Strage Stuttering Lag - have a gig in 3 hours...help?

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 4:20 am

bradelectro wrote:a single .als for each track.

that is how I do it but still get stutters

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 4:38 am

Amaury wrote: - Are you using the same sound card on each of the 3 machines?

same brand on all 3: e-mu

Amaury wrote: - Whether it's the case or not, have you tried the build in soundcard?

no

Amaury wrote: - Have you tried to make sure it's not a buffer size issue?

yes

Amaury wrote: - You say that it happens with your 12 Live sets, equally, and that they are "light". What does that mean?

They run at 15%cpu and take very little ram. (light)

I can happen in anyone of them, always when I start a clip with a midi remote button

Amaury wrote: Do they use third party plugins? If so, which ones?

Do they use a lot of sampling instruments? If so, which ones, and how is the memory load reading, in Windows Task Manager?

yea of course and but it is going to take long to enumerate them all!!!

but it can happen in any set, if I build one with only built-in live devices can it solve the problem?

So I see you are serious and CAN help me debug... I will detail an email to support, hope support will be serious this time, cause it will take me a long time to enumerate 12 sets with dozens of plugins.... -thanks

I tried Live 7 demo and it is still present, but maybe to a lesser degree. I was going to upgade but won't until ableton support help me fix the problem.

if i can count on a clean performance by the software I will be a lot better -I would hate to have to use something else.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 4:39 am

bradelectro wrote: OK that's cheating but hey I'm s-s-sick of these damn s-s-stutters!

hows that cheating? I've known people that would just use a sync'ed delay (at 4 bars or 8 bars or so) at the end of every song that would repeat long enough to load another song, if you do that right it seems like the music is still playing. it can sound bad if you do it wrong but if you work on it you can make it a very smooth transition.

Airwave · Post by **Airwave** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 6:57 am

okeeeeey, guys, I can share my experience about this, although I don't know exactly what the cause is...

I've been touring for 2 years with a liveset running an extensive bunch of long audio files, and several operator and sampler tracks, without mentioning the beat repeat, the flangers, the autopans, and so on... on a macbook.

This is quite simple to me, as I experienced the exact same glitching that you're talking about.

There are some rules that I tend to keep in mind.

1° Minimum 256 samples latency, but most preferably 384 or even 512 if you can live with it

2° NO SELFPOWERED FIREWIRE DRIVES, NO FIREWIRE AUDIOCARDS. They tend to take all of the power available. Experienced lots of glitches last year when performing in B'ham and Montreal because of that lacie external hd.

3° Defragment your hd's => speedtools on the mac is the right choice

4° DO NOT install boot camp and partition your internal hard drive.

5° put the set and save it self contained on the internal hd (for example in "documents")

By applying those rules, I was able to leave spotlight, dashboard, exposé, all on, even airport and bluetooth. No glitch at all!

For god's sake avoid using selfpowered external soundcards on firewire ports, especially m-audio. The chipset is well a cheapset and is extremely unstable.

L.

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 3:20 pm

Airwave wrote: There are some rules that I tend to keep in mind.

that is a great contribution, but it applies to macs. Now please ableton tell us what you learned about this bug on the PC. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT YOU GIVE US THE INFO. see, a user can tell us about this bug, how come ableton support is silent about it and gives us NO info!!!!!!

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 3:32 pm

Hi Waverider,

did you try this tweak which helped me to get rid of the stuttering:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 136#558136

so far i did not get single response to my findings. ymmv but it is worth trying

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:35 pm

Bunky Freaks wrote:hi,

i just posted a possible solution for the clip stuttering issue in this thread:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38955

Is that it?????
---------------------------------------------------------------
For Live 6 on Windows I got rid of the problem by using an alternative caching scheme.
It can be activated using the command line "-UseFileSystemCacheForReading=Off" in options.txt.
--------------------------------------------------------------

that is all? where is that file (options.txt) ? I can't find it.

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:52 pm

the instruction for creating the "options.txt" file can be found here:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 656#400656

in short: you have to create a simple text file called "options.txt" with the line

-UseFileSystemCacheForReading=Off

in it and put it in the Live preference folder, like:

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Ableton\Live [version]\Preferences\Options.txt

hope that helps!

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 10:35 pm

Bunky Freaks wrote:
hope that helps!

thanks for the tip, but it did not work

Bunky Freaks · Post by **Bunky Freaks** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:57 am

too bad it didnt help you. At least another possible solution canceled out.
Hope you find a way to get things running smoothly because i know how incredibly annoying this issue is, it really made ME freak out.
In fact it was one of the most maddening issues i ever had with Live (until i stumbled over the aforementioned "hack").

Did you try playing back your set on a completely different setup(computer, recording card,..)?

WaveRider · Post by **WaveRider** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:48 pm

Bunky Freaks wrote: Hope you find a way to get things running smoothly because i know how incredibly annoying this issue is, it really made ME freak out.

yeah, it is making me freak out, especially that I committed myself to making music on a computer... got 2 new hi end computers last spring, still 18 months of payments to go... can't buy anything else... I would really go towards hardware now, I made a mistake by choosing the computer. There is no other software apart Live I would use anyway....

I wrote to support, let's see what happens...

..nothing would make me more happy to get live not to glitch anymore...

S4racen · Post by **S4racen** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:42 pm

Anything happening?

Mine only now occur (after all other tweaks) when launching a clip after changing the tempo of the track, then i have to get live to "re-learn" the clip making it stutter each time...

Cheers
D

BASSbüro · Post by **BASSbüro** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:55 am

my tipp is to work with an high-speed-usb-stick like the one from corsair. put your set on the usb-stick and u should be fine.

streamin' audio from the internal hd is always a sensitiv thing.

TequilaKez · Post by **TequilaKez** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:34 am

Happenned again 2 me twice in a 1 hour set at a festival last weekend.
Once on the mac with the Konnekt and once on the other one which is using the internal soundcard (optical spdif). Man it makes you look bad.

I second the 'burn in' button idea. I really think that new updates/betas should unclude a burn in button and a little progress bar. You press it and live mutes output and maxes itself out internally, triggering every clip for a millisecond or so, so the OS can sort it's memory allocation out. When the progress bar is finished, you know it's safe to hit play.

It could also happen automatiically when you load a set, but you can hit play before the meter is finished if you're in a hurry and are feeling lucky

It's not a very graceful solution but we live performers need a workaround to get us by till something else is worked out.

erickdan · Post by **erickdan** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 9:52 pm

I had a lot of problems with Live 6 where the audio would dropout every minute or two. It didn't matter if I was recording or not, or how many plug-ins I was using, or the number of tracks. The glitches were random.

I finally fixed it by disabling the power management features in the BIOS, increasing Live's process priority, and disabling my wireless adapter while using Live.

Hopefully this will help others as well.