Strage Stuttering Lag - have a gig in 3 hours...help?

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Tue Aug 28, 2007 4:50 pm

I don't know if something like this would solve the problem or if any software still uses this kind of routing, but I remember years ago using Photoshop and they gave you multiple "scratch disc" options so that you could use an external drive for a buffer. That would be sweet and solve a lot of this BS. You could buy a relatively small external drive and just leave it blank and use it for nothing but that.

shtreimel · Post by **shtreimel** » Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:38 pm

Anybody else?

mat101 · Post by **mat101** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 9:49 am

+1 here: clip stutter when fired for the first time, also happens when an effect or instrument is used for the first time, or an fx send is opened....

Mac Book CoreDuo2 2.0 Ghz, 1gb RAM, the set is approx. 750Mb in size.

The problem also appears on a PC: HP Pavilion Turion64, 1gbRAM, double internal harddrive...

It is interesting to note that I did not have this problem with Live5.....

Called Ableton support, and they suggested to expand the RAM as the issue could be related to swapping to/from the internal HD. Anyway, I think I'll have to live with this as I see in this thread....

shtreimel · Post by **shtreimel** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 4:29 pm

mat101 wrote: Called Ableton support, and they suggested to expand the RAM as the issue could be related to swapping to/from the internal HD. Anyway, I think I'll have to live with this as I see in this thread....

I'm at 2GB of Ram. My problem occurs with Guitar Rig and Loop Machine, even when only 5% of Ram is being used, and then WHAMO...the CPU will spike, sometimes to 112%, other times to 300%...the 'puter will freeze for a milisecond, and then resume.

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 6:21 pm

hi,

i just posted a possible solution for the clip stuttering issue in this thread:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38955

Posting here to let all "problem participants" receive a notification. would be great to hear if it helped you to fix the problem,

cheers,
Phil

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 11:55 pm

Thanks Phil, will investigate.

TequilaKez · Post by **TequilaKez** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 2:50 am

Well add me to the list, this is really frustrating. If you're doing uptempo stuff and you have the crowd, that infuriating lag can really kill the vibe.

Well first of all I should say that I only use small sets, one per song normally so I'd rarely have a set going for longer than 5 or 6 minutes, though I may have live itself running for over 40 minutes.

It used to happen on an old pc with 1G so I thought screw this I'm going pro and bought 2 new macbook pro 2.33s with 2 Gig of ram each.
Problem still happens at what seems like random intervals, on both machines, though more frequently with a particular song.
This song has 10 tracks, 1 impulse, 5 or 6 internal plugins and no more than a dozen clips, each 4 bars long or less.
It always happens when I launch a particular scene which brings in the kick with the impluse. I trigger that scene, live comes to a halt for maybe just over a second, then comes back. Then I can trigger all scenes without a hiccup from then on.

This has happened with live 5 and 6 and on pc and mac.
I recently bought a TC konnekt 24D but the problem exists when using internal sound aswell.

jacob_ma · Post by **jacob_ma** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 5:44 am

Has anyone tried this....

Going through before Gig Kick off and triggering every single scene in your set?

Now I know that would take a bit of time for a super mega set, but someone mentioned to me once that it will give Ableton a chance to reference all the clips in the current active set and cache a reference to them?

Im currently building a "Super Mega Set" so I am looking for sollutions to this too!!

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 9:46 am

The problem with stuttering clips might have several reasons, but at least in my case the tweak i recommended made everything work like a charm.
No need to "preplay" any clips, the scenes start as expected.
Even my somewhat old laptop (which has a super slow hdd by todays standards) plays back my set without any struggle.
This is on Windows XP, so i can't tell if this is applicable when running Live on mac os.

On a further note, my oberservation when L6 is running in its standard cache mode is that it "fights" for ram against windows.
I monitored what happens to the allocation of physical ram and some serious mismanagment between Live and Windows seems to go on.
At first when loading a sample heavy live set, Live loads all necessary data for precaching into ram, filling almost all available memory.
After running the live set for some time (which varies even on the same machine) heavy fluctuations of memory allocation occure, windows system cache
grows by a multiple, "stealing" back physical ram from Live and at the same time Windows tries to increase the size of available and free physical ram.
This leads to some serious swapping which consequentially kills all fluid playback.

When using the "-UseFileSystemCacheForReading=Off" tweak, live loads its data to ram, no memory allocation and no swapping happens and the size
of Lives ram utilization stays approximately the same during playing through the whole set.

My conclusion is that the new caching scheme which was introduced in L5 is somehow screwed up
since L4 was avaible to run an insane amount of clips in big sets without any problems.
I skipped L5 for live usage and jumped to L6 for live usage recently, so i experienced the stuttering just some weeks ago.

Sorry for that rather lengthy post, but I hope that my findings help to cure and understand what seems to plague so many Live users...

cheers

COSM · Post by **COSM** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 9:58 pm

Thanks for these ideas. I will give them a try and post my findings here shortly.

bradelectro · Post by **bradelectro** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:50 am

Misery loves company- I run 12-15 tracks in one giant file, and Ideal with this issue on a regular basis. To combat this issue I've: upgrading my drive from 5200 to 7200rpm, I now use a cooling dock fan, I've experimented with loading clips to ram (no big difference), I "pre-play" random scenes in my headphones and pray it will work out the glitches/stutters.

Things I'm considering: upgrading from 1GB to 2GM ram. Converting all my stereo clips that are routed to mono inputs on my mixer to mono. Less data to gum up the works right?

Defragging helps- even when windows says you don't need to defrag, I think it helps to defrag on a regular basis. It definitely makes all my samples load a lot faster, which makes me think it's leaner and more efficient= less chance of a stutter. Tomorrow night I'm going to defrag right before I play the 1.5 hour set I'm slotted to play...

Glad to see it's not just me- sorry I don't have any better solutions. Let's keep this thread alive.

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:22 pm

COSM wrote:Paddy thats the first thing I thought of when it started happening. My sets have changed recently resulting in quite a lot more small processes happening while playing... and it just feels like I've run out of room somewhere.... the audio plays fine... i can still tweak and grind... but when its time for a new clip to come in it spikes from 20% cpu up to well over 100!

I am on a PC.

me too, I cannot go thru a live set without glitches when starting a new clip, either midi or audio. i gave up and concluded that is a live bug.

1 gig ram
dual core pC
WinXP

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:29 pm

mat101 wrote:+1 here: clip stutter when fired for the first time, also happens when an effect or instrument is used for the first time, or an fx send is opened....

exact thing happens to me, on 2 different machines. Both Xp, 1 gig ram, and dual-core. And even if it is a very light set with few samples and tracks. It won't happen every the time I use the set. But if I play for 1 hour, it will happen 2 or 3 times.

...again it can happen on anything, like matt said, a midi clip, a wav clip, etc...

..it is a major bummer, as I cannot do anything without glitching.

bartvd · Post by **bartvd** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 5:25 pm

will Ableton give your money back if you cant do your musicthing with this glitching.
you pay a lot of money , so it should work for you.
When i buy a car and it stops driving so now and then,, i will send it back...

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 3:15 pm

bartvd wrote:will Ableton give your money back if you cant do your musicthing with this glitching.
you pay a lot of money , so it should work for you.
When i buy a car and it stops driving so now and then,, i will send it back...

I just made another show and it glitched 4 times in a 90 min show. I get that randomly, when loading and playing one set after another, on firing (for the first time) an audio clip, a midi clip, any midi message can cause it like even just touching a keyboard key on my midi controller or a pot that is asssigned to a send... Live produces this crakling sound that lasts half a second. And I am around 15% cpu.

I am really desperate, as I know it is a Live problem (got 3 pcs and all exhibit this problems since I got live at v4), and Ableton support is the worst I have ever seen as they do not even read the forum and won't even care about my bug reports because they want them formatted in a certain way... and it takes way too much time for me to document bugs as they want... like I tell them that live is crashing when recording a track with a lot of pitch bends and here is their answer:
---------------------
in order to help you we need additional information and the logfiles.
Please send us support requests according to this page:
http://www.ableton.com/pages/support_contact

Thanks,
NAME WITHHELD
ableton ag
-----------------

again they do not even want to take it into account my problem because it is not presented to them in the right way BUT I DO NOT WORK FOR ABLETON AND WON'T SPEND HOURS DOCUMENTING THEIR BUGS, I JUST REPORT THEM AND if they cannot listen to someone who has been using their software daily for the last 2 years then it is going to be their lost, as they have a very buggy software (I talk for the pc version, witch is not tested enough, cause I would bet the management all use macs, the pc version is so poorly crippled I cannot believe they really test it)

...so considering this VERY SERIOUS bug of cracking sound when firing clips, that renders all your efforts in doing a quality show useless...

...and they do not even respond tho this thread or acknowledge the problem

...so as Live user base is mostly made of non-musicians, that have no clues, THEY JUST SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG.

Live 7 sound exciting, I will probably upgrade, but I am done as a live musician as long as this cracking on firing clips is not gone....

...and nobody cares about this forum anyway, it full of cluless people and ableton do not even resond to threads like this. ON the contrary on forums that belong to pro audio apps you have a large base of very experienced people who know the fine points of audio production.

I know about 30 ways to crash live on the pc, and a lot of minor but inexcusable bugs, it would take me 2 weeks full time to document them the way they want it. Maybe they should pay for bug hunting? i KNOW THeir quality control on the pc version is very weak!!!! I HAVE ALL YOUR BUGS IN MY FACE EVERYDAY AND YOU NEVER SEEM TO FIX THEM!

...LIKE WHEN I FOUND THE XFADER WAS LEAKING AUDIO f*uck what expertise does it takes to find that???? I wrote it in the forum -they never read it- after 6 more weeks wrote to support -but how in the world they did not find that elephant sized bug by themselves in the meantime???? because they have NO quality control (at least for the pc version)!!!!! the person responsible is just sweeping problems under the rug and Live infantile user base just do not see bugs.

...and you naysayers that hang in here: I do not even want to know your opinion!!!! YOU ARE MORONS