Audio glitches - please help!

[stockylocky]

Hey Ive posted before but not got a response possibly due to inadequate information !
So here goes... Live 7 seemed to work fine but now ive upgraded ive run into problems.....
Anytime the cpu meter reads around 30% or upwards i get audible glitching. It was suggested that it could be my audio preferences which I have tried to amend to no avail.
My set up is this
Dell Latitude D830 laptop, Core 2 duo T7500 2.20 Ghz, 4gb ram running windows vista business
Ableton Live 8.01
M-audo fast track pro, latest appropriate drivers.
I also had installed an Echo indigo DJ but have removed it to avoid any confusion so the only audio card now aside from built in is M-audio.
I have reinstalled the drivers and still this problem persists.
In lives audio preferences I have selected ASIO and m-audio asio. IN/OUT sample rate is 44100. Default SR/pitch conversion is normal.
Latency - buffer is set to 256 samples and wont adjust input and output latency both 8.21 ms overall 16.4 I have not adjusted the driver error compensation.
If I remember correctly I used to be able to click on the hardware set up tab and adjust the latency but now all the parameters are greyed out.
When I try the test signal at 80% cpu there is not glitching, though when I try a song on or around 30 % (sometimes much lower) it glitches pretty consistently.
If anyone can help I would really, really appreciate it as this is completely melting my head. I just wanna make some damn tunes with the hard earned cash Ive spent

[elxicano]

And everyone else is trying to make glitchy music! ...sorry couldn't resist. Does sound frustrating.

Really, with all the specs you mentioned, you should not have that problem. You should definitely have heard a glitch in the audio if testing at 80%, so it seems weird that it would happen when hitting just 30%.

What have you done to eliminate possibilities?

Have you increased your buffer size to 512, or larger? Although you should be good at 256, it's still worth adjusting to eliminate.

Are you working with ONLY audio tracks/clips/loops? If not, I would start there and begin introducing VST FX one by one, to see if maybe it's a specific one that is causing the glitches.

Also, definitely make sure you've contacted Abes support... From what I've been readings, there's a lot of issues w/Vista and Live 8. They might be familiar with your issue already.

[leedsquietman]

The Echo Indigo (although doesn't have preamps, which could be a problem) will play back at lower latency than the Fast Track Pro due to it's cardbus structure being better performing than USB. My Echo Indigo IO could get me 256 samples at <13ms *total* actually and I could run it at 64 samples easily on my older system on Reason 2.5 for up to 10 tracks and 128 samples for many more. Although with Live, the lowest buffer size I could ever use with any card is 128 samples.

Run the DPC latency checker (did it run OK or did you get yellow and red bars for glitching) and try and work out what is causing your issues. Vista always has higher inherent latency than win XP, but it should be manageable with tweaking. Did you optimize your audio? Did you turn off wifi (notorious for glitching and latency), are your graphic card drivers up to date (graphic cards are another frequent culprit of bad audio performance).

Are your audio card drivers the most up to date ? (go to the M-Audio and Echo websites and update if necessary). It's totally OK to have both cards set up on the same system, that causes no issues, you just select which driver you want and use the appropriate card.

[stockylocky]

Thanks for the replies guys.... ok so im using the most up to date drivers for my audio card, I have checked out DPC (thanks for that!)and it has recognised that there is a problem with a driver (green and yellow bars)however I havent yet found out which one, but I will be addressing this ASAP. My main gripe though is that I cant seem to adjust any of my audio settings in live, as I mentioned they are just greyed out???? Has this ever happened to anyone?? Do I remember that on first install live does a full check with the soundcard, is there anyway to get it to do this again?

[sersun]

I was having similar glitches until I adjusted the Driver Error Compensation. I recommend following the nice guide at http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... &view=next . Hope that helps.

[pulse]

as red here somewhere on the forum, I played with the acceleration hardware and it solved my prob
but I am with XP and Dell Inspiron 8600 Laptop.

I had few glitches and yesterday I install that DPC soft and when I saw regular bump in yellow I decide to solve that ...
So I :
- tweak XP
- update the bios (from v4 to v14 !)
- update the video driver from dell

now when I put acceleration to the max, the system is worse than before ... when I slide one step on the left, everything runs fine ...
I dont have this bumps of yellow anymore ... sometimes I get little bumps but it stays in green

So try to desactivate 3d and all acceleration hardware (if still available on XP)

keep us informed

good luck !

[H20nly]

I had an issue in the past with pops in audio that I was able to smooth out temporarily by bringing up the Windows display properties (right clk desktop) > settings tab > Advanced button > Troubleshoot tab... and uncheck 'Enable write combining'.

I also played around with 'hardware acceleration'. If the settings get too low your volume and CPU meters won't "bounce" right. I don't remember what I left that at, but I remember that the write combining check was what removed my misery. The poblem was a while back and I've reloaded and updated the OS and gear so I can't go back and look, sorry.