skips and spikes

alan* · Post by alan* » Mon Sep 05, 2005 11:38 am

5.0.1 seems to have been working fine and then today it would skip or stutter when I launched a new clip ? I have heard other people mention this, it's quite a big set, takes a long time to load, also I was booting it up off my external drive. Also got cpu spikes again ?

DJSK · Post by **DJSK** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 9:46 pm

Started having these problems as well. I played a set this weekend. About an hour into it. I started getting audio drop outs and the music would stop and seconds later come on again. The dropouts were random at first but then seemed to happen very frequently almost every two minutes or more at times. I noticed as well that when trying to use my sound card and switch between tracks using the cue button I wasn't able to cue properly. It worked fine at first but once I started having audio dropouts I wasn't able to cue properly. I thought maybe this was my sound card but I don't have this problem at all when using version 4.

alan* · Post by alan* » Tue Sep 06, 2005 1:03 am

self containing the set didnt seem to help, i thought it might but must be something else, one thing I found that helped is to go through and launch every scene in the set once before you start playing, will experiment with this a bit more, would be nice, obviously, if this wasnt necessary

alan* · Post by alan* » Wed Sep 07, 2005 9:15 am

No plug ins, just triggering clips, thats all. Normal cpu with 3 or 4 tracks running is around 30-40%, the triggering of a new clip or scene will usually cause a sound drop out of some sort or cpu spikes in some instances went as high as 5000% (no joke) when launching a scene with 5 clips in it. Then it will settle back down to 30-40% again ?

Other times the set seems to play ok, never perfect, and then some times it's just really not good at all.

I really, really dont want to go back to playing cd's, I find live offers so much more creativity for me but I cant seriously think about using this for a gig and now this set is fiverized, perhaps start a new set in v4 ?

If anyone might know what is causing this problem would hugely appreciate it, would also be great to hear from someone at Ableton that they realize this is a problem and are looking into it ? I remember experiencing cpu spikes in v4 as well and not sure if that was ever resolved ?

I have got a 1gb ram chip on the way, maybe that could help things ?

Just noticed there is another thread going with similar stories.

Also, some clips would have a couple seconds of very loud white (?) noise at the begining of them, when inspecting the waveform, I noticed it was corrupted and maxed out in those places. Deleted clips and replaced them and was ok. I noticed all the clips that this happened to were 24bit wav files. It didnt happen to any of the 16bit aif files in the set.

hortonjupiter · Post by **hortonjupiter** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 9:39 am

hello doc.

am having the same trouble, and after a few suggestions, the posts dried up ;o(, so lemme know if you have any luck!

one thing that has worked is to keep the sets smaller. i originally had all of my tunes (a few hundred whole tunes, plus lots of loops and samples and whatnot) loaded into one set, so that i could play anything i wanted to (i have quite a diverse style, to say the least), but i found that the glitches have stopped now that i've cut it up into 3 sets.

but if you find a better solution, lemme know.

alan* · Post by alan* » Wed Sep 07, 2005 9:45 am

I am going to try the latest beta 502b4 and see how that goes but I think also I will make a smaller set of just what I want to play for this night i have coming up, i like you have a big set with over 200 tracks in it, nice to have everything there in front of you but maybe best to strip the tracks out that i know i wont play no matter what, probably start a new set in v4 unless this beta seems to be working well.

Post by **Alex** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 10:54 am

Hi alan,

can you check how much memory (physical and virtual) Live consumes (via the activity monitor) when you experience these clicks in your large set?

regards,
Alex

alan* · Post by alan* » Thu Sep 08, 2005 2:57 am

Hi Alex,

In 5.0.1
real memory 308
virtual memory 470

In 5.0.2.b4
real memory 280
virtual memory 470

Although it didnt severely spike during this test, there were some glitches but the figures seemed to remain constant. I have noticed I am experiencing fewer dropouts/glitches in the beta version but there are still some there sometimes.

Hedroom · Post by **Hedroom** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:20 am

I'm still getting very unpredictable skips and spikes.

It's really annoying because I think I've got it sorted (no sign for an hour or two), then I get a few in a minute. The constant worry og glitches makes performing in front of a crowd unneccessarily stressful!

p2.4 GHz, loads of free HD space, 1 Gb RAM. NOTHING installed on my machine but Live!

Hedroom · Post by **Hedroom** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:32 am

Oh... sorry.

RME audio digiface soundcard. Anyone else out there having difficulties with this setup?

alan* · Post by alan* » Thu Sep 08, 2005 10:59 am

I've just discovered...a clip that has been used in Live 5 wont carry it's warp settings into Live 4 ? I realized that you cant open a live 5 set in live 4 but didnt realize you would have to re warp each track in live 4 ?

This basically means for me there is no turning back, I was about to start rearranging my set in 4 for a gig because too many sound problems in 5 but there is no way i can rewarp all those tracks again in live 4, that would be especially painfull now it is so easy to warp mark in live 5 and I would much rather spend my time practicing the set sooo...

Come on guys, sort it out....pleeeaase ! Otherwise I am going to be standing in front of everyone next weekend going snap crackle pop, wont look good for me and wont look good for you either ?

What is it thats causing these dropouts and spikes ?

alan* · Post by alan* » Tue Sep 13, 2005 11:25 am

Just thought to add...I have just upgraded my ram from 640mb to 1128mb and it seems to have made a good deal of difference to the amount sound dropouts etc...so I am quite a bit relieved that this has helped...I might just get away with a set this weekend.

Frivi · Post by **Frivi** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 5:28 pm

I have been pulling my hair out over this issue... I flew all the way to texas and im expected to play this evening.... but V5 cuts out after about 40 minutes.
everything looks normal.., andthe problem continues with 3 different soundcards.... CPU sits at around 20% the whole time.
Live 502b5 is worse even still and as far as my paging files and virtual memory everything looks fine, this is what the task manager reads (aprox) before and after the continuous drop-outs begin and I'm forced to restart live.
Totals
Handles 5443
threads 298
Processes 23

Commit Charge
Total 764340
Limit 4089836
Peak 1281248

Physical mEMORY
Total 1047920
Available 289636
System Chache 527204

Kernel Memory
Total 41136
Paged 30596
Nonpaged 10564

never a problem with live 3 or 4, but now that i've opened and saved in V5 i'm screwed... ps. maybe also a nice feature where you can export sets in a format that is still compatible to older versions.... like in illustrator or photoshop.
D

Nod · Post by **Nod** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:03 am

Frivi wrote:
Totals
Handles 5443
threads 298
Processes 23

Commit Charge
Total 764340
Limit 4089836
Peak 1281248

Physical mEMORY
Total 1047920
Available 289636
System Chache 527204

Kernel Memory
Total 41136
Paged 30596
Nonpaged 10564

Don't know if it's a related problem Frivi but I'd posted a bunch of stats in this thread :

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

Never mind sets with 200+ tracks - I just want to know why an empty set in v5 uses 5 TIMES as much juice than it did in 4?