Still getting Audio dropouts in Live 4.1

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:55 pm

Running Live 4.1 and am still getting those annoying periodic audio drop outs.

Usually hppens when first starting a set, I run scene 1 which will launch fine, then when I move to scene 2 live will stutter, the cpu meter will surge for a moment and the audio will drop out for a second. CPU usage is normaly not high at this point as there are usually only 2 to 3 tracks running.

Also happens the first time I crank up a send while running a live set.

Both of these occur fairly consistently.

Usually, after one or both of these things happen once it will not happen again, unless I restart the set.

vince watson · Post by **vince watson** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 8:03 pm

as per all the previous posts...too many of them on here to link to...there not hard to find..

its your m-audio product....

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:55 pm

Thanks for the response Vince and forgive me for not searching before posting, I was at work.

I was under the impression that these issues had been adressed with the latest update and when I didn't see any mention after a quick scan of the page I figured I would post. Again, forgive!

I should be clear that I am using my internal soundcard, so no it is definitely not the Maudio product. If anything I think it may happen less when using the Quattro, but I am not sure as I do not use it very often.

vince watson · Post by **vince watson** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 8:01 pm

mm..

10.3.6 and 3.7 are much more stable than 3.4 for audio...

pm me if you need the link for the updates

v

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 9:30 pm

BAHH!

Please excuse me for decieving you again Vince! I am running 10.3.7, although I have not updated my signature I have kpt my OS up to date....

I am changing my signature now......

vince watson · Post by **vince watson** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 10:37 pm

are you running your audio from Ram? or the hard drive??

have you got max ram??

mozo · Post by **mozo** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:05 am

Excuse me if I intefere, maybe it would sound stupid, but how do you choose if you want to run audio from ram or hd in winXP?

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:51 am

Just read the manual how to play samples from RAM.

Page 73
Ciao ITALIA

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:04 pm

Vince,

Here is a description of exactly how the problem is happening:

8 tracks - 2 impulse, 2 simpler, 1 operator, 3 audio

3 sends, A. simple delay B. Grain Delay C. Apple Reverb

Compressor 2 on track 7 audio
Apple peak limiter on master out

Start live, open the set, fire scene 1
Scene 1 triggers track 4 - simpler, this track starts with effects wet - send a 100% send b about 75%, send c about 40%

No problem

Fire scene 2
Scene 2 repeat track 4 simpler as listed above and also fires tracks 7 and 8 audio.
Processor spikes up to 250% for about a second, audio drops out, then returns to normal.

Stop live. repeat process, does not happen again.

Until I trigger scnene 4, then it happens again. Scene four contains impulse tracks 1 and 2 and audio 7 and 8.

After this it does not recur.

Restart live. Repeat process, does not occur.

It does seem to recur if I have been doing something else for a while, say working in photoshop or illustrator or playing a game.

Also reference this thread in the general forum if you'd like:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 6645#96645

I see no reason to load samples in ram as there are only 2 audio tracks running?

I wonder if it has something to do with the graphics work I do? I do a lot of copying and pasting of large images from one document or program to another. Often times when I get sick of working I will take a break and briefly work on some music.

I don't know... but I will continue to monitor the problem.
_________________

vince watson · Post by **vince watson** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:23 pm

mmm..personally mate, i wouldnt use anything other than audio on my music computer....but this is obviously not an option if you only have one

ok...well, im not sure your graphics progs are causing too much problems, other than if you try and run live after using photoshop etc without restarting your computer and clearing your cache's, then your computer will be using up that memory until you reboot, effectively clearing your mac ready for audio use.

I would definately reinstall live 4 then update to 4.1....

have you thought about fragmenting your drive and keeping your audio on a seperate setup....

or better still, you could try creating a seperate user and use osx's User Switching to flip between your audio set and your graphics setup...i know a guy who has a g5 dual 2.5 and while the live software doesnt cater for dual, yet

..he has done exactly this and it works really well...

but you dont have the power of that machine, so it may work well for you, but it may not....

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:04 pm

OK smutek with all the talk of audio drop outs, there's no mention of where your cpu is in the song before this happens.
I run a dual Gig G4, and pretty much the cpu meter in Live is shit, to get decent sound out of Live I realistically have to stay in the 80% or less range for things not to misbehave.
There was a thread where this was explained as a problem with the way Live's cpu displayed processes.....

Partitioning your hard drive will do absolutely nothing to help with audio drop outs, but throwing audio into RAM, and rendering the instruments to audio will. Restarting your computer before using Live is also a good idea, this clears RAM, and cache like Vince said!

You might seriously want to consider getting more RAM, I have 1 Gig in my powerbook, and things work pretty well, unless I'm pushing over 80% cpu. 512 is a minimum amount for the OS alone IMO.

Personally I almost never use the Live instruments. Simpler takes as much cpu on my system as Kontact, and Operator is a PIG compared to FM7. Ableton made a great DAW, but I think they need to leave the VSTi's to people that know how to optimize code!
I do use Impulse sometimes, and it seems to far better than the other two.

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:21 pm

Machinesworking wrote:OK smutek with all the talk of audio drop outs, there's no mention of where your cpu is in the song before this happens.

Partitioning your hard drive will do absolutely nothing to help with audio drop outs, but throwing audio into RAM, and rendering the instruments to audio will. Restarting your computer before using Live is also a good idea, this clears RAM, and cache like Vince said!

Ahh yes, sorry. For this particular set cpu is at 14% idle, 20% for scene 1, spikes then drops to 24% for scene 2.

The highest overall cpu usage for this set is 38% running 2 impulse 1 simpler, and 3 audio tracks.

Clearing ram and cache by restarting I think is definitely a good idea. I have a strong suspicion that this is the problem. I rarely restart my machine.

I would love to max out the ram, this computer can hold 2 gigs, but I just can't afford it right now.

Eventually I will have a dedicated audio machine, maybe as soon as the end of this year, but again - I can't afford it so I need to work with what I have. I am a graphic designer by trade and that is how I earn my bread and butter, so until I can afford a dedicated audio box the graphics suites must peacefully coexist with live!

Thanks so much for the responses and I will continue to monitor this situation an will post any other abnormalities and discoveries. I have a gig Friday and will be using Live so we will see how it goes.

vince watson · Post by **vince watson** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 5:06 pm

http://macramdirect.com

ive been using this ram for years from these guys and never had any issues.....they are the same as the top price ones like crucial and kingston and samsung and apple ship with, only under a different name.

for instance, it cost me £180 for 2gb kit for my powerbook.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Sun Feb 13, 2005 5:32 pm

smutek wrote:I would love to max out the ram, this computer can hold 2 gigs, but I just can't afford it right now.

Eventually I will have a dedicated audio machine, maybe as soon as the end of this year, but again - I can't afford it so I need to work with what I have. I am a graphic designer by trade and that is how I earn my bread and butter, so until I can afford a dedicated audio box the graphics suites must peacefully coexist with live!

You don't need to have a dedicated audio machine in OSX, this is a definite advantage that OSX has over XP now, OS9 was actually worse in some ways than Windows 95 even, in this respect, but you could get around it with extension sets. Because of the way OSX handles tasks, there is no conflict with having tons of graphics apps on your powerbook.

My personal opinion is that your RAM is the problem here, it could be a few other issues as well.
A few more questions....

Do you have any MIDI drivers installed?

How many audio cards have you had for this machine?

[These two questions relate to drivers that might be badly written, and incompatible with each other, in my case MOTU, Emagic, and M-Audio all had installed midi drivers in my Extension and midi drivers folders, and I was having audio glitches in Logic 6 because of it.]

How big is your hard drive, and what percentage of it is full?
You should never have more than 75% capacity on any hard drive for top performance, this is not OS specific, and a lot of people are unaware of this fact. It's not something that the hard drive manufacturers recomend, simply because it's possible to use all of your hard drive, it just causes problems....

External hard drives are pretty cheap now, I have my old powerbook HD in a fanless firewire case for back up!

Have you tried clearing the VST and AU folders, ( this is really easy, just turn off the AU and VST settings in Live ), and running the same test? Internet rumor, but possibly true,( though unlikely ), is that a bad AU or VST in your set up can cause the App itself to be unstable. Simple enough to check to be worth it.

You know all about repairing permissions and have a copy of Disk Warrior maybe? I have both Disk Warrior and Tech Tool Pro, though at this point OSX pretty much takes care of itself, it's not a bad idea to play it safe I think,

BTW defragging in general is a waste of time on OSX, and should pretty much only be considered if you have in fact, used up more than 75% of your HD. There are plenty of people out there that disagree with me on this, but Apple themselves have stated as much.

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:05 pm

Tanks for the tips. You are probably correct that this may be a ram issue. Like I said, if I clear my cahe or restart my machine I have no problem.

I do have usb midi drivers installed for my oxy 8, my 2x2, my quattro, and my uc-16.

My HD is 60 gigs, before this weekend I only had 6 gigs free but I backed a bunch of stuff up to cd and now have 20 gigs free. This didn't help. I didn't realize defragging was even possible in OSX, how do you go about this? I wonder if it would be beneficial considering 90% of my hd was full as of a couple of days ago? The remaining data must be scattered all over the place.

For maintenance I use cocktail, to run crons, clear cache's etc.