Ableton Forum

Hey all, I wonder if anyone has had the same issue as me before?

I was performing yesterday, outdoors, hot and dusty.
I was using my mac at the campsite preparing and all was working fine.

got the lappy to the stage, opened it up, and the trackpad would not respond to my fingers correctly. It felt laggy, jumpy, It took 100% focus to click on the correct spot. I was using an APC 20 and this was the only way I could continue. I still had to use the mouse from time to time though, and at one stage the mouse hit the 'back to arrangement' button without me even clicking! naturally, I had no arrangement and was using just the session view.. so the sound stopped. I lost the vibe, had to rebuild from there. FARK!

The rest of my set was really challenging, as I had lost confidence in my gear.. 25 mins later the generator ran out of fuel.. if it wasn't for the party being so dam cool and the crowd being awesome and with no bad vibes towards me at all this would have been a gig from hell..
Instead I still had a ball.

Cannot let this happen again though! has anyone got any experience with anything like this? There was a person there with the exact same computer who said he had had the exact same issue with his trackpad earlier that day...

We think that it may have been cause by the vibrations from the bass. If i lifted the lappy in my left hand and used the track pad with my right, the problem was mostly fixed. So it was NOT dust related.

cheers all.

I dunno if this could be caused by bass. Were the vibrations any worse than those at past gigs you've experienced where the trackpad worked fine?

I've never had any trackpad issues at gigs with Macs in 10 years. YMMV of course. Be good to know if this was a prove-able issue/something to beware of.

Could it also possibly have been the power supply? If you were at the campsite on batteries, or hooked into a different generator, possibly the generator at the stage had issues?

Direct sunlight? Heat? ... just spitballing ... sounds like it could possibly be a mac hardware issue rather than specifically Ableton-related?

Yes it was a mac issue, nothing to do with ableton, apart from the context.

I have played many gigs with the same setup, plenty of bass, and no issues. I was plugged in, with a decent amount of battery life in the bank.

the main fact that made me surmise it was the bass was that I could pick my laptop up, and the mouse would respond almost perfectly. As soon as it was directly on the table, I lost control.

Perhaps a specific frequency that these subs were tuned to punch hardest at? and that freq was vibrating the whole sensitive trackpad?

If you put your whole palm over the track pad and try to move the mouse like that, it gives a similar response to what I was getting, just in my case it was even worse.

a Brown Note for macs?

HA! yes.. yes it seems so!

maybe that could be due to the electric setup, interferences...

My solutions would be
1) try unplugging the adapter from your laptop if problem reappears
2) always have a usb mouse in your bag