Ableton Forum

Had this problem out LIVE last weekend & couldn't perfrom my set because of it:

I load up my set, it plays fine until i move the cursor, or adjust any parameters, like the CPU is overloading.

The obvious answer would be there's too much going on & to bounce some stuff down, but the thing is, this overload doesn't register on LIVE's built in CPU meter, or on the Windows task manager & it's on sets that have previously played fine.

There are no programmes running in the background, like anti-virsues, because i don't connect to the net with my laptop. It's an Acer 1350 with 2.2 GHZ AMD processor and 768 MB RAM & this happens on different soundcards.

any suggestions? thanks!

I was about to post this in regards to soft synths, but yeah it happens if i move a MIDI assigned knob or slider as well.

I'm on a 1.5ghz powerbook using an X-Station for MIDI/audio, so it seems the problem is cross platform.

Anybody have any solution to this? is it 5.02 that's the culprit?

Same here
I noticed it when controlling live VSTs with CC from my controller.

OK a question for you guys, what are your settings?

I'm using USB for audio as well as MIDI, (X-Station) what are you guys using?

Live 5.02

Buffer setting of 128 for plug ins, 252 for audio.


I'm going to try different buffer settings, maybe that will help?

I'll try he buffer settings, but for some reason when i've pulled up the task manager, i can see ableton is jumping from 10% to 50%+ randomly, even when there is nothing going on!! No audio playing, so what does it need that much CPU to do? Anyone know how i can make it more efficient?

mudbone wrote:I'll try he buffer settings, but for some reason when i've pulled up the task manager, i can see ableton is jumping from 10% to 50%+ randomly, even when there is nothing going on!! No audio playing, so what does it need that much CPU to do? Anyone know how i can make it more efficient?

Hey mudbone, what are you using for a soundcard? what are your buffer settings right now?

i'm using an echo indigo IO right now, but was having the same problem with an Edirol UA25. i'll try it with my laptop's native soundcard, but i don;'t think that's the problem.

Also, i've tried increasing ht buffer size, but this doesn't seem to be helping

That's too bad, I was hoping it was a USB audio issue... Echo is PCMCIA right? so...

I'm going to try my firewire 828 later today, I'll let you know if it helps.

What I tried today that seems to have worked is to roll back to Live 5.0.1. At practice today there were no noticeable dropouts, I can't say it's all 5.0.1, but the buffer setting change didn't seem to help etc.. For now, that's what I suggest, my songs I saved in 5.0.2 opened up just fine in 5.0.1, so....
Makes sense, because this problem wasn't really anything to cry about for me before. Maybe I had it happen once or twice, and not much has changed in the last month with my setup except 5.0.2.........

not a bad idea...i might try reverting back, see if that helps, but i was also having this problem with Live 4, so doubt it will.

Might format my laptop, but i've only had it a year & it was new then...think it could be the hard drive? Logic is performing worse than it should be, but nothing as bad as my Ableton issues.

just checked my HD model, it's pretty slow at 4200RPM..could this be the problem?

mudbone wrote:Might format my laptop, but i've only had it a year & it was new then...think it could be the hard drive? Logic is performing worse than it should be, but nothing as bad as my Ableton issues.

My HD is a 7200rpm model, so it's not hard drive. Ableton support suggested setting my plug in buffer to "As Audio Buffer", try that. I have to run off to work, but when I come back I'll test this out in 5.0.2 and 5.0.1.