coming on. Very happy with it. works very fast and speeded up boot time.

edit: it's not actually that one i bought but 1 very similar...........
http://hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/me ... 4eac4f0a0/

krank
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Post by krank » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:10 am

I'm getting spikes that don't really register on the CPU meter - and so far 5.2 seems to be much worse in this regard than 5.0.3. The playback goes GRRRWWWW briefly (and often), but the CPU doesn't go beyond 50-60%. Not a harddisk issue, at least the 'D' is not lighting up.

I'm running OSX 10.4.6 on an iBook 1.33GHZ with 1GB ram.

Amaury
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Post by Amaury » Wed Apr 12, 2006 11:34 am

krank wrote:I'm getting spikes that don't really register on the CPU meter - and so far 5.2 seems to be much worse in this regard than 5.0.3. The playback goes GRRRWWWW briefly (and often), but the CPU doesn't go beyond 50-60%. Not a harddisk issue, at least the 'D' is not lighting up.

I'm running OSX 10.4.6 on an iBook 1.33GHZ with 1GB ram.
Hi Krank,

You should monitor the CPU usage in the OSX monitoring utility. For example, if you're using a Firewire audio interface, there are great chances that the device is demanding quite a lot of CPU itself.

You should also monitor the RAM usage, see if there is enough left.

Kind regards,

Amaury
Ableton Product Team

djxpcm
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Post by djxpcm » Wed Apr 12, 2006 11:37 am

We are still having these same spike and dropout problems with 5.x and they f*cked up a gig for us last Friday, which I'm really not happy about.

I see people writing about their computers not being optimised or different HD or RAM configurations but I believe the problem lies with the software and it's about time Ableton sorted it out.

We are using 17" Powerbooks 1.67Ghz/1Gb RAM/OS 10.3.9 with MOTU 828 mk1+2 soundcards so I find it hard to believe that this setup is not "optimised for audio" or the "quality of the hardware" is not good enough.

We have also tried running from a Lacie D2 over FW800 and that didn't help so we are now thinking of using Live 4 instead of 5 as there doesn't seem to be these problems in earlier versions.

Can I authorise a copy of Live 4 with my Live 5 serial?

X

rodcencko
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Post by rodcencko » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:47 pm

I'm getting spikes that don't really register on the CPU meter - and so far 5.2 seems to be much worse in this regard than 5.0.3. The playback goes GRRRWWWW briefly (and often), but the CPU doesn't go beyond 50-60%. Not a harddisk issue, at least the 'D' is not lighting up.

I'm running OSX 10.4.6 on an iBook 1.33GHZ with 1GB ram.
I'm getting the same kind of problem but I found that if you increase the audio buffer to 1024 samples or more you can still hear right with 75% -80%.
So the problem must be something with audio buffer

MAC OSX 10.4.6 G4 2X1ghz and 1 GB ram

huffcw
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Post by huffcw » Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:44 pm

djxpcm wrote: I see people writing about their computers not being optimised or different HD or RAM configurations but I believe the problem lies with the software and it's about time Ableton sorted it out.
You are probably correct that there is some issue in the program - especially considering there is such a huge difference between 4 and 5. I do know that the plugin delay compensation is one thing that can hit the CPU pretty hard, but I am not sure what else might be creating such a huge performance difference between the two versions on the same computer.

You are also right in saying that Ableton needs to get this worked out - and quickly. There is lots of competition out there (the new ACID 6, Cakewalk Project 5 - not to mention all the traditional DAW software) - and the primary advantage I always hear about Live is that it is the best for performing live with. But that may no longer be the case with this type of issue causing problems.

It's never a good thing when people who purchased the latest version are forced to go back to an earlier version because they can't get it to work properly. (even if it is not showing up as an issue for everyone)

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