Processor spiking and audio drops

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thephjc
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Processor spiking and audio drops

Post by thephjc » Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:16 am

I have been using live for some time on my desktop in the studio with only a few minor problems. I have recently purchased a laptop for live performances and have had nothing but problems. I have tried outboard sound through the firewire and also a usb card and neither helped even when I hoped that the outboard asio might remedy the situation. I of course have hit up the bios and turned off any power/performance limiting utilities, as well as for my video and anything else that I thought could give me an unwanted spike.
I have tried tweaking my latency on both the outboard and onboard sound with only a little luck with the onboard when I put it at about a 250mill latency and even that is not that stable. . I have never had so many problems so it must be something I am missing on the laptop or maybe I should go to an older version such as three because it never gave me any problems running a simmilar setup. I feel I am in a tuff place when a usb controller can also spike my processor if my latency is not set high enough. I have also tried running my samples from RAM incase it was a hardrive issue. I was running 4.01 recently on my lappy am now running 4.1 but I am a still having the same issues. Any suggestions.
Thanks, J.

Win XP - M 725 Processor 1.60GHz/400MHz - 512 ram

dexterbland
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Post by dexterbland » Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:30 am

I had a similar problem - it was related to the Centrino CPU switching frequencies and for some reason wasn't solved by disabling power saving in the usual ways.

you could try downloading a freeware utility called SpeedswitchXP : http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/

To use it go to Options - CPU policy and for your Max Performance profile set allow demotion to No No No. Not sure if that's the correct way to do it - I couldn't make head or tail of the docs but it did the job.

thephjc
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Post by thephjc » Sat Feb 19, 2005 10:02 am

Right on well == if it worked for you im going to give it a shot before I have to start cancelling shows.. :)

thephjc
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Post by thephjc » Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:25 am

Didnt work unfortionately
:( I am really frustrated...

dexterbland
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Post by dexterbland » Sun Feb 20, 2005 11:57 am

So just to check - if you look at the history diagram in speedswitch it shows a flat line and its running at top speed?

Have you turned off all the unneccessary XP services - indexing service, live update, auto restore etc? Disabled wireless, bluetooth, anti-virus, checked for spyware?

The onboard cards on laptops are generally crap - only really useful for playing things back when latency doesn't matter. The firewire card should work fine but there's a couple of laptop models that are rumoured to have problems related to the IRQ of the firewire port. I say rumoured because mine (Dell 9200) was supposedly one of them. But I got it working - it was all the stuff mentioned above causing the problems.

thephjc
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Post by thephjc » Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:46 pm

dexterbland wrote:So just to check - if you look at the history diagram in speedswitch it shows a flat line and its running at top speed?

Have you turned off all the unneccessary XP services - indexing service, live update, auto restore etc? Disabled wireless, bluetooth, anti-virus, checked for spyware?

The onboard cards on laptops are generally crap - only really useful for playing things back when latency doesn't matter. The firewire card should work fine but there's a couple of laptop models that are rumoured to have problems related to the IRQ of the firewire port. I say rumoured because mine (Dell 9200) was supposedly one of them. But I got it working - it was all the stuff mentioned above causing the problems.
Ok because I am on a 9200 as well so that gives me hope to know yours is in working order.

thephjc
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Post by thephjc » Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:39 am

Seems to be paging alot as well. THe swapping is not so good for the slow harddrive. Anyone else have any ideas?

thephjc
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Post by thephjc » Mon Feb 21, 2005 11:11 pm

Alright so after much troubleshooting me and my tech have figured out it's Live Pagging after the buffer runs out. So it's definately the software pagging and then the hardrive can't handle it so it pauses do to it. Do you think a possible solution would be to run live on a seperate hardrive? I am curious what speed of hardrives people are running if they are having audio drop out as well. But if you are having problems with drop outs I think you should check your paging. It could still be a driver issue live is expoiting. Does anyone have an older version of a live Demo for me to compare my data to?

thephjc
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Post by thephjc » Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:08 pm

I have installed 3.0.04 and I have no more problems. I got tired of waiting for the techs to email me any info so I gave it a shot. I recomend to anyone else having the same problems to install 3 since it seems to be alot better written.

tylast
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Post by tylast » Thu Feb 24, 2005 10:20 am

I'd be nice if the Abletons could include something similar to SpeedswitchXP within Live. Perhaps there are some WXP calls they could include that set processor performance to max when Live is on? The new P4 processors (600 series, but not the EE versions) have StepSpeed builtin, so anyone who buys a new computer will be affected by this.

beateater
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Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2004 9:16 am

Legend

Post by beateater » Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:24 am

Mate, you're a bloody legend! I've been needing that speedswitch for a year. I never new it existed. Thanx a heap.

AdamJay
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Post by AdamJay » Sat Mar 05, 2005 2:45 am

Speedswitch is more of a system utility.
it would be BAD if ableton bloated their software adding something like that.

beateater
Posts: 43
Joined: Sat Sep 11, 2004 9:16 am

Not really the problem

Post by beateater » Tue Mar 08, 2005 12:15 pm

Well, I installed it and I'm sure it's not hurting any, but I fixed all my CPU spike/audio dropout problems by re-installing 4.0!
The set is rockin' just like it used to! Now it's time to get back to making music for a while.
I think I'll wait for 4.2 before I try upgrading again, this issue has cost me so much time and energy.
Cheers

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