Ableton Forum

I am forever trying to make the perfect set so i can make beats/record live jams
with some software instruments and live instruments with latency kept under 10ms.
Every time I think I figured it out, i start getting the latency pops again....my
computer is rather old but its just frustrating when it can stop working after doing
close to perfect for so long when nothing I can tell has really changed.

Anyways people seem to swear by track freezing/flattening but in my experience this
makes things exponentially worse. Once I freeze a track, the latency pops go from
occurring every few bars to being pretty much constant and unlistenable. This
continues even after I unfreeze the track until I deselect and reselect my audio
interface (umc1820).

Does this happen to anyone else? Any idea why freezing makes things worse for me?
Also any pointers getting a 2011 Windows 7 dell to run ableton with more stability
would be great.

Thanks

if freezing tracks is causing more audio dropouts, one possibility is that the drive storing the audio is not keeping up. is Live's disk warning indicator lighting up when this glitching is happening?

Well I do have 5400 rpm hard drives but no the D is not lightong up. The only thing different ive been doing lately is playing 6-8 audio clips at the same time. Ive taken all software instruments and effects out so the ram its using is way down but i still get pops just from 6 short audio loops playing. Currently messing with disabling services but i dunno if its helping. Cpu in ableton hovers at 4% and pops when it spikes to like 12%. System cpu hovers extremely close to ableton cpu so 4 to 12%. Hard drive has Main hd where recorded samples are has 65gb left....should I try to free up more?

Thanks

dimday wrote:Well I do have 5400 rpm hard drives but no the D is not lightong up. The only thing different ive been doing lately is playing 6-8 audio clips at the same time. Ive taken all software instruments and effects out so the ram its using is way down but i still get pops just from 6 short audio loops playing. Currently messing with disabling services but i dunno if its helping. Cpu in ableton hovers at 4% and pops when it spikes to like 12%. System cpu hovers extremely close to ableton cpu so 4 to 12%. Hard drive has Main hd where recorded samples are has 65gb left....should I try to free up more?

Thanks

That doesn't make sense. I feel HD speed is your biggest problem. And probably the audio interface

if your disk is not overloaded then it might well be another issue. overall low CPU use does not guarantee glitch-free audio, because even a tiny extra delay in processing can cause a dropout (that's what the DPC Latency checker stuff in the dubspot guide is about).

there are lots of guides out there on Windows 7 optimisation for music production, e.g.:

http://blog.dubspot.com/optimize-your-w ... roduction/

https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ar ... windows-7/

PC Specs?
Live Version?
Number of tracks?
Instruments loaded on tracks?
Effects in the chains?
Information?

Doesn't happen to me.

While a latency mark of 10ms is nice to achieve, have you tried to just increase your buffer/latency up a bit to see if that starts making anything better?

Other option, upgrade to SSD or upgrade your PC in total.

So I moved my User Library, temp files, and cache to my external drive thats a sshd connected through usb 3. It seems better but I still get some pops with a 128 buffer. Also freezing tracks doesnt make things better or worse any more. Do you mean it doesnt make sense that I have such low cpu usage and I still get pops? Do you think a 7200 rpm or SSD would solve the issue?? I run a core i5 2340m 2.39 ghz with 8gb ram. My main drive where ableton is stored is a 5400 rpm sata 2 so only my recordings and samples are being stored on the 4tb sshd (8gb flash and the rest 5400 rpm). The umc1820 interface had been working really well in the past, much better than focusrite and ni komplete interfaces Ive used.

Goin up to 256 pretty much stops the pops. Im running 9.5 with about 20 tracks. Ive been using latencymon to find some problematic programs but now the biggest hogs are usb drivers. I aint got no money fer dem fancy hard drives and processors....

Thanks for your replies

if you are not experiencing disk overloads then faster drives shouldn't make any difference to the glitches.

low CPU use doesn't guarantee glitch-free audio. audio processing needs to be done quickly and reliably. any bad spikes in LatencyMon need to be rectified, as they indicate issues with your system that can cause glitches.

I'd be ruling out things that the problem ISNT before guessing at what the fix will be. I have no idea but as a start I would allow a larger buffer. Even allow 1024 as a test and if things are smooth, it's a lack of your system power. If not, could be more related to how many tracks you have or the number of plugins/effects and their settings (especially if you have a lot of voices enabled)

We have no idea what you are using. Could be using a project with 100 tracks on it for all I know. CPU doesn't always have to be the bottleneck in how well things run, could be outdated motherboard drivers/bios, power saving settings in Windows, slow speed Ram, Slow HDD speed, USB2 connected HDD, poor sound card drivers, IRQ conflicts, Lack of power, heat related issues, power demanding background software, antivirus or windows update processes or plain old acts of god.

What would solve the problems is a PC environment suited to audio stuff:

- Good i7 CPU
- Quality brand RAM with fast bus speed
- High end motherboard with good chipset
- Updated BIOS drivers
- High end power supply with enough overhead
- Efficient cooling
- SSD drives
- Dedicated audio interface
- Minimal programs installed/running in background...

Keep in mind just because a PC can open the software doesn't mean it is suitable to run it. The CPU you have is pretty average and 5400 HDD is not very good for audio. Using a USB drive on USB2 would not be much better either. An SSD I don't believe would make a "huge" difference but again,. I have no idea how many tracks you are running.

lol yeah jester im well aware my computer sucks. I have been making music on it and ableton for six years though. I always buy other hardware cuz frankly ive seen people on the internet with very nice comouters with ssds and i7s and babyfaces still having trouble running ableton. For what its worth i am running 128 again with pretty much no pops and 6 third party software instruments. 9.8 ms baby. I bounced my three drum mic recording into one file, froze some tracks, moved all recorded samples to my external sshd, and stopped some services that were acting up in latencymon. Tough to say what fixed it....could be just luck since it was working fine before. It very much seems like bare audio tracks playing hurts me way more than fancy kontakt plugins
If you had to guess, what would you say would be most important to making sure my machine runs clean? faster processor?

Thanks guys

The audio interface drivers are the most important, then CPU.

You are using a behringer one, they are not exactly known for good drivers.

Steinber (cheap) or RME (expensive) are the brands with better drivers on windows.