Ableton Forum

I'm running just a vocal clip & a synth together on a loop and the cpu is peaking at 12% but every now and then it spikes right up to 75%. When this happens my Laptops power meter at the bottom right starts flashing, saying 'charging'. When i stop the loop it goes back to normal and says 'Ac Power'. Could this be an adapter issue do you think?

Have you got ACPI Battery enabled in your PC hardware?
Sounds like you have if you are getting windows feedback of your battery state.
This generally causes IRQ spikes in the PC. Disable it,
Run Dplatency check software and see if you are getting spikes.