Ableton Forum

I'm guessing the answer is that I just need a new laptop but it'd be nice if there was something else

So this has happened with a Mackie Black Onyx and now it's happening with the new RME Babyface I acquired

I'm running a Dell D820

I'm using the
Instrument Rack -> Guitars and plucked -> Lead GUitar -> Guitar-Kontrol Solo(Amped)

It's strange cause the second I drop this instrument in the CPU goes up to like 30 or 40 percent and just sits there
The instrument works pretty well (I can't get it to work reliably any lower than 512 samples)

After about 2 minutes of playing it on the mpk 25 I have hooked up the cpu slowly starts to climb until it finally gets to around 90 and than it starts jumping between 90 and 150 and it just sounds like crap

The only way to fix it is to totally shutdown ableton
unplug the interface
plug it back in
start ableton

And it's just weird cause it does the exact same thing with both AI's that I've used

If I just run Ableton off the integrated sound card in the laptop the cpu meter never peaks and I can play this instrument until the cows come home without a single problem (the Latency kind of blows) but at least it never crashes and burns. The CPU meter still just sits at 50 percent though when I'm not doing anything which is weird. And only when I have this instrument loaded.

I tried this on an HP Pavilion a1640n and it seems to work fine on there cpu stays at about 2 percent I play it goes to 30 percent
I stop and it goes back down.... I can get it to work at 256 samples on the HP without a problem

which is a little annoying cause it's a 1.8 GHZ and the laptop is 1.6 GHZ both dual core but the laptop has 2 more gigs of ram

I realize there's about a billion other factors like all the hardware and who manufactured what and how it's put together but yea.
I think I'm just doomed as far as the laptop is concerned and just need to get a MAC or figure out a windows based laptop that's audio friendly.

From your other thread, it looks like your running a pretty low spec cpu in your laptop. 1.66 Ghz 1st gen core duo @ 667 Mhz fsb. I'd say your possibly just hitting the limit of what that machine is capable of doing.

What version of windows are you using? Have you done anything to optimize it for audio use?

twisted-space wrote:From your other thread, it looks like your running a pretty low spec cpu in your laptop. 1.66 Ghz 1st gen core duo @ 667 Mhz fsb. I'd say your possibly just hitting the limit of what that machine is capable of doing.

What version of windows are you using? Have you done anything to optimize it for audio use?

Yea that's what I figure :-/


XP Professional

No I'm not that aware of what you do to optimize...
I've stopped every single non essential service
I used Process Monitor to find anything running in the background not related to audio and stopped it
I disabled all my network service
all my wifi
the bluetooth thing

Basically anything I possibly could that's not related to audio


I guess that's probably why the HP out performs it ... It's about the same CPU speed but it has a 1066 FSB opposed to my sad 667...

I'm probably just going to go get a new laptop (it's about time for an upgrade)
Any gotcha's or specific things I should know?

It seems with laptops you're just kind of a slave to the manufacturing design... I've seen a lot of people on here with pretty beefy laptops that don't perform that well due to cheap USB controllers or interfering graphics modules...

And the thing is is that

I don't even need anything that beefy or crazy

I'm not running like a ton of VSTs and effects... What I need it for in Live sets right now is fairly minimal

The most advanced setups I'll have running (which might require a ton of power)
are

1) I just want to play that instrument and have it not freak out.
2) One or two audio clips with possibly a single affect on it..
3) Possibly running vocals through ableton and doing effects (But even this I can skip seeing as how I can use the onboard stuff that comes with the babyface)
None of which I'll be doing at the same time

and than I usually have a limiter and an EQ on the master

that's it really.
Some day I'll worry about getting something with some crazy muscle that can run everything under the sun without a hiccup BUT for right now if I could just play that guitar instrument without it crashing I'd be so happy

Since you are after so little from live at the moment, can you try reaper to see how it fares?

Perhaps see if you can pick up a faster cpu for your D820. It looks like you should be able to fit a T7600 C2D @ 2.33 Ghz, which would be a pretty significant improvement.
Check this thread on notebookforums.com , then go hunting on ebay.

RME state that a Core 2 Duo is a minimum requirement for their usb interfaces see here.

Re: optimizing XP for audio work look here

twisted-space wrote:Perhaps see if you can pick up a faster cpu for your D820. It looks like you should be able to fit a T7600 C2D @ 2.33 Ghz, which would be a pretty significant improvement.
Check this thread on notebookforums.com , then go hunting on ebay.

RME state that a Core 2 Duo is a minimum requirement for their usb interfaces see here.

Re: optimizing XP for audio work look here

awesome that's some great information....

Thank you for the links!!!!!

No problem. I'm very tempted to pick up a babyface myself, my mixer has adat i/o so it would be a perfect replacement for my Emu 1616m.

Holy mother of crap that optimizing guide rocks...
I can now run the instrument I was using plus additional samples and the CPU meter in Ableton never gets above 40 %.

PLUS I have the device now running at 256 samples and I don't hear any clicks or pops..
Yay for being able to hit notes on a keyboard and hear the sound instantly.. Makes it SO much easier to play with a beat that way :-p

I don't know what I disabled specifically that made it start kicking ass but something in that huge list did it..
Such a relief... I can now put off buying another laptop until tax season is over so that's huge.

Thanks again for all the great info

Thats fantastic.......
Now opinions on the babyface please.

twisted-space wrote:Thats fantastic.......
Now opinions on the babyface please.

And the story goes sad from here But eventually happy
And I did find out a few fun things

SO all that ended up doing was taking longer for the system to crash. After about 10 minutes of jamming with the computer generated lead guitar it would just go kaput and I'd have to power cycle everything for it to recover


Being on the verge of taking a sledge hammer to the laptop in frustration (literally not figuratively) I decided to just walk away and buy a new laptop.. Which I did today (would have done it last week but I was in Austin over the weekend)

I purchased a Lenovo Edge 14 for about $599 US.
And it now works great.
I can run everything at 96 samples without any glitches..
WELL almost

The instrument runs super. I bang on every key and go nuts and I never hear it click or pop YAY.

I went into some of my sample projects I have and I shed about 6 tears when one of my samples kept popping at the very beginning. I have this sample transposed and whenever I would transpose it more it would pop worse unless I changed the samples to 2048

What I finally figured out though is that it only does this if
-warping is set to complex pro
-and you have a a shortened loop region on the sample

If I changed to complex it transposed like a PRO.
Or if you crop the sample it works fine. I right click cropped the sample and now I can run it with complex pro and transpose the shit out of it at 96 samples without any glitches...
Not sure if that's a limitation of the laptop
a limitation of ableton
a bug with ableton
or just how life goes
but whatever
I never use loop regions I crop everything (usually) I guess I was too lazy that night to right click than left click

All seems good now... Have about 8 hours of practice sessions before the next show so fingers crossed..


As far as the Babyface I'm probably WAY WAY WAY too much of a novice user to give a very good review but I can try I'm only using 2 outs, one in, and the head phone jack..
I can run at 96 samples which is probably reason enough to get it....it has a like 2 ms latency. Being able to press a note on the keyboard and hear it come out the speaker at the same time seems like a rare treat with Audio Interfaces
I like the construction a lot ... I really like how small it is..
I like the large rotating thing for volume control.
I like the lights so you can see levels.
I like that the lights turn red when you start pushing it into the awesome levels so everyone knows you're really giving it to them
I like that you can push the rotating thing down and it dims the outs in an oh shit I think I'm about to break the speakers fashion.
The Total FX program it comes with is really cool. I can tell that I understand about 5 percent of it.
The onboard effects are nice... I haven't used them too much yet because I can loop the ins through ableton just fine and use some presets I've already built

Overall I just like it because it feels like a solid construction from both a software and hardware perspective. I don't see the USB drivers crapping out on me randomly like I see with most Audio Interfaces. Plus I really like how mobile it is my entire setup takes up about 16 inches by 24 inches.. With a laptop (now a smaller one), an mpk25, and the babyface. I really needed everything to be reliable and working for a show this weekend so I've only pushed what I need. I'll learn it much more through and through in March but for now I Just need to know it's not going to all of a sudden emit a loud static noise of death which it hasn't so far.

And that's all I got really for a review :-/
Like I said I'm a pretty hardcore novice user at this point. Hope something in there was useful.
If something freaks out and dies on me at some point I'll come back and note that

And thanks again for all your help with things..

Even though the Dell can't run Ableton it's never ran faster so at least it has that going for it..

oh and on a side note the only downside so far that I can see with the Lenovo Edge that I purchased is that it only has 2 USB Bus controllers
I don't know if that matters too too much but the integrated webcam runs on one and the like security finger scanning thing runs on the other.
It has 3 USB plugs the 2 on the side are on the same controller and the one on the back is on its own..

So for now I've disabled the webcam and the finger thing so that the keyboard and the babyface are each the only thing running on their respective controllers.

That's the only thing about the construction of my laptop that makes me sad. I was hoping to run a webcam possibly during gigs but I'd be a wee bit terrified that might screw up the through put for some reason on the controller and cause something to go out.

actually strike that cropping the samples doesn't help. It was set at 2048 when running around with those tests..

So I guess maybe that's a limitation of the laptop still :-/ or an Ableton issue not sure.

But running complex pro on a sample doesn't transpose in real time very well it seems or that's just an extremly complex process.

I tested it with the internal sound card and it performs identically as the babyface in this scenario. I have to turn it up to about 1500 samples before it doesn't start popping.

And it's only a pop at the very very beginning of the sample the rest of it plays fine but in the very beginning it pops. And it's annoying because it pops with each loop iteration when it starts over.

I was hoping that it would have the knowledge that like it's about to repeat and would forward process but I didn't write ableton so I'm sure there's a logical reason why.....

I guess for now I'll just resample the tranposed iterations or just leave it at 2048 when I'm doing purely sample based stuff