Audio dropouts when triggering clips - Live5

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 6:40 pm

I just played a show last night, and for the first time ever using Live I was experiencing occasional dropouts. 4 or 5 times I would trigger a clip and all audio would dropout for maybe 1/2 a second. Very noticeable.
All of my clips (maximum of 2 at a a time) were playing off my second internal 7200 drive.
Two things about the setup I used for the performance were different. I was using an Edirol UA-1 for the audio interface, and using ASIO4All as the driver. I had used the exact same setup earlier in the day to record a practice set, but I did not experience any audio dropouts at all.
All clips were decoded mp3's I had previously warped. Had Izotope Ozone on the master, and EQ4's on each channel.

Live has always been ultra-stable for me, so I was shocked to hit those dropouts. I'm not sure if its a bug just with Live, or a combination of Live and the UA-1/ASIO4All combo.

Thanks!

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 1:09 am

Any ideas?
I'm playing out again in a week and I'd like to feel confident about it going in.

Thanks!

futurestore · Post by **futurestore** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 5:03 pm

dude, try live 4.1.2 on the same setup.
I think it's not smart to use live 5 for a live gig.
It's version 5.01.
That's asking for problems if you ask me

i have the same problems. But not on Live 4.

greetz

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 5:52 pm

Hi ethios! Yeah man, it's like not smart to use live5 for a live gig...
oh, wait - who cares? nah, jk.

In my experience the asio4all drivers were never rock-solid with live - I get the occasional crash with even the latest drivers. My trusty fw410 behaves a lot better with the builtin drivers as does my laptops builtin soundboard.

Obviously I can't determine exactly what is up with your system, but I'm willing to bet a tenner that asio4all is the culprit.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 6:37 pm

cool. thanks for the replies!
I was thinking that it probably has something to do with the UA-1/ASIO4All combo. I'll try switching back to my 2496, but one of the outputs is having a problem where I have to put the RCA plug in about halfway for the connection to work.
I use the 2496 at home, but I'd be worried using it live because of the faulty jack, but perhaps the UA-1 is even more risky. The best would be if I could ensure the 2496's jacks would work...
As far as using 4.1.2 vs 5....I'm using the mp3 functionality of 5. Thats what the whole set is about. I could convert everything to .wav, but I'm extremely pressed for time because I have to build my 1-hr set into a 3-hr set by Friday for a residency we just got at a club here, and work 40+ of jobby-job. blah. Although I could batch convert overnight....do you know if the .asd's for mp3's can be applied to .wav's? I'll try it myself....
Thanks!

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:08 pm

iirc you can drag and replace the files in the set, ctrl+a in the warp marker clip view to select all the markers and then offset them by those few "mp3-ms" to make it sync

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:14 pm

btw, ethios, you can get special "cleaner-connectors" that have an abrasive end to clean out the connection. I have one for my jack plugs - it works! A hell of a lot cheaper than replacing kit, that's for sure.

Chris J · Post by **Chris J** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:11 am

I get loads of them with wavs and no 3rd party plugins.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 8:02 pm

I tried the connector-cleaners and still had the problem. I'm not sure whats going on with that card...probably has something to do with being 5 years old?
I ended up buyng a Presonus Firebox, which I had planned on buying anyway.
Since switching to the Firebox I have had no problems with the audio dropouts, so I am guessing they were caused by the UA-1/ASIO4all combo.
Thanks for the help everybody!

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 8:05 pm

i used to get audio drop outs when triggering audio clips that were longer than 3 minutes in length - WHEN i had 512MB like you.

This was in both Live 4.x.x and Live 5.0.1
It was swapping the longer samples to and from the HD alot.

now with 1.25GB, no issues.

can you borrow a stick of ram from someone to try to troubleshoot and see if a lack of Ram is the problem?

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 9:42 pm

Thanks Adam
Actually, I have another 512 on order that should be here next week. I've long been curious as to how much difference that would make, and I finally have the money to throw down. I suspect that will help with a lot of glitchy issues I've always had with Live.
Do you load your longer clips into RAM, or still play from the HD?

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 9:57 pm

ethios4 wrote:Thanks Adam
Actually, I have another 512 on order that should be here next week. I've long been curious as to how much difference that would make, and I finally have the money to throw down. I suspect that will help with a lot of glitchy issues I've always had with Live.
Do you load your longer clips into RAM, or still play from the HD?

only shorter clips get loaded into RAM here. and by shorter i mean 30 seconds and under (tho most clips are usually less than 1 second)

It wasn't that i got more ram to put the larger samples in, it was that having more RAM allowed for (non-audio) data that was swapping to and from the HD alot to just stay in RAM, leaving the HD for streaming long audio clips.

I really wish there was an option to load Impulse and Simpler sounds into Ram. Especially Impulse, as they're so so small anyway. It would hardly be a burden on your ram, but when you have 3 impulses going plus 10 other audio clips, the HD starts to get cranky.

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 10:32 pm

Hey AdamJay, I have been having the same problem with 1GB of ram. Of course some of my sets are huge, but I never had these sort of glitches in 4.etc. Any thoughts?

I will be collaborating on a set which was put together between me and my collaborater who just got 5, so we don't have the option of setting it up in 4. Just not enough time. Good thing it's just a party, but If it glitches again and I have to delete every large file and dosen't help... I might just freak out a little bit.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 10:47 pm

LOFA wrote:Hey AdamJay, I have been having the same problem with 1GB of ram. Of course some of my sets are huge, but I never had these sort of glitches in 4.etc. Any thoughts?

I will be collaborating on a set which was put together between me and my collaborater who just got 5, so we don't have the option of setting it up in 4. Just not enough time. Good thing it's just a party, but If it glitches again and I have to delete every large file and dosen't help... I might just freak out a little bit.

very unusual.
hopefully Live 5.0.2 will fix alot of these small issues some of us are having that we didnt see in v.4
I would just make sure to use as high an output buffer as you can live with during the show.

Chris J · Post by **Chris J** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 9:25 am

I have 2 athlon 3000+ with 1Mb ram. one is a laptop with built in soundcard the other a desktop with a STAudio.
With Live 5, a set done in L4 that used to run very smoothly on both machines, is completely unusable on the laptop due to the drop outs when triggering clips. No VST, praticaly no effects, very low CPU.

One can argue that the asio4all is the culprit on the laptop. Yes but the same set runs with no problem under L4