Good specs but still glitching

Dj Ruby · Post by **Dj Ruby** » Wed May 24, 2006 4:55 pm

Hi Guys,
I am getting glitches happening occasionally while playing Live. I use a lot of tracks and samples when playing, but the cpu never really goes over 35% so i am trying to work out what the problem is.

Fujitsu siemens amilo pro 8010
Centrino 1.73 ghz
1 gb Ram
Echo indigo dj sound card (sample rate 384)
Ableton live 5.0.3

If anyone has an idea what to try i'd be glad to hear it.

cheers
Ruby

mr-e · Post by **mr-e** » Wed May 24, 2006 5:06 pm

- bad drivers
- slow / defragmented disk
- monitor other applications in the background , maybe these create random CPU/disk access/memory spikes

frisbeedisk · Post by **frisbeedisk** » Wed May 24, 2006 5:08 pm

maybe try putting your buffer rate up to 512 or a lil higher...

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Wed May 24, 2006 5:13 pm

Dj Ruby wrote:
(sample rate 384)

Ruby

really? !!!!!!!!!

if so try reducing it to 96 or even 48 or 44.1

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Wed May 24, 2006 6:00 pm

Change you buffer sizes, there's an audio buffer and a plug-in buffer. Also, set the CPU limit threshold higher, all of these are found in the options->preferences menu.

Sample rate probably has nothing to do with it.

If there are other programs running, kill them.

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Wed May 24, 2006 6:19 pm

DeadlyKungFu wrote:
Sample rate probably has nothing to do with it.

I beg to differ. at 384KHz the system has to handle 8 times as much data than at 48khz. each track uses the same system resources as 8 tracks, any weak point in the system architecture is 8 times more likely to cause a problem and unless you are making music for bats it's just a waste of resources.

In any case it only takes a moment to find out.

[edit] s/beg to differ/disagree/

"beg to differ" indeed, makes me sound like a self impotant twat!

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Wed May 24, 2006 6:42 pm

I dig. I was in denial he was actually running at 384kHz, weird.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed May 24, 2006 6:55 pm

the weird thing is that sample rate only goes up to 96k !

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Wed May 24, 2006 8:29 pm

Angstrom wrote:the weird thing is that sample rate only goes up to 96k !

Mine goes up to 192KHz - probably depends on the card.

Jomdom · Post by **Jomdom** » Wed May 24, 2006 8:39 pm

He probably got buffer size and sample rate confused, that's all. Either way, new drivers, a larger buffer (1024 and work down from there as you tweak), less background processes, etc. The works - find these kind of things at places like AudioXP or any other "optimize Windows for Audio" site.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed May 24, 2006 8:39 pm

nolus wrote:
Angstrom wrote:the weird thing is that sample rate only goes up to 96k !
Mine goes up to 192KHz - probably depends on the card.

mines an echo Indigo DJ same as his, sorry I meant to fill in those crucial details.
buffer sizes available are 64, 128 , 256, 512.

no 384

dizaster · Post by **dizaster** » Thu May 25, 2006 7:34 am

oops. Sorry guys, that was my fault, i was at Dj ruby's place and wrote that message with him. We were trying to compare the cards on the lappy and in the main pc and 384 is not on the echo, but is DMA buffer size on the audiophile 192 in the desktop. It's not sample rate, it's amount of samples in buffer on the card. It is actually set to 512, but was also glitching at 256.

Angstrom, you use the same card, you had any probs like this before?

What do your settings look like?

I'm starting to suspect it might be the hdd, maybe it's time to upgrade to a 7200rpm?

Regards,
Dizzy

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu May 25, 2006 11:29 am

my specs :
dothan 2.0
1.5 meg ram
7200 hard drive
Echo IndigoDJ buffer 128 at 44.1 k
XP home
Live 5.2

I assume that the cpu in your computer is a 'dothan' IE the second generation of centrino, the performance difference between the first and second generation was quite large due to cache and pipeline changes.

I very, very rarely have issues. In fact I cant think of a time I did with this setup. I ran it with 512 meg for about 6 months too.

If you have a slow drive and the computer has been used a lot, I highly recomend a good defrag program to speed up disk access. Try diskeeper - they have a 1 month trial, you may find that a 5200 drive seek time is slowed down a lot by fragmentation. The basic XP defrag is okayish.

ciw · Post by **ciw** » Thu May 25, 2006 12:30 pm

nolus wrote: [edit] s/beg to differ/disagree/

don't you wish sed worked for audio?

forgie · Post by **forgie** » Thu May 25, 2006 12:47 pm

Mate, have you set your power settings to "Always On"? Go to Control Panel -> Power Options -> Power Schemes and select "Always On".

If not your CPU may be throttling up and down. This is an issue for many laptop users. On a mac you have to set Processor Performance to Maximum.

Good specs but still glitching

Good specs but still glitching

Re: Good specs but still glitching

Sample rate