Ableton Forum

Hi all,

I just bought a new Windows 10 laptop, new DAC (Topping E30) and AMP (Atom) for my Bayer DT 990 Pro and studio monitors.

I have set Ableton audio output to ASIO and to both ASIO4ALL, or directly to Topping E30 driver, however, the noise crackles heavily, even below 50% CPU usage in both cases. And when the CPU reaches above 50%, the crackles, and interruptions make it almost unlistenable.

I never had such problems in the past using MME/Direct X route, and I am not sure what the root cause of this problem is.

The things I have tried to fix this issue:

1. Checked USB port (same result either connected directly or through an USB hub)
2. Uninstalled Asio4all to see if it conflicts with the Topping E30 driver, but no differences.
3. Changed buffer size. Outcome: Anything less than 1024 samples produces excessive noises. Set to 2048 samples buffer size directly to my Topping E30 driver, and it seems to work a little better, but not sure if this is the best practice.
4. On Asio4all, checked the option: Force WDM Driver to 16 Bit (seems to help slightly, but not at all consistent).

Does anyone know what might be the cause, and how I can fix this issue to improve my audio quality? I really appreciate your help. Thank you!

This might be a problem caused by a driver or background process. Try downloading latencymon.exe and see what it reports.

Hi,

maybe changing the USB cable might help. Some ago, I had some massive problems with distortions/scratchy noises with an RME Babyface. I have tried a lot of things without success and was quite frustrated, but after changing the cable the problem has gone.

Florian-Schneider wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 15, 2020 6:57 pm

Hi,

maybe changing the USB cable might help. Some ago, I had some massive problems with distortions/scratchy noises with an RME Babyface. I have tried a lot of things without success and was quite frustrated, but after changing the cable the problem has gone.

You're life saver! I have tried all the technical solutions but did not think once about the quality of the new USB cable from Topping. I replaced with a different cable, and it works like a charm!

Seriously can't believe how cheap these USB cables were made... I guess no surprises coming from a Chinese company.

But thanks again!

I have this same issue and running i7-7700HQ, 7th Gen, 2.8 GHz, 16GB Ram, 450 SSD. My track is primarily only had midi and I can't play pack without crackling rendering Ableton unusable. There is a massive amount of complaints about this and the consensus seems to be that this is a bug. Has anyone had any success fixing this without having to invest big $$ into a new computer to run the software and/or is Ableton addressing this issue with a bug fix? I've already gone through all documented steps. My concern is that no laptop will be powerful enough and users will be forced to go with the most powerful desktop available. That's not cheap. I am currently looking to build my own PC but part of me is thinking maybe I should simply change DAW's if this issue is unique to Ableton.

Ableton product team, please help!

ahope wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 23, 2020 10:49 pm

I have this same issue and running i7-7700HQ, 7th Gen, 2.8 GHz, 16GB Ram, 450 SSD. My track is primarily only had midi and I can't play pack without crackling rendering Ableton unusable. There is a massive amount of complaints about this and the consensus seems to be that this is a bug. Has anyone had any success fixing this without having to invest big $$ into a new computer to run the software and/or is Ableton addressing this issue with a bug fix? I've already gone through all documented steps. My concern is that no laptop will be powerful enough and users will be forced to go with the most powerful desktop available. That's not cheap. I am currently looking to build my own PC but part of me is thinking maybe I should simply change DAW's if this issue is unique to Ableton.

Ableton product team, please help!

General consensus is, as is proven in this exact thread, that these kinds of issues are more likely to be caused by everything else outside of the Ableton Live environment, not a bug that Ableton need to fix so I wouldn't be waiting at that station for a train.

Laptops are a complete mixed bag in regards to performance and suitability. Specs alone are not enough as there can be bottlenecks or poor design that hinders the performance. Manu users that want more "trouble free" performance choose Apple because there is more control and stability over hardware performance but you can achieve good results from any Windows based machine, you just need to do a little more research and work.

As a suggestion, Post the model of your laptop and if you have done any actual performance tweaks to it yet. There are a load of things a Windows laptop needs to have tweaked to make it suitable so here are the standard copy/paste questions:

- Are you using a decent external USB audio interface and which model (or are you using the terrible in-built audio which will probably be the main cause of your issue)?
- What audio driver are you using in Live?
- What are the buffer/samperate set to?
- Have you opened the windows Power Manager and set your CPU to Max Performance and switched OFF all the sleep options for USB and drives? This will cause your battery life to take a nose dive, but you cannot run power hungry software AND have long battery life...
- Have you dived into the BIOS/UEFI options and made sure you have disabled any power saving features, CPU throttling options?
- Have you ensured that when running Live you have closed as many other running applications you have open in your taskbar?

Even though you say you are "only using midi" this means you have instruments loaded and depending on the instrument, the number of notes played, the number of voices the instrument uses, the effects in use etc, this can all add up and eat up your limited CPU cycles so you need to detail more of how name tracks you have, what is loaded on them etc. With your specs you won't be running dozens of tracks with Serum for instance without issue.

ahope wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 23, 2020 10:49 pm

My concern is that no laptop will be powerful enough and users will be forced to go with the most powerful desktop available. That's not cheap.

holy shit, I had no idea.

ahope wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 23, 2020 10:49 pm

My concern is that no laptop will be powerful enough and users will be forced to go with the most powerful desktop available.

The problems you describe can apply to any and all DAWs running on a Windows PC. The basic problem is that DAWs require both as close to real-time operation as possible and multi-tasking, and modern operating systems also need to multi-task. Real time operation and multi-tasking are incompatible and contradictory requirements.

It is possible to buy an extremely powerful PC and it still perform badly when running a DAW unless it has been tuned for best performance. There is a reason specialist PCs for DAWs builders exist. Powerful enough laptops to run as a DAW without audio glitching certainly do exist - mine is a mere 2.2GHz quad i7 that’s six years old, though it does have a glowing Apple on the back of it. Modern PC laptops should have more brute power than that.

Apple’s advantage is that Apple know exactly what is inside a Mac so can ode drivers and the OS for known hardware rather than the MS approach (at which they’re actually pretty good all things considered) of coding an OS to run on potentially millions of different hardware combinations. Apple’s customer base also includes a higher proportion of “creatives” (horrible term) so if Apple do manage to break something they generally fix it reasonably quickly via OS updates and OS updates aren’t “pushed” whether you want them or not. Macs also have Core Audio/MIDI as part of the OS which makes things a lot easier and smoother. The downside is you pay more for the hardware, which is high quality but generally has less sheer power than a similar priced PC.

Laptop PCs can be particularly troublesome because you’ve little or no control or knowledge over exactly what parts go inside them. They also tend to be loaded with all kinds of software and associated background processes courtesy of their manufacturer and many don’t even allow full access to the BIOS settings. Sometimes it’s worth asking DAW companies which Windows laptops they use for product development and testing. DAW laptop users can also often help with pre-purchase advice (then you have to hope that the laptop they bought six months ago is identical to the laptop currently on offer with the same product name and code).

jestermgee’s post explains some things which might help. Poor DAW/low latency audio performance can also be caused by badly written/behaving background processes such as wi-fi drivers which hog Window’s attention for so long that the ASIO audio buffer overflows - then you get the dropouts. “So long” meaning maybe 20 milliseconds if your buffer is that or less. Not even the most frame-rate obsessed gamers are likely to notice that sort of thing but DAWs do. Latencymon.exe can locate and point out the cause of some such problems. Sometimes something as simple as disabling the wi-fi driver (and maybe other non-essential third-party drivers) in process manager while the DAW is running can make a big improvement.