Ableton Forum

I'm currently using windows 7 and having some issues with Live so i'm thinking of getting a recovery disc and putting vista back on . I believe it's on SP3 now right? Is audio performance much improved/worse/the same/broken? How is cpu load? Anyone using live having any problems at all? Am i crazy for even considering it? Should i go mac??? Thanks!

works pretty good on my machine (on vista business sp2), not having any major problems at all, and given I only have a 2ghz processor I'm actually rather surprised at that =]

it fine, popping and cracking a lil bit but i think its because of AK1's drivers...

It works well for me.

This page has a tool for checking how your system as it is currently configured may be prone to dropouts called by excessive "DPCs" (deferred procedure calls" and has good background info on the phenomenon:

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

Ed J wrote:works pretty good on my machine (on vista business sp2), not having any major problems at all, and given I only have a 2ghz processor I'm actually rather surprised at that =]

Thanks. So your not getting random spikes? Looks like it's just me then.

Zygi wrote:it fine, popping and cracking a lil bit but i think its because of AK1's drivers...

I get that when cpu spikes occur which makes using live at all a pain as they occur quite often, usually when i play a note on a softsynth (my playings not that bad ). I created an os partition on my hd so i can just install over that but it's not going to be fun having to reinstall and authorise everything. Cheers.

I only seem to get spikes when I have facebook open and it does stuff (oddly)

mikemc wrote:It works well for me.

This page has a tool for checking how your system as it is currently configured may be prone to dropouts called by excessive "DPCs" (deferred procedure calls" and has good background info on the phenomenon:

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

Thanks i forgot about that. After running it for some time this is the message i get:

Some device drivers on this machine behave bad and will probably cause drop-outs in real-time audio and/or video streams. To isolate the misbehaving driver use Device Manager and disable/re-enable various devices, one at a time. Try network and W-LAN adapters, modems, internal sound devices, USB host controllers, etc.

Tried all of those and disabling speed step etc in th bios but it's had absolutely no effect. The dell inspirons are well known for poor latency. I discovered my bios was 3 revisions out of date so i updated that but hasn't made any difference. I'll have to put it down to windows 7. I'll just get the vista rd and if it doesn't work out i'll throw it in with the lappy when i get a new one. Cheers.

The inherent system latency is not really vendor specific (IMHO (i.e. Dell) but device driver specific - wifi, dvd/cd, graphics card drivers etc - Because Vista is still a relatively new o/s, drivers are less mature and less optimized than most of their win XP equivalents and no matter what machine you are on, XP handles system latency better than even the best configured Vista systems - for example the DPC latency checker never goes above 400 on the worst spike on XP and averages about 170 on Win XP SP3, so great for low latency audio processing, on Vista, if I turn off wifi and DVD driver, close all non essential background services and tasks, I can get it to run at an average of about 650, but with the occasional spikes up to 1600 which make the bars turn yellow. I cannot get those spikes to disappear no matter which drivers I disable Leave the wifi on or have any kind of program running in the background, and watch the DPC latency numbers increase loads.

So long as it's only a couple of occasional spikes in a row, it won't affect audio, but if it spikes over 2000 then you will get dropouts and if it's running 1500 as an average, you will get glitching and probably need to increase latency on your audio card. My Dell computer performs no worse latency wise on the DPC checker than Lenovo, HP and Toshiba systems I've seen belonging to my friends when running Vista and using the DPC latency checker.

My opinion is therefore that it is not Dell specific, it's an issue with Vista and/or various device drivers.

Also - you should NEVER have web browsers, anti-virus, anti-spyware or anything similar running when you use pro audio applications, they will inevitably cause glitches and load down the CPU. Go into task manager and turn off any backgorund programs, services or processes not required. Also if you own a Dell, turn off the Dell dock (it can sometimes run as much as 7% of the CPU load) and it's usually a good idea to disable wifi.

I have got some driver problems, but I guess from the soundcard. I got to run too much high buffer sizes. I use a presonus FP10. On XP, with L7, I can have 19ms latency, but on vista (with everything disabled), I run around 60ms orelse I got clicks. Check on forums with your soundcard.

leedsquietman wrote:The inherent system latency is not really vendor specific (IMHO (i.e. Dell) but device driver specific - wifi, dvd/cd, graphics card drivers etc - Because Vista is still a relatively new o/s, drivers are less mature and less optimized than most of their win XP equivalents and no matter what machine you are on, XP handles system latency better than even the best configured Vista systems - for example the DPC latency checker never goes above 400 on the worst spike on XP and averages about 170 on Win XP SP3, so great for low latency audio processing, on Vista, if I turn off wifi and DVD driver, close all non essential background services and tasks, I can get it to run at an average of about 650, but with the occasional spikes up to 1600 which make the bars turn yellow. I cannot get those spikes to disappear no matter which drivers I disable Leave the wifi on or have any kind of program running in the background, and watch the DPC latency numbers increase loads.

So long as it's only a couple of occasional spikes in a row, it won't affect audio, but if it spikes over 2000 then you will get dropouts and if it's running 1500 as an average, you will get glitching and probably need to increase latency on your audio card. My Dell computer performs no worse latency wise on the DPC checker than Lenovo, HP and Toshiba systems I've seen belonging to my friends when running Vista and using the DPC latency checker.

My opinion is therefore that it is not Dell specific, it's an issue with Vista and/or various device drivers.

Also - you should NEVER have web browsers, anti-virus, anti-spyware or anything similar running when you use pro audio applications, they will inevitably cause glitches and load down the CPU. Go into task manager and turn off any backgorund programs, services or processes not required. Also if you own a Dell, turn off the Dell dock (it can sometimes run as much as 7% of the CPU load) and it's usually a good idea to disable wifi.

Ok thanks for that. I read some quite negative things about the dell laptop but what you say about the OS makes sense. Has vista been optimized with the latest service pack? My latency stays mostly green with the occasional yellow spike but occasionally there is a red spike. I have disable most things but i do browse the web when i'm having a break so i leave it connected.

I don't have dell dock or anything like that installed. My machine is pretty stripped down with all non essential services disabled etc.

I am testing the beta again and it seems to be much better so far (PSP Nitro was maxing out the cpu). I have increased the latency on my soundcard and played around with the usb buffer size. A couple of plugins that were causings spikes before are behaving nicely too.

It was a question of whether i go back to vista or XP if my problems couldn't be resolved. XP probably the better option for audio but i'd have to use older drivers and i have no idea how well Live 8 would work and what other problems i might encounter. Apart from Live everything else i've tested has been fine so it would be preferable to stick with Win 7 for now.

Cheers.

chapelier fou wrote:I have got some driver problems, but I guess from the soundcard. I got to run too much high buffer sizes. I use a presonus FP10. On XP, with L7, I can have 19ms latency, but on vista (with everything disabled), I run around 60ms orelse I got clicks. Check on forums with your soundcard.

Jeez that's pretty bad! Even with SP3?! Vista came preinstalled on my laptop so i already have some experience with it. Latency was never that high!

If they haven't optimised it by now i'm sticking with 7. It's only the random cpu spikes that was making me consider going back but Live seems to be much more stable now plus the abes are addressing windows 7 bugs.

I don't know about the SP3 thing, I'll have to check. This computer has never been connected to the web, so never updated. That's maybe the solution. Tomorrow I am travelling for a gig, but I will sure take a look next week.

A quick look at Dell's web site shows that almost all of the XP drivers for the Inspiron 1525 were last updated in 2008. They're only a year or more old. Why not try XP anyway? You may be pleasantly surprised.

Just purchase a cheap hard drive for your laptop, swap it out, and load XP. If you don't see a performance boost, swap in your original drive, purchase a USB enclosure for the new drive, and use it for backups.

Personally, I haven't thrown out a HD in years. I just put them in enclosures, and use them for permanent file storage. Sure beats burning CDs & DVDs.

chapelier fou wrote:I don't know about the SP3 thing, I'll have to check. This computer has never been connected to the web, so never updated. That's maybe the solution. Tomorrow I am travelling for a gig, but I will sure take a look next week.

You can download the service packs and install them manually. It's SP2 for vista, not 3. Getting mixed up with XP. I was kinda surprised that my bios was so out of date but updating it does seem to be giving me a more stable able-ton.