Anyone else seeing unusual disk activity in Live Version 5?

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 1:45 pm

Been playing with version 5 a lot lately, and keep running into disk activity issues where I never had them before with versions 3 or 4. My live set for instance, has about 30 scenes of 6-8 clips each. In the past I was able to launch whole scenes with no issues, everything played back instantly and never dropped out. In version 5 though, launching the exact same scenes sometimes causes the Disk meter to light and the audio sounds all stretched for a couple seconds. This seems unrelated to which scene it is, or how many clips are in that scene. Sometimes it happens with 8 clips starting at once, sometimes it happens with only 2 clips starting at once.

This happens sometimes to me when I'm DJing as well, and then I'm only launching 1 clip! Here's some more specifics:

- This happen on my desktop (1.8gHz AMD system) and my laptop (1,6gHz centrino).
- Intel speedstep has been disabled on the laptop, and all XP tweaks related to DAW's have been performed on both machines.
- On both the desktop and laptop, the live set is in it's own 3Gb partition on the outer (fastest) portion of the drive. Both partitions were defragged with OO Software's Defrag tool. Desktop is a 7200RPM drive, laptop is a 5400RPM drive.
- Multiple latencies for my Indigo DJ tested, has no effect on this happening.

To reiterate, if I reinstall Live 4, and play the EXACT same set, this does not happen. It is only specific to Live 5 for some reason. Anyone else seeing this?

dannyk · Post by **dannyk** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:45 pm

Yes. I have the Red D for disc flashing quite often in Live 5. Don't think i ever saw it in Live 4 - I had audio dropouts here and there but never the red D.

How much memory do you have? I've seen someone on here say that Live 5 uses more RAM than 4. As i only have 256MB, I reckon my hard drive is being used lots for virtual memory quite a lot. Add on playing tracks to that too, and it equals Big Red D.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:52 pm

I had lots of red Ds when using follow actions, for some strange reason.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:14 pm

I have 512MB RAM, but I'm only ever using 320MB of it at most.

QUAZAR · Post by **QUAZAR** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 8:39 pm

hi guys
we have prepared a liveset in live4, which we use on stage now.
last week we decided to move to 5, while preparing for the upcoming gigs of the weekend.
but it's impossible.
with the same set (which our laptop plays happily in L4 with about 20% CPU) in L5 we had sudden, unpredictable CPU-peaks (till 60-70%), glitches, stopping of the computer and a whole range of other strange issues, most of which you mention too:
- flashing of the red D (even with only 1 clip playing)
- follow actions acting as if in randommode (which they weren't)
- clips looping only half of the loop, and repeating after a silence
- disappearing clips
- not playing of clips, even though they seem to be ok and the volumemeter indicates they're playing
- ghost sounds that should'nt be there (a delay while all the sends are at 0)
- sync function unusable (wandering from 130-60 bpm and even stopping)

we'll put a complete list on another thread

but anyway, we think that all of what you guys mention, must be BUGS, very strange bugs maybe, and a lot of them too, but still bugs.

we're sorry about this, there are a lot of great things about L5, but for now we definitely cannot use it.
and especially not on stage with a restless festivalcrowd wondering why the music has stopped (we had to load L4 before we could continue)

so we're back to L4, with which we haven't had many problems

cheers

Quazar

set up: Acer laptop, 3.06 Gig, 7200 RPM, 1 Gig memory, RME Fireface, Mackie 16 channel desk, 2 Behringer BRC 2000, Roland TB 303, Acces Virus

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 8:46 pm

QUAZAR wrote:- flashing of the red D (even with only 1 clip playing)
- follow actions acting as if in randommode (which they weren't)
- clips looping only half of the loop, and repeating after a silence
- disappearing clips
- not playing of clips, even though they seem to be ok and the volumemeter indicates they're playing

I reported all of those during beta- let's hope they fix this up nice and good for the .1. I am however capable of running quite enormous sets now, but a lot of bugs remain.

djastroboy · Post by **djastroboy** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:01 pm

I've been wondering about the disk overload indicator flalshing at me too. Never seems to make any audible difference. Must be set overly sensitively. Be nice if the flasher was actually useful for its intended function...

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:01 pm

djastroboy wrote:I've been wondering about the disk overload indicator flalshing at me too. Never seems to make any audible difference. Must be set overly sensitively. Be nice if the flasher was actually useful for its intended function...

i echo this statement exactly.

wierd chit.

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:03 pm

It's a bug that Ableton confirmed.
It's mostly releated to the impulse in my case. The last part of the sample is not being loaded into the RAM. (or so i have been told)
Mostly it is not audible though.

Cheers

helixx · Post by **helixx** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:43 pm

i first saw this happen yesterday. i had only about 5 channels playing samples in a set that had very little going on. it was just in the idea phase. sure enough, i started seeing the red D when previewing samples and the sample would just stop playing.

i closed live5 and restarted and the problems seemed to go away but i fear them coming back. very strange stuff indeed.

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:03 pm

Noticed same thing.

inis · Post by **inis** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 1:48 am

Definetly happening to me. Im running all my sounds off a 7200rpm external hardrive. ive got a powerbook 1.5ghz, with 1.25 gb of ram. I will see this shit lately just by playing with one longer clip on one track. Its really getting anoying. And I do see audio dropouts if I continue without restarting.

I did first notice mine on impulse though, so im sure thats the root of the problem.

Chris J · Post by **Chris J** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:02 pm

I've always (live4) had Disk overload with Impulse when using a chunk from a clip, for ex putting the start marker on a snare on beat 2 and the end marker after the snare and dragging it into an impulse slot. The only way for me not to get the overload is to go in arrange, consolidate the chunk I need and using this in impulse.
So I always thought this function of using bits of clips in impulse useless.
Has it changed in L5 ?

psherburne · Post by **psherburne** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:42 am

I'm having the exact same problems in Live 5, where I never had them in 4 -- dropouts, freezes, unwanted timestretching, etc. I generally use several instances of Impulse and one Operator, plus sends to external MIDI devices, and a handful of audio clips, with light effects. But I've got a 1.67 GHz G4 with 1 Gig of RAM, I'm not running any other programs, and to reiterate, I never had this kind of trouble in 4.... frustrating!

tribalogical · Post by **tribalogical** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 8:15 pm

I'm getting the Red D just previewing Clips from the browser. It seems to happen randomly. This is with no clips, fx, or plugins loaded into tracks (an empty set), and with the transport stopped....

I checked to see if it was specifically an Impulse issue, and it isn't. One example: a Clip that just lit up the D is from the Live 5 Library: Clips/Rhythmic/Arperator02.alc.... this uses an Operator, along with a few midi/audio fx.... the D lights up (sometimes! It seems pretty random) when first clicking on the Clip to initiate preview playback.

It's happening on my G5 system (with tons of RAM and fast SATA drives), so this shouldn't be a problem....

I searched, but didn't find this thread, so had posted specifics here:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25895

nice to know it isn't just my system....

hope this issue gets sorted quickly!

peace,
tribalogical