Ableton Forum

I wonder if this is a peculiarity of my system or whether this is a known problem on many Ableton Live setups. First, a bit of info about my system - I'm running Ableton Live 8 Suite (Live 8.1.1) on a notebook computer (Intel Core-2 Q9000 Quad-Core CPU, and an M-Audio ProFire 2626 firewire interface).

1. I highlight a short section on a track in Arrangement View, and set the punch-in and punch-out buttons at the top of the window (not the loop button).
2. I then set the playback marker to a couple of bars before the punch-in section, and click the Arrangement View record button as well as the track record button.
3. Live punches in to record mode and punches out at the end of the highlighted section. However, at the punch-out point, there is an audio glitch, like a very short crackling sound, and there is a slight pause (a few milliseconds, perhaps) before Live continues play past the punched-in section.
4. At the exact moment of the glitch, the 'D' drive light at the top-right of the window flashes briefly, and the CPU Load Meter goes from its nominal value in this Set (around 20%) up to about 50%, for a fraction of a second, then back down immediately.

Can anyone shed light on what the problem might be, and how I could correct this? I was running the Live Set from a partition on the internal drive, but I copied it to an external (e-SATA) drive and ran it from there, and I get the exact same symptoms. I also switched the temp recording folder to the external drive. Same symptoms.

Thanks!
Doug

I always set the punch in/out points a little before and a little after where I actually want to start and end. easier to trim afterwards than miss recording a tail or slight before the start bar preformance.

For the glitch, check your buffer settings.

UK Russ, thanks for the tip. As it turns out, the glitch I'm experiencing seemingly doesn't have anything to do with my audio buffer settings - it does the same thing whether I have the buffer set to 64 samples, 256 samples, or 512. What it does seem to be affected by is the other tracks in the Live Set and what's loaded into them.

I created a new Live set with only one audio track, and was able to punch in and out with no glitches. So I went back to the Live Set in which the problem exists. In that Set, I have a Latin Percussion clip on one track. But I found that if I flatten the track to audio, I don't get the glitch, at any buffer setting - I can punch in and out of record mode smoothly - no glitches. Even at 64 samples (3.1 ms latency). So it depends on what clips are loaded into tracks, apparently.

I wonder if anyone else gets the same symptoms when certain clips are active on tracks? If this is unique to my setup, that's one thing, but if this is a commonplace problem, then perhaps Ableton could look at this and attempt a fix.

--Doug

Cool. What version of live are you running though? It may be the fault disappears with the latest 8.1.3 anyway?