What is the solution to my "Red D" Disk overload p

[PJD]

Hi everyone, I've been using the search function for a while and I felt it was time to post in hopes some of you Live guru's can help me out.

I'm getting the Red D and all sorts of dropouts BUT the Live CPU meter is at 10-29%, nothing intensive at all.
System specs are as follows:

Gateway tablet notebook
Windows Xp service Pack 2
Core 2 Duo 2.16 2g RAM
Ableton 6.05
internal 7200 RPM
externals tried a5400 and 7200

We've tried it from the internal drive and the above mentioned externals and using RAM mode for some clips, nothing helps.

I'm also wondering if this could be because we loaded in 12 files at 48 and the other files are 44.1.

There are no warps on and what makes this Gremlin of a problem really aggravating is that it worked fine for an entire evening. I was even tweaking plug-ins in real time and experienced no glitching. Only late at the end of the session did things start to act up and the next night; poof-red D and intermittent playback.

Anybody have any thoughts?
Your help will be greatly appreciated.

[longjohns]

The CPU load and the disk activity are mostly separate issues. CPU has more to do with effects processing, instruments, etc. Disk has more to do with track count.

Streaming the 48k files will be somewhat more taxing than the 44.1, because they are larger

I don't know if mixing sample rates could be causing problems

There are other factors which could have big effects - USB activity, computer power settings, soundcard settings, other programs running, etc.

More details about your gear?

[PJD]

Thanks for the reply Longjohns,

I think I'm at @60 tracks on this, give or take ten (I'm not in front of it right now; different computer).
We're using a Line 6 TonePort UX2 (USB) with the ASIO For All driver and it's been pretty solid until this .
Other than the TonePort there are a few other USB devices, an M-Audio controller and an external hard drive.
There are no other programs running in the background and we changed the system settings a long time ago to optimize performance.

Changed the buffer settings and tried both the internal soundcard and the Toneport and still have the problem.

What da ya think?
Need more details?

Thanks again!

[longjohns]

It can potentially make a big difference where all the devices are plugged into your computer. If one of your controllers or the laptop's track pad are sharing USB bandwidth with the hard drive, for example.

60 tracks is quite a lot

[roby]

i think the number of tracks is the reason you're getting that D flashing.

[PJD]

i think the number of tracks is the reason you're getting that D flashing.

I would disagree because I've had several other sessions with that many tracks that ran fine, but then again I'm at a loss to figure anything else out!
I'll keep digging and post any findings incase anything else has this problem.

[Clearscreen]

maybe try defragmenting the drive?

[PJD]

maybe try defragmenting the drive?

Did that, to the internal and the two externals that we tried running the session off of.

[Lateral]

Try to turn off page file (virtual memory: system properties/advanced/virtual memory). 2 GB of RAM should be enough; with page file turned on you'll have swaping on your HDD, which is surely the slowest part of your PC.
Else, don't plug more than one device onto 1 USB hub (because of power consumption).

[blank]

your best luck is prolly to run data on your 7200 external, that way live processes will not share the drive with the data.

Did then glicths, cuts and dropouts appears in the same place in the track or they appear randomly ?

[Tarekith]

For whatever reason Live seems to struggle a bit more with higher track counts compared to other DAWs. Usually I'd attribute it to the warping of all audio, but you say you have that turned off. Honestly 60+ track in Live is probably pretty close to the max I'd expect to get out of it before these issues.