Ableton Forum

Hello

So I have three drum racks, with short samples (already pre processed). My drive keeps alerting (top right hand corner) and maxing out , so the samples are glitching. This only happens every once in a while, but makes playing a LIVE set not very friendly.

I'm on a M1 mac, I'm running the latest ableton. I've got plenty of hard drive space and nothing running in the background.

What is the problem here?

How much RAM and how much SSD?

Usually samples stress RAM more than the drive. When you run out of RAM, the OS starts swapping samples in and out of RAM as needed, using the drive as a cache. Of course, this is much slower than accessing the RAM directly. If the drive is choking it might be that you are swapping too much for the system to handle.

Are you using the computer for more than just music (i.e. day to day stuff like mail, web surfing, Zoom, messaging, etc.)?

With any computer, be sure to shut off everything that is not needed. On a Mac, that includes Spotlight which is constantly scanning the drive and any number of “helpers” that launch on start up. Turn off WiFi and Bluetooth unless you need it while performing.

You can do some diagnostic work at home, try performing a set while you have Activity Monitor running and it will show you what’s hogging the CPU, the drive and the memory (including swapping).

What's your buffersize and sample rate?

I use multiple Apple Silicon Macs and have never encountered these issues. However, it’s important to check if there aren’t any third-party services taking CPU or disk activity. In my experience, you don’t need to disable standard services like Spotlight, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi.