endless clicking/crackling problems with Live 9?

[nemoy]

Now here are some things I found out lately:

- Clicks occur very often when a looped clip jumps back to the beginnng to be played again.
(fade button won't change that, and the clicks are not in the audiofile)

- when the set is playing, but none of the clips are:
I still get a lot of clicks on the input channels towards the beginning of each bar.
(even with a gate applied, the clicks don't show up here, so it's something post FX happening here)

- already had midi preview off, so that didn't help.

- When an empty midi clip is playing and i try to midi overdub it with some drums for example,
the very first note (1.1.1) is never written into the clip. thats very annoying, when
playing some 4 to the floor kicks, because the first kickdrum won't be recorded.

- When i map a APC poti to 2 different controls in ableton (a knob and a button)
at the exact point, whre the button is triggered, i get clicks & crackles.
even if those controls are on another, muted channel

I'll continue this list, as soon as i have more time....

Setup:
Mbp 2010
8g ram, SSD
RME Fireface 400
akai APC 40
Livid Base
novation Launchcontrol
And some live instruments

[33tetragammon]

I contacted support for a download link for Live 9.1. Tested the same stuff with that version. Crackling appears when my cpu is around 80% (Audio Buffer set to 128 samples).

[Michael Hatsis]

Now here are some things I found out lately:

- Clicks occur very often when a looped clip jumps back to the beginnng to be played again.
(fade button won't change that, and the clicks are not in the audiofile)

This is the complex pro algorithm. It clicks everytime the loop restarts or a one shot starts. Change it to something else and it wont click. I know that's not a good solution but it will get rid of the clicks

[nemoy]

complex pro: yikes!
I had shitloads of empty dummy clips using complex pro algorhythm!
this already helped a lot! thanks for the hint!

But the clicking every two bars even with no clips actually playing is still there.
I Cant figure out what the hell is causing that.

Here's another source for clicks i've discovered yesterday:
Drumracks: When i play drums and the drumrack is selected:
there's a lot of clicks because ableton updates the display
of the simplers/samplers inside the rack and always show the simper/sampler
instance in the cell that is played at the moment. especially
when playing fast alternating notes, ableton goes crazy.
as soon as i select something other than the rack, it's ok.

BUT: when an apc40 is connected, each time a Sample is triggered
the device control dials on the APC automatically map themselves
to the referring simpler/sampler inside the Drumrack.
So, the LED rings around those Dials are flickering with every note I play.
Again, especially when playing fast alternating notes of course.
clicks are back, AND deselecting the drumrack doesn't help this time.


Any Ideas?!

[ze2be]

I notices some of you use RME 400 soundcards. Maybe there is a bug related to the soundcard driver or something?
NI cards have a bug on Windows 7 where the cpus get a +40% spike every 6 second or so when using Traktor. Sometimes it happens in Live if I used Traktor the same day. You can get it down a bit by deactivating all internet stuff: Wifi card, lan port, etc. On a fresh boot, only using Live the spikes are not as extreme. NI support blame Windows but many other brands of soundcards does not have this problem.

On heavy projects I get some crackles when looping the arrangement, but that's usually a hint that I need to start freezing tracks. Its an old intel core 2 duo. Cant say ive noticed anything like Angstrom and the others here. Im now installing a new laptop with quad i7 Haswell. I will report back if I find any issues.

Old laptop:
Win7, Live 9.1.1 64bit
Intel core 2 duo 2.4GZ
3gb ram, ssd drive, usb2 ports
NI Audio 8 mk1 + Audio 2 mk2

New laptop:
Win7, Live 9.1.1 64bit
i7 Haswell, 2.4-3.4 GHZ, quad core
16mb ram, 2 ssds, usb3 ports
NI Audio 8 mk1 + Audio 2 mk2

[themartinmulholland]

FIX: I fixed this issue by switching my samplerate from 44.1 to 48kHz.

[eyeknow]

FIX: I fixed this issue by switching my samplerate from 44.1 to 48kHz.

Really? Hmmmmmmmmmmm, I run at 48k all the time. Maybe that is why I have better luck than some people?

[Dom Murphy]

Sorry, but I think the Live engine needs a massive overhaul. Performance is awful compared with other DAWs. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm stuck with Live owning Suite and Push. Hopefully Live 10 will fix this once and for all along with all the other gunk which is the result of a unoptimised app.

[EMC_Square]

Are there any news on this issue? I have the same problem.

Live 9.1.5
Gigabyte P55B-UD3
i5 [email protected]
8GB Ram
SSD drive
Win 8.1 64bit

The CPU load jumps to 30-50% and causes almost constant crackles. Very annoying. I don't use any audioclips in this project. Just midi and some plug-ins.

Thanks.

[eyeknow]

With "codex" I have run into this a little. However, it's not constant. If I restart live after a reboot, the issue goes away. I've had some problem in the past with the cpu not being efficient but since 8.42/up it's been fine. (I may have already mentioned that)

[fishmonkey]

Sorry, but I think the Live engine needs a massive overhaul. Performance is awful compared with other DAWs. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm stuck with Live owning Suite and Push. Hopefully Live 10 will fix this once and for all along with all the other gunk which is the result of a unoptimised app.

it's apples and oranges. the only other DAW that works similarly to Live is Bitwig, and its CPU use is higher than Live, and it has a brand new audio engine.

you can't expect Live's CPU use to match a traditional linear DAW (Logic, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, Pro Tools, etc.), it never will.

[davethedrummer]

I have to bump this thread
Since Live 9 I have had constant problems, starting from 9.0 and onwards to the present day.
I've even changed my computer setup from an old mac pro 2.8 GHz to a Mac Mini i7 2GHz with 16 GB Ram (much faster bus speed) and it hasn't gone away.
I've done a clean OS install, I'm running Yosemite ( I'm thinking to go back to 10.8 TBH, this update game goes round in circles!)
I changed my audio from and old Digidesign 002r which was great with Live 8 and is good with Logic but with Live 9 Kept getting itself lost, plus the drivers were not updated properly for OSX10.8 + by Avid and probably wont' be. (thanks Avid you're a real chum!) I got myself an RME UC recently which is superb for everything else other than for Live 9.
So that hasn't solved it.

Generally what is happening is Live "sometimes" decides to have nasty CPU issues when I move stuff about on the screen, causing crackles and glitches during playback, while I'm arranging, really irritating, and it's gets clients jumping about too. not good.
I know about the complex pro algorithm issue, that's an old one.

But more annoying is the fact that I cannot change buffer settings as I work without having to reboot, if I try playback is completely messed up, crackly digital mess, it sounds like a word clock/sample rate issue, I've played with those settings over and over and it's no use. I do change buffer setting occasionally while I work as I like to relax the buffer when I'm finishing an arrangement so I don't get creatively held back by watching the CPU load.

Guess what, Live 8, no problem, I can change anything at a moments notice and it just does it. boom!
Tempted to take a flight to Berlin and give them my Mac mini and see if they can use it to debug Live 9....that's an idea?

In short I'm really pissed off.
I've used Live since Live 1 and I really love it, I always want to update and play with the latest new inventions, such as the audio to midi conversion tool, and the Places browser idea is really a must have once you've used it, great ideas but .......

So I guess I downgrade, or use live 8 for ever or something, I do not know right now. But I am not happy I AM LOOKING AT YOU HERE ABLETON SUPPORT STAFF.

Oh yeah strangely, if you do have sample rate issues while changing buffer settings, try running Live 8 at the same time as Live 9...it seems to help, don't ask me why.

Mac Mini i7 2Ghz 16Gb Ram OSX 10.10 Live 9.1.7

[Stromkraft]

I have to bump this thread
Since Live 9 I have had constant problems, starting from 9.0 and onwards to the present day.

What have previous bug reports/support cases led to?

[Angstrom]

I have to bump this thread
Since Live 9 I have had constant problems, starting from 9.0 and onwards to the present day.

What have previous bug reports/support cases led to?

Some of the issues have actually been cleared up. For example there was one bug which involved L9 trying to turn off the signal path of certain (software) instruments when playback was stopped. Unfortunatley moving a note would re-engage and disengage this in rapid succession and that resulted in mighty CPU spikes. Ableton resolved that in one case. I rereported a further case and they fixed that also.There were others too, many of them related and all only in L9.

I reperted a bunch and sent videos, because they have a hard time reproducing the issues. Like I said: some have been squashed, but others live on. I got a bit too busy to be sending videos, so I left it for a while, but I guess I ought to send more because they have slowly been fixing some of these issues. I just wish it worked.

L9 has always been crackly for me, L8 never was, and still isnt. As much as people have tried to say "its you / your system" that has been proven false by the bug reports leading to fixes. Unfortunately many remain.

[H20nly]

i was pondering the notion that this sounds like an issue with the temp directory, such is it being on another drive, too full, on a bad sector or on one with very fragmented files. does a disk repair and/or a defrag help it?? is the temp directory in a directory set to one that Live 9 is indexing??

what throws me off is the moving from computer to computer. how is that done, a back up of a drive with a questionable sector or a clean install?

can you make it stop crackling if you do a Collect All and Save of the set??