Ableton Forum

I'm running into disk overload errors with the current Live Set I'm performing with my APC40. What I've done is condensed a single one of my songs into about 6 audio tracks, which I map into session view. What has happened is that the clips I've made for each channel, all reference the same large audio file (the entire "DrumsBus" file, for instance). The start and stop markers are the only things that change. I'm planning on putting some clips into RAM mode, and they're all 16 bit audio files, but I was wondering if cropping these clips would be a good idea too.

So my main question:

Is it more memory intensive to move around a single large audio file when launching clips (the start markers change) or is it better to crop these portions, and therefore launch smaller audio files. My fundamental knowledge of how clips are loaded/buffered isn't very good.

The problem is that all your clips refer to the same big audio file. In this case ableton makes a wav file of all these little clips in the cache, and plays it out of the cache. When your cache is full you get artefacts, lags and all these other nasty overload problems. Cropping the clips (right click > crop sample) will help, because ableton stores the cropped clips in "your project folder > samples > cropped" and plays these files instead of processing them out of your cache.

you should also make your cache bigger:
options > preferences/settings > file folder > in the middle there is the cache category
there is also a button [clear cache] or so (i don't know how its labeled in english, but you should recognize it when you see it). i always clear my cache before i start a performance.

hope this is comprehensive to you, when it gets too technical my english is not so good. Please check the manual, in the german edition it is chapter 8.2.10