Ableton Forum

I have assembled a new desktop specifically for production in Live 5 and was dissapointed to find that I get pops and clicks when I go below a 1024 buffer (23 ms). I have the following setup:

1. Asus P5LD2 mobo - Intel LGA 775 CPU w/ P4 3.0 GHz
2. 1G of dual channel ddr2 kingston memory
3. Maxtor 200 GB SATA Harddrive
4. GeForce 6600 videocard
5. RME Hammerfall interface connected via PCI card

I am using ASIO Hammerfall DSP as the audio interface and have disabled hyperthreading in the BIOS. I figure I should be able to get down to at least 3 ms with this setup. Any ideas why I can't achieve this without pops and clicks???

Have you tried turning off the stereo output under your output configuration screen. I was having the same problem as you and then I did that and everything worked fine. Although, I am not sure if this will cause any other problems, it gets things to work.

Ahhh ..... I've seen problems like this before.

PCI Express (we'll refer to as PCIe from this point) based motherboard with PCIe Video card = pop crackle central at conservative latency settings.

I'm glad I'm still using a non PCIe system for the moment. The dust hasn't quite settled in PCIe land for audio production (and sadly there are no PCIe audio interfaces on the market - yet).

On PCIe motherboard / PCIe Graphics based systems, pops and crackles most are caused by the Video Card (often tuned for good performance for playing games with accerlerated 3D graphics) demanding way too much bandwidth leaving little for bandwidth over for your PCI audio interface.

On this music dedicated system you've built the fancy gamer-specific video accelation facilities will offer little or not benefit at all to your system.

How to reduce the bandwidth allocated to the Video card ?

Try one or more of the following.

- Inspect BIOS settings to see if there is a specific setting to control this aspect of the system. CAUTION Don't tweak settings unless you are absolutely certain its the correct setting to address this issue. Maybe investigate this with ASUS.

- Investigate driver settings in the proprietary control panel which allow setting of the advanced features of the Video card ...

OR

- If the above options don't help then see if ASUS provide a small utility program to address the bandwidth occupied by the PCIe graphics card.

PCIe motherboards + PCIe Graphics cards + PCI Audio cards seem to cause problems for many users of any audio software (i.e. Live won't be the only software effected on your system - the problem will be evident using any software which interfaces to your audio card via low latency ASIO drivers).

If none of the above works then change your Video card to one which is known to work OK in PCIe systems for audio production.

I've encountered many cases where users having this same motherboard, report pops/crackles when using an ATI Radeon X600. I've seen this problem resolved on such systems by downgrading to an Radeon X300 graphics card. Pops/crackles disappear.
Maybe worth seeking (or borrowing) a X300 to test this out ?

Also - sorry to state the obvious - however have you performed any of the tasks listed on the Tuning Tips page of www.musicxp.net? The first tip listed (changing Processor scheduling to background applications) is absolutely vital, not optional otherwise the ASIO driver will not be getting the attention it requires from the CPU and thus - pop/crackle central.

Strangely it seems some users have more luck integrated Firewire based audio interfaces into PCIe based systems. This isn't substantiated absolutely yet.

Whichever solution you discover, please write back to this thread to report what actually resolved the problem. The more information that can be shared on this subject of known working solutions the better for everyone.

Cheers

jasefos wrote:Strangely it seems some users have more luck integrated Firewire based audio interfaces into PCIe based systems. This isn't substantiated absolutely yet.

I'm using a Dell XPS 200 system with a PCIe Radeon graphics card. I use an M-Audio Firewire 410, all is well with buffers set at 128 (and lower, but I don't notice a difference, so I just leave it at 128)

Luckily it's such a thin case that I can't use anything other than half-height cards, so I never got to experience such problems.

jasefos wrote:Ahhh ..... I've seen problems like this before....

Cheers

it is truth but only if your CPU usage is very high (about 90% and above). I used nForce4 with PCIe and FW Audiophile on 64 samples and no problem (under 95% CPU)

poshook wrote:

jasefos wrote:Ahhh ..... I've seen problems like this before....

Cheers

it is truth but only if your CPU usage is very high (about 90% and above). I used nForce4 with PCIe and FW Audiophile on 64 samples and no problem (under 95% CPU)

Might I ask which PCIe Graphics card do you have installed?
Which model of NForce4 based motherboard ?

Just curious - it's good to gather some anecdotal evidence of working combinations for DAWs.

jasefos wrote:

poshook wrote:

jasefos wrote:Ahhh ..... I've seen problems like this before....

Cheers

it is truth but only if your CPU usage is very high (about 90% and above). I used nForce4 with PCIe and FW Audiophile on 64 samples and no problem (under 95% CPU)

Might I ask which PCIe Graphics card do you have installed?
Which model of NForce4 based motherboard ?

Just curious - it's good to gather some anecdotal evidence of working combinations for DAWs.

It does not matter....PCIe issue arises from high system stress (very high CPU, HDD, RAM and PCI Bus usage).
If I start new project with 5% of CPU then PCIe could not be the reason of my latency problems

poshook wrote:

jasefos wrote:

poshook wrote:
it is truth but only if your CPU usage is very high (about 90% and above). I used nForce4 with PCIe and FW Audiophile on 64 samples and no problem (under 95% CPU)

Might I ask which PCIe Graphics card do you have installed?
Which model of NForce4 based motherboard ?

Just curious - it's good to gather some anecdotal evidence of working combinations for DAWs.

It does not matter....PCIe issue arises from high system stress (very high CPU, HDD, RAM and PCI Bus usage).
If I start new project with 5% of CPU then PCIe could not be the reason of my latency problems

Yes ...

In other words you've got a successful working combination of PCIe Graphics card and motherboard.

That's why I'd still like to know which PCIe graphics card you have in your system ... if that information isn't "classified" or anything like that .

; )

cheers