Juddering when i play a clip please help

Krisstoff · Post by **Krisstoff** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:34 am

Hi All - I've just moved to live on the mac coming from cubase on pc all well apart from when i launch a clip in sesion view for the first time live noticably judders then carries on playing. it only seems to be the first time i launch a clip after that the clip plays fine, but as you can imagine it sounds pretty bad live. It does this on every clip

It seems to happen if i leave the set up idle for any legnth of time, about 5 mins is enough to do it. I'm using a macbook pro 2,13 1mb a avastor 800 firwire drive & tc konnekt 24d. I've noticed that the hardrive go's onto standby if not used in a while i'm thinking it could be something to do with this. is there anyway to keep the live. set active or refreshed?

Any help would be much appreciated

Krisstoff

djod · Post by **djod** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:07 pm

Do you mean that is makes a little hickup ( not really a hickup, but more as if its holding back so it can fire teh clips for a few milliseconds ) when more clips are fired.

I've had the same thing and don't like it it doesn't make me feel confident for playing live. And that's

It seams to be the first run indeed.

Hope the abs see this and fix it.

teknik8 · Post by **teknik8** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 5:39 am

I have been using live at my shows on many differenrt computers pc+mac for over a year now and every time there is a stutter or hiccup it is a hardware problem.....most new soundcards like the fire studio or fire wire need dual core technology..or a pc that runs at a high mghz ....on my g4 powerbook with 2 gigz ram it was stuttering playing with 8 channels,at the last moment i switched the two laptops for a p4 3.2 tower and it ran 16 no problem...try setting your processor to max performance on a laptop and make sure youre not running anything else in the backround....good luck

Krisstoff · Post by **Krisstoff** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:43 am

Yeah - it's as you discribe a little audio hickup when the clip is launched. Its a problem for playing live let hope they see this and suggest a workaround. It could be a hardware issue. does anyone know if there is a way on mac to keep your firwire hd primed for action so that it dosn't go to standby if its not used for a while

djod · Post by **djod** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:46 am

@teknik8 The thing is that there is to my knowledge no way to set the cpu to fixed max, it throttles no matter what power settings you use.

And I suspect that thats the problem, I've also have an Amd64 laptop and that also has hickups when I leave it in power on demand mode, but I have a utillity that can be used to set the cpu at a specific frequnty so doesn't have to accelrate. I suspect the accelrating of the cpu to be the mean problem, cos i mostly use AU's and not many audio loops.

I'll try to test some more, later.

db · Post by db » Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:47 pm

Hi Krisstoff - what version of Live do you use?
can you please check your Preferences:MIDI and make sure you do not have Remote enabled on the IAC Output.

In Live 6.x, enabling Remote on IAC Input and Output will potentially create a feedback loop which can cause a hickup in Live, when triggering clips/scenes that are MIDI Mapped.

Daniel

Krisstoff · Post by **Krisstoff** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:10 pm

Hi Daniel I'm using live 6.x will do as you suggest, thanks for getting back to me. This is an Ace program!!

mocker · Post by **mocker** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 9:56 pm

I'm having the same problem as described here :
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56600

I've checked out a possible IAC loop : the answer is no, no Remote enabled on the IAC output. My setup is : Remote on the input , Track on the output.
So I'm afraid it has nothing to do with this VERY frightening problem which makes Live 6 and a MacBook practically unusable on stage at the moment.

djod · Post by **djod** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 10:10 pm

Same here, no IAC loop, its there even with all midi channels off.

I've tested with audio loops only 4 tracks.
1 looping as "intro" sound and after a few ars the other 3 kick in.
At that point the hickups start.

I've aslo have this with mixed setup of absynth, surge and operator.
3 tracks, 1 intro sound and the other 2 kick in and then the hickups start.
When I let the second loop with a volume automation so it kick in with the 3rd loop
there is no hickup.

This is all in arrange view btw. And on both internal audio as with my firebox.
So ita not the audio card, I guess. I'm still suspecting something cpu related.

laterz

bradelectro · Post by **bradelectro** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:57 am

I feel ya- I'm having the same issue on my Toshiba R25 dual-core runnning Live 6, Echo Layla card. When triggering a large group of scenes, playback will sometimes stutter when going from one scene to the next. Obviously I have no IAC virtual MIDI ports b/c they're mac only. I have some MIDI Yoke ports but they aren't enabled.

Last night the stuttering was worse than it's ever been. My laptop had been on all day, and I'd done a lot of production work earlier. So maybe it just needed a reboot to clear out the RAM cache and whatnot.

Since last night I've done a much needed disk cleanup and defrag. Please give me your thoughts on other possible solutions: increase latency/number of buffers? Load more clips into RAM? Convert unecessary stereo clips to mono? Any ideas totally appreciated.

mocker · Post by **mocker** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 11:21 am

In a way I feel better knowing PC users get the same issue : it eliminates a possible computer's fault. And puts it back on Live's shoulders, making it more and more urgent to get some answers and consideration from Ableton's people. Where are you ?

djod · Post by **djod** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:05 pm

Hmm, yeah it seams be a general fault. And it looks like dual core related.
Cos our pc freind has one too.

Bradelectro, can u control the throttling on you cpu?
Can you set it to a fixed, c.q. max frequenty.
If so is the problem still there?

Laterz

Krisstoff · Post by **Krisstoff** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 2:31 pm

Bugger!!

bradelectro · Post by **bradelectro** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:38 pm

djod wrote: Bradelectro, can u control the throttling on you cpu?
Can you set it to a fixed, c.q. max frequenty.
If so is the problem still there?

I'm not sure, I'll look into it. I haven't had much time in the studio since my last post, but I did load all my drum scenes into RAM (100s of them) to see what would happen. And I set my latency back to 512ms since I have a hunch it's got nothing to do with this issue.

The results? No stuttering in my limited tests but that's no success story yet. I need to play a full set and really run it hard and pay attention to what happens. I have a gig in 1 month so I gotta get this sorted.

I'm wondering if it's disk-related, b/c my CPU meter never goes more than 30%, and doesn't spike on the stutters. Perhaps launching 10-12 stereo audio scenes (a mix of beat, tone and complex mode) is too much for my drive.

Now's a good time for someone from Abe HQ to speak up please!

mocker · Post by **mocker** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:59 pm

bradelectro wrote:
djod wrote:
Now's a good time for someone from Abe HQ to speak up please!

Yeah, it's been a few threads already and nothing.
BUT I did add 1 giga RAM to my MacBook, so it's 2 now and there IS a change, big time. Hope I don't speak too fast but it seems the "idle syndrom" could have disapeared. (Idle syndrom : opening a set, play with it for a while then do nothing for half an hour or so and when you come back you can't play any scene smoothly without having to quit Live and start again.)

A developer friend of mine told me an intel duocore needs approx 1.5 time the RAM needed on a G4. That could explain why I didn't have the problem on my 1.5 giga PowerBook.

Let's keep searching since the Abes don't even seem to read… Fantastic, not a word so far.

Juddering when i play a clip please help

Juddering when i play a clip please help

Hiccups