Ableton Forum

hey ho.
i'm reasonably new to this thang. trying to optimise my setup as ableton has started glitching on me, and it's getting worse.

could the amount of long clips loaded into my dj set have an effect on the cpu load?
does anyone reckon i need to drag and drop a few clips into the set at a time? i currently have a few hundred clips and full songs in the set already sorted into styles and bpms, though none are set as RAM clips.

At first i thought it was my EDIROL FA 66 causing the problem, as i would get massive unexpected CPU jumps from 7 percent to 260 percent for half a second, but the glitching is happening even when using the ordinary stereo out on my laptop. then i tried defragging my hard drive (Wiebetech whatnot, full speed 7000 rpm thing), but the problem is still getting worse. it's really boring, especially when playing at a party.

Do you have Delay Compensation checked? Try that, and try lowering your plug in latency and report back.

Deleting the prefs.cfg file will sort out the problem. But only for a bit it seems.

Hi hortonjupiter,

can you check how much memory Live is using (via the system monitory) when you have load your set into Live?

regards,
Alex

are you streaming clips off you internal drive??? You can get way more clips and much better response ou of live by using a 7,200 RPM firewire (or usb 2.0) drive--makes a LOT of difference.

A 5400RPM laptop drive should easily get you dozens of tracks though.

Tarekith wrote:A 5400RPM laptop drive should easily get you dozens of tracks though.

does his box have a 5,400, or 4,800? Also, it depends on the length of the clips--he mentions full songs--I kind of doubt you can play a dozen full songs at once off internal (not that anyone would want to). I could be wrong, but sometimes if seems that if a lot of full song sized clips are present in you set, even if you aren't using many at once, the presence of these big clips seems to slow down zooming and other graphic response--seems like the presence of a lot of big clips all from an internal drive could be problematic. Maybe he could do a test with an external drive to see what difference it might make...

he3llo all. thanks for yr. help so far, but am using an external 7200 rpm drive. i spent silly money on a tiny one that still goes at full speed, too!


horton x

hortonjupiter wrote:he3llo all. thanks for yr. help so far, but am using an external 7200 rpm drive. i spent silly money on a tiny one that still goes at full speed, too!


horton x

try your internal drive, whatever speed it may be.

do you still get drop outs?
if you do not, you've narrowed the problem down to your external HD.

Alex wrote:Hi hortonjupiter,

can you check how much memory Live is using (via the system monitory) when you have load your set into Live?

regards,
Alex

errrrrrrrrrr.....only about 10Mb free....i tried lowering the latency, but the sound quality got worse, and the drop outs still happened, say for instance i launch a scene or clip, it happens just after beat one

horton x

Hi hortonjupiter,

sorry for not replying...
Indeed, a left of only 10MB could explain this problem. At this usage the operating system is very probably already swapping.

You could try if there are some option to reduce your Live set:

- removed unused effects
- removed unused tracks
- removed unused clips
- check if the RAM switch is off for all clips (hint: you can multi select clips)
- complex warp mode consumes a lot of memory. If possible try to use another warp mode or render this clip

When having done this, save the Live set under another name, quit Live, reopen Live and reload this set and check if it makes a difference.

regards,
Alex