Ableton Forum

I'm getting this awful crackling noise when I use Ableton Live with my 002R and the Digi Audio Engine. I know this is primarily a forum for Live and I've decided to use Live to work on some new material and I'm a bit unclear on what is causing it so I will post here and on the Live forum as well in order to fix things as it's now critical mass and I'm now in the middle of a batch of songs.....too late to turn back. It's not a latency issue some of these songs have 5 tracks with little effects.

I've updated to PT 10.3.2 hoping it would fix this but no...still the awful cracking noise. Not getting the noise in Pro Tools of course....just live to add to my frustration. I've tried toggling back and forth in Lives' Prefs between the interface choices......no noise if I use the Mac line outs....so there when I switch back to the Digi unit. Samples setting in Live is on an even number, Checked cables and all that my gear hasn't been moved. What should I try next it's driving me nuts!

I'm really loving Live a lot but this noise issue is putting a big hurt on.

Gothboy wrote:I'm getting this awful crackling noise when I use Ableton Live with my 002R and the Digi Audio Engine. I know this is primarily a forum for Live and I've decided to use Live to work on some new material and I'm a bit unclear on what is causing it so I will post here and on the Live forum as well in order to fix things as it's now critical mass and I'm now in the middle of a batch of songs.....too late to turn back. It's not a latency issue some of these songs have 5 tracks with little effects.

I've updated to PT 10.3.2 hoping it would fix this but no...still the awful cracking noise. Not getting the noise in Pro Tools of course....just live to add to my frustration. I've tried toggling back and forth in Lives' Prefs between the interface choices......no noise if I use the Mac line outs....so there when I switch back to the Digi unit. Samples setting in Live is on an even number, Checked cables and all that my gear hasn't been moved. What should I try next it's driving me nuts!

I'm really loving Live a lot but this noise issue is putting a big hurt on.

Remove all instances of Vinyl Distortion

Oh thanks really helpful.

Seriously though I went into Prefs>CPU and tried different buffer settings and no matter what I chose I still got noise eventually settling on AS Audio Buffer which is now giving me the least amount of crackling though a small amount of it is still there. What IS this "As Audio Buffer"? I've never used it before.

I went back and read posts about crackling and noise and it somehow it's the result of some form of latency in Live I just don't know what would cause it because these projects are using about 20% cpu. I've got multicore processing on.

What I REALLY don't get is why this crackling noise has even appeared because when I started working with Live about 6 months ago it sounded glorious and I NEVER had to worry about latency. Finally I was freed up from those delay comp issues in Pro Tools....even on 32 samples everything went smooth. Anything helpful I would most appreciate.

Make sure your wireless networking is turned off. At least that's what works for me.

crumhorn wrote:Make sure your wireless networking is turned off. At least that's what works for me.

Turned off Airport but it bears nothing on the matter. Still getting crackling and pops. Getting spinning ball now when I try to make changes in cpu area of Prefs.

I've had similar problems lately, and find either...

.my Emu soundcard is set to get sync from my Aphex pre over co-ax when the pre-amp isn't turned on, remedy is switch sync back to internal

.turn the unused inputs off, or turn all inputs off and back on again.

neither explains why I get crackles, but it works (for me) which is the main thing.

Do I have to request another Auth. from Ableton to download and do a reinstall on the same machine?

I have the same problem.
When i set the latency (buffer) below 256, crackling and glitching appears even if CPU usage ist underneath 30%.
If i click into the arrange window while playing, the crackling is even worse. It´s a nightmare...
I dont´t believe another authorization will do, i also don´t have an Airport on my MacPro.
I checked a session with 10 Audio and 4 MIDI Tracks (ok, pretty "intense" samplers on them), the CPU usage was low,
and i would assume a MacPro to handle such a little thing with ease... still a lot of crackling.

My setup BTW is: MacPro (bought Feb. 2010), Snow Leopard 6.2, Live 8... (just bought), ProTools 8.0.3, Digi 003 with
DigiCore Driver 8.0.3, which should be the latest running wiht PT8 as well.
There are no problems with Pro Tools.

Well in another Forum someone says that one should check the sample rate and bit depth, also in AMS (audio midi setup).
Well the DigiCore Interface seems to be fine, changes the sample rate according to changes in Live, but the AMS is a bit strange.
It changes the sample rate as well, but it´s always set to 32 Bit and i cannot make any changes for that in AMS.
I don´t even know how to set 32Bit in Live, i know just the setting of 16 or 24 Bit for recording wav or aiff...
So why is AMS set to 32 Bit? Is this the problem?

I don´t really need to waste time with installations, a new setting up the whole system or something, if it won´t help.
It would be great if anyone has a solution, any idea probably...

Thanks a lot!
Best,
M.

PS. It´s Live 8.2.1.

Gothboy wrote:I'm getting this awful crackling noise when I use Ableton Live with my 002R and the Digi Audio Engine. I know this is primarily a forum for Live and I've decided to use Live to work on some new material and I'm a bit unclear on what is causing it so I will post here and on the Live forum as well in order to fix things as it's now critical mass and I'm now in the middle of a batch of songs.....too late to turn back. It's not a latency issue some of these songs have 5 tracks with little effects.

I've updated to PT 10.3.2 hoping it would fix this but no...still the awful cracking noise. Not getting the noise in Pro Tools of course....just live to add to my frustration. I've tried toggling back and forth in Lives' Prefs between the interface choices......no noise if I use the Mac line outs....so there when I switch back to the Digi unit. Samples setting in Live is on an even number, Checked cables and all that my gear hasn't been moved. What should I try next it's driving me nuts!

I'm really loving Live a lot but this noise issue is putting a big hurt on.

That's calle Glitch - record it and get it out there.

James Holden will play it.

Not to hijack your post, but to contribute my experiences, which, I believe are very close to yours and very many other Live users, so it seems. Apologies in front: this is not an optimistic post.

Over the last 2-3 years I have used Live 8:
- on contemporary Macbook pro (4GB RAM) and imac (8GB) computers.
- with Echo Audiofire8, Audio Kontrol 1, Line6 Pod XT interfaces. Individually or as aggregate devices in all possible combinations.
- to record up to 4 tracks of mono signals simultaneously. Mostly it was just 1 mono signal.

In Live, I have tried many setups:
- No plugins or with plugins (either Live's or AU/VST)
- Buffers small and big. (from 64 to 2048, even power cycling after changes, just to be sure)
- Various bit-rates and sampling frequencies (again, both with and without power cycling after changes)
- Dumped preferences file so many times.
- External and internal hard disks.
- Kept an excel file (yes, I know) of the settings I have tried with observations and results.

In many of these scenarios, CPU simulator/test shows no signs of any issues whatsoever.

What I do not have running on my computers:
- system hacks, pirated software, games, programs that hang in the background, browsers, mail or chat clients, any connection hubs, etc.

I still have to try exorcism/voodoo, although I do not expect any improvement there.

Psychologically, I would consider my brain as "usable" (managed to get some graduate degrees even), I believe I understand the issues with digital processing and it's idiosyncrasies. I have read the manual carefully, read many forum discussions, and I would say that I have tried a fair deal of possible ways to setup this thing:

I still get the crackling in my recordings! This is extremely frustrating and a true creativity killer.

Crackling occurs in a completely random fashion. One day it is fine, the other, it is not. One take is fine, eight others are not. One track is fine, others are not. Sometimes is just annoying to ruin a vocal recording, sometimes it is horribly grotesque. It is absurd. I am recording a mono channel, direct HW monitoring, no effects on the track, 2048 samples buffer and no luck.

Ableton, should I give up? I think I will.

And... His Highness, The Crackle:

is this issue related to Live's unique realtime audio stream buffering?

Hi pencilrocket,
Maybe Gothboy here knows more. I do not know so much to answer your question directly, unfortunately.

Buffers or time-stamping, something else? A combination of those?
As far as I can see, it might be stream buffering issue (guesswork). Although the crackles are very much random (the number of samples involved, their distribution and frequency), the waveform on the top of the crackle is interesting.
It looks like a piece of puzzle got misplaced, right? It is not fitting in the adjacent waveform but it does look like it could be a piece of the recorded waveform. From somewhere.

What could be happening here?

michal.k wrote:PS. It´s Live 8.2.1.

You just bought Live and are on a version over two years old

Just downloaded and activated Live 9. I have a macbook with the highest of everything, intel and i'm running 10.5.4... as with previous posters in this thread, i too am using a digi002 rack. i just launched ableton 9 for the first time tonight and decided to have a listen to the Live Set which comes with it... guess what...? LOADS literally LOADS of crackles...!!! I soloed the Epiano, the Chords, the Bass and the Shaker and every single track is crackling away... is this a digidesign/avid compatibility issue...?

BTW just opened my own track from an older version of Live and it plays perfectly... it's not particularly effect or cpu intensive however, so maybe it's beginners luck :-)