Live 4.0 PowerCore FireWire Audio Dropouts

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naga
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2004 3:30 am

Live 4.0 PowerCore FireWire Audio Dropouts

Post by naga » Sat Jan 08, 2005 9:09 pm

heyall-

This is about how I fixed audio dropouts and choppy performance using Live 4.0 and PowerCore FireWire.

Guts of my Live 4.0 DAW:
G5 Dual 1.8 256 RAM
MOTU 828 mkII
Eventide Eclipse 3.0 using ADAT I/O to the 828 mkII
Emagic AMT 8

I create music at 44.1K using:

Onboard G5:
Absynth
Vokator
DFH2
Controller = Keystation 49e and Axon AX100 (see below)

Outboard:
BBE Sonic Maximizer
Demeter Preamp for my Ken Bebensee Custom Bass
Axon AX100 for MIDI conversion from the Bass and a Godin Steel String
Akai Z8 (analog out only)
HandSonic (both realtime and sequenced from Live)
Studio Projects C1 straight into the 828mkII

To deal with latency, I use the Eclipse for all realtime effects.
I use the PowerCore for all after-the-fact effects. This way, latency is not really an issue.

Problem:
When I first bought PowerCore FireWire, I was having all kinds of drop outs, high processor drain, and very choppy performance, AND distortion (no, I wasn't clipping). The PowerCore shared the FireWire buses on teh G5 with the 828mkII and a GLYPH hard drive.

Solution:
I installed a separate FireWire bus on the G5 solely for the PowerCore. The 828mkII and a GLYPH hard drive remain on the standard buses that come with the G5.

Contrary to what TCElectronic suggested, I kept my buffer size at 512 instead of 1024. BUT, I did swich the ADMA buffer to 2 (one for each processor) as they suggested.

Audio drop outs disappeared, performance became completely smooth.

Hope this helps!

naga

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