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Pops and clicks in rendered file 5.02

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 4:32 am
by milfbait
I can't render a file without some serious clicks in the file. The only way I can mix down is record out of spdif, as the rendered files are unusable and don't sound as good as a spdif mixdown. Anyone else have this problem?

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 8:30 pm
by groovecatcher
Yes! I am also having this problem with Ableton 5. I am working with 48khz 24 bit audio in Ableton and when I try to render down to a 44.1khz 16 bit audio master file I get all kinds of random annoying clicks happening.

If I render down to a 48khz 24 bit file there is not so much of a problem, however it still does happen sometimes. I am wondering if it is possibly due to processor load/memory problems as Ableton 5 does seem to grab every resource available.

The only way I can get around this problem is rendering down to a 48khz 24 bit master file (with *hopefully* no clicks!) and then using Cakewalk's Sonar to convert it as a 44.1khz 16 bit audio file! This is *not* what I want to do! :evil:

I'm gonna drop the Ableton guys a line about this, it really does need to be fixed.

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:02 am
by mdb
This happens to me as well. And it also happens when you sub group tracks

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28330

This does need to be addressed! We are not the only ones tyhis is happening too. Its even happening to me when i went back to 5.0.1...

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 3:40 am
by milfbait
mdb wrote:This happens to me as well. And it also happens when you sub group tracks

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28330

This does need to be addressed! We are not the only ones tyhis is happening too. Its even happening to me when i went back to 5.0.1...
Come to think of it, I had my drums sub grouped when I discovered this problem, I wonder if it occurs without subgrouping.

pops and clicks when rendered

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:31 am
by earwig
The problem when rendering in Live is worse than you think. The sound of whatever your rendering is diminished significantly. Try rendering a straight kick without an effect and you'll hear what I mean, the same kick will be slightly different in a bad way. The only way at the moment is to record onto a DAT or CDR of some sort The problem gets worse when you realise that Live's CPU overloads with only a handful of chanels of audio and plugins. If Ableton stopped all these problems I'd pay a lot more for there product as then I could use it!!!!

Unfortunately Logic is still the best.

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:27 pm
by noou
I thinks this rendering problems (I experienced... sigh!) are related to the way Live manages the cpu resources: the manual says that to preserve cpu Live intelligently turns off devices with no incoming data, but IMO this is not functioning properly 'cause 2 sets I tried to render have clicks related to audio or VSTi data.
The first one has rythmic clicks a few seconds before the real rythmic track gets in.
The second one has a clipped click corresponding to the first midi note of a VSTi and this happens at each rendering.
Maybe Live can't manage in the right manner the intelligent activation of devices.

On the other hand I thin most of the CPU spikes we experience are related to the same problem.

Please Abletons let me know if this can be a hint to find a bug.

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:48 pm
by djastroboy
I think both sub-groups & other activity cause rendering problems.
Was getting noisy renders, so I made sure that all the other clips that were (silently) playing along were stopped, re-rendered, and the biggest pops went away.
When I ungrouped my drums, another rendering pass got rid of the rest of the noise in the rendered file.

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 7:08 pm
by noou
latest news: now I rendered the same song tha was giving a big clipped sample but with normalize option ON... the result is an empty file excluded a big clipped sample!!! incredible!
Ableton are you there? that's a serious problem!

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 10:32 pm
by the dark wizard
im having this problem too, its always with the same track, and at the same point. doesnt happen with other tracks??? :?

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:12 pm
by timothyallan
I find the only way for me to get a perfect render is to load absolutely every audio clip in Arrange view into RAM. Mind you, you've gotta have a lot of RAM to do that :)

-tim

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 1:44 pm
by tylast
I had one song that was nortorious for doing it. I actually narrowed it down to the Ableton compressor on that particular channel. Once disabled...no pops anymore. Worth a shot. BTW, I already sent the song to tech support.

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 6:37 pm
by milfbait
Lives rendering does degrade quality. I loaded a single wave file with no warp, rendered it with all faders set to 0 and then opened both of them in Wavelab and did some analysis. The original file had significantly more low frequency content, the rendered file was weaker overall. I always suspected this, but I never did a proper test. I record my mixes through spdif instead of rendering.

Alot of people way "blah, hosts all sound the same, it's just math". They are mistaken.

Ableton, how about a higher quality rendering option, like a "real time render"?

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 7:55 pm
by noou
those 3 last posts are really interesting to me, and using Live as my main sequencer I'd like to know what Ableton thinks about people who bought something that's unusable to finish a job!

The only workaround I found is to resample the whole mix into another audio track... but now I fear this track could be "altered" in some way with respect to the audible mix :( I'll try the RAM clip... then I'll stop to use the included compressor... but what a pain!

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 8:50 pm
by eldar
i also have a rendering problem in a set using battery 2 with either 2 midi tracks routed to battery or 2 audio output tracks from battery (can't remember which it was)...clicks, pops, silence etc.

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 10:04 pm
by mdb
This shit MUST BE FIXED!!! This program is practically worthless if i cant render the music i recorded on it properly.

And while your at it. FIX THE SUB GROUP POPS AND HALF RENDERED SONGS WHILE HAVING SUB GROUPS!!

Oh yeah, And add mousewheel zoom for christ sakes. How does this get over looked through 5 versions??