Audible clicks in Live 8

[friend_kami]

i dont really see a reason why i should set lives priority to realtime.

why? because ive never had to do that before, and it has worked perfectly.
why dont i want to do that?

because as opposed to many of you guys i only have one computer and that computer is my allround computer. and like i said it has worked perfectly before until upgrade. i have a tendency to multitask a bit, and live has a tendency to almost always be open on my desktop. and like i said again: it has worked flawlessly before.

[paulkeeley]

i completely agree. messing with your cpu's clock speed just to coax an app to work the way it should? no thanks. at least that's what the coolbook solution seems to be doing. then again, it seems to be laptop-focused, where cpu throttling could be happening due to battery management or somesuch. i appreciate the suggestion, but that's definitely not an option for me.

i know that with macOS, there's always the renice option (essentially the same as realtime priority in windoze). but again, this really isn't something that should be required just to get an app that i paid good money for (and have been paying for for a long time through many upgrades) to work properly.

maybe i'm just getting old, but i for one am getting really tired of paying for software that doesn't work the way it should. when i'm feeling creative, the last thing i want to be doing is troubleshooting.

then again, maybe it's just me. damn you kids, get off my lawn!

[heavensdaw]

I've tried Coolbook... Didn't like it.. My mbp's fan was constantly running like 'flat out' 90% of the time!

Still getting cliks'n'pops.... Spoke to support directly.. warping in complex pro doesn't help! Fabfilter plugs seem to don't either!
But maximizing you ram will...

I often notice 'audio aliens'*tm (hmm name of my next album or project I like that!) appear after I have made some automation or some heavy edit.. First playback after can be WTF!! then subsequent play nothing.. But heavy automation can be a culprit.... It seems

@ paulkeely.. don't you mean 'grass'

Hd

[danman323]

I notice the pops and clicks especially when I don't use the fades. It's like if I don't have a little bit of a fade connecting two clips it will make a pop. Very annoying. Never had this problem before of course. Fades are nice, don't get me wrong but I'd like to not always have to use them.

[friend_kami]

I notice the pops and clicks especially when I don't use the fades. It's like if I don't have a little bit of a fade connecting two clips it will make a pop. Very annoying. Never had this problem before of course. Fades are nice, don't get me wrong but I'd like to not always have to use them.

for me the crackling is the typical too-low-buffer-settings crackling although when testing the audio buffer in the settings its all perfectly fine, but i still get it even with low cpu loads. and its only in live. no other audio software gives me this at all, just live.

but yeah, faders bugs for me too but the other way around, as has been documented on these forums alot of times.

[dctucker]

OS X users

Download and install the application "Coolbook" (http://www.coolbook.se). Turn the CPU load slider up until the clicks disappear (likely needs values higher than 5). This will force your CPU into its highest clock-rate and effectively turn off Speedstep.

The CPU Load slider is available in the free trial version, switching the CPU clock to a fixed state is only available for paid users. Unfortunately it doesn't work as promised on current Core2Duo Macs unless you are doing some more trickery (and even then the CPU load slider remains the best working option).

Windows Users

Open Task-Manager, right-click on Live.exe and change Live's "Priority" to "Realtime".

You can also try to defeat Speedstep by running some additional CPU load in the background (like Prime95 which runs at lowest priority).

If you are using Bootcamp on a Mac you also need to perform several tweaks, including turning off KBDMGR.EXE (I made a script for that), updating your WLAN driver and checking your graphic-card driver's behavior: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4320

Non Bootcamp/Mac users might want to have a look at the possible tweaks as well.

Speedstep can be disabled in BIOS for some desktop PC users - look for C1E, EIST, PWM and/or SpeedStep; they all affect processor performance based on load. It could be the culprit, but I doubt it. I'll report back once I've given it a shot.

A user commented that Speedstep is only for laptops and well, that's completely untrue. Many Core2Duo desktop CPUs use SpeedStep to throttle the heat generated by the processor since it's proportional to clock speed, so for example my 2.4 GHz CPU will slow down to 1.6 GHz when not under load, and jump back up to normal when needed.

[Origin]

just to offer more info.

I had this popping and clicking issue for the first time today.

Was using my slow and crappy macbook (which I usually use for teaching only) and a Lexicon Audio Interface (I-ONIX U42S) and I had this issue even though the CPU never went above 50 percent.

The issue was rectified by a reboot.

Also, during this same session, I had audio dropouts and program freezes that would be catastrophic in a live setting.

None of these issues have ever happened while working @ home on my 4 core mac pro and a modded MOTU 828.

Hope this helps!

-origin

[friend_kami]

OS X users

Download and install the application "Coolbook" (http://www.coolbook.se). Turn the CPU load slider up until the clicks disappear (likely needs values higher than 5). This will force your CPU into its highest clock-rate and effectively turn off Speedstep.

The CPU Load slider is available in the free trial version, switching the CPU clock to a fixed state is only available for paid users. Unfortunately it doesn't work as promised on current Core2Duo Macs unless you are doing some more trickery (and even then the CPU load slider remains the best working option).

Windows Users

Open Task-Manager, right-click on Live.exe and change Live's "Priority" to "Realtime".

You can also try to defeat Speedstep by running some additional CPU load in the background (like Prime95 which runs at lowest priority).

If you are using Bootcamp on a Mac you also need to perform several tweaks, including turning off KBDMGR.EXE (I made a script for that), updating your WLAN driver and checking your graphic-card driver's behavior: http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4320

Non Bootcamp/Mac users might want to have a look at the possible tweaks as well.

Speedstep can be disabled in BIOS for some desktop PC users - look for C1E, EIST, PWM and/or SpeedStep; they all affect processor performance based on load. It could be the culprit, but I doubt it. I'll report back once I've given it a shot.

A user commented that Speedstep is only for laptops and well, that's completely untrue. Many Core2Duo desktop CPUs use SpeedStep to throttle the heat generated by the processor since it's proportional to clock speed, so for example my 2.4 GHz CPU will slow down to 1.6 GHz when not under load, and jump back up to normal when needed.

nonetheless, we are paying for a piece software thats supposed to work.
i havent seen a single DAW out there that requires you to change your bios settings and/or do custom hardware profiles just for it work as it is announced, except for live. to think that they charge as much as they do you would think that they would take some of that revenue, hire a proper coder and fix it already.

[WytRaven]

I had these "clicking" problems with the Live 8 demo under 10.5. I just upgraded to 10.6 and am running the 64bit kernel (edited com.apple.Boot.plist to make it permanent) as I have 64bit kexts for all my hardware. Bought Live 8 today and installed it. No clicks at all with an Echo Audiofire 8 and buffer setting of 62 samples at 48KHz. This is on a Mac Pro - Octo 2.66GHz Nehalem - 12GB Ram.

Could be blind luck but it looks like the Snow Leopard has saved Live 8.

[syzygywell]

I had these "clicking" problems with the Live 8 demo under 10.5. I just upgraded to 10.6 and am running the 64bit kernel (edited com.apple.Boot.plist to make it permanent) as I have 64bit kexts for all my hardware. Bought Live 8 today and installed it. No clicks at all with an Echo Audiofire 8 and buffer setting of 62 samples at 48KHz. This is on a Mac Pro - Octo 2.66GHz Nehalem - 12GB Ram.

Could be blind luck but it looks like the Snow Leopard has saved Live 8.

I have an echoaudio 8 as well. I'm on 10.5.6 and live 8 has been rendered useless for me with this problem. I mean I cannot run one audio track at 3% cpu without the problem showing up. even if I change the buffer to over 1000 which is ridiculous on this system. I have 4 gigs of ram and 3.06 dual core. Going back to live 7 didn't help either the problem existed there as well when it hadn't before. Unfortunately much of my software isn't 10.6 compatible yet.

No issues in Logic.

[oscilator]

This doesn't seem right. I'm using a new Mac Pro Quad-Core with more ram and Live 8. When I software monitor an incoming physical synth as audio I'm getting clicks. This is even at a higher buffer rate with only one track. When I record the audio, the pops and clicks are audible. This shouldn't be happening on a workhorse machine like this. Could it be a Firewire or internal hardware issue?

[sdmiddleton]

same here, mainly when launching a row of clips...Its almost like the clipping noise you get when looping a sample thats edges aren't nicely crossfaded together, but this is clearly a different cause its more CPU skipping related.. 4GB of RAM on a 3.06 Ghz Imac, no way this is buffer settings...doesnt matter the size of the project...

[lazlo_funktek]

I've been having that problem too. I have a few ongoing tunes that I was working on in Live 7 and loads of the audio has warping turned off - but is cut up quite a lot just in the arrangement window. I'd spent a long time making sure there were no clicks anywhere, but when I load it up in Live 8, there are clicks all over the place. I thought the fades at the edges of the pieces of audio were supposed to get rid of clicks!

[redglass]

same problem here

greez bastian

[mdifonzo]

Same problem with clicks/pops in Live 8.0.5 - I started noticing them in 8.0.4 too.

Running a Macbook Pro with 10.6.1 installed but I had the same problem in 10.6 and 10.5.8.

I'm getting the exact same problem whether it's with a newly created session or with anything larger.