Ableton Forum

hey,
its been around 4 hours since im trying to play live with live... and its completly impossible...
im trying not to get completly angry... but belive me.. its really hard...
i was having jumps in the audio playing with my powerbook... ok.. when i played with my partner me synced to his pc the problems had gone...
he just bought an m-audio fw (i hacve a firewire 410) and we couldnt synced them at all... we tryed every configuration... and 2 minutes after we start playing we lost the sync (this hadnt happend with his pc before... it happens now with his news souhndcard on his powerbook... aso.. to make things clear.. we both have powerbooks, and we both have m-audio cards... so.. whats the deal ?)
we tryed to midi sync also using my behringer controller... same problem.. me hosting, he hosting.. its all the same.. we just loose the sync after a while...
so.. back to his pc and have some fun! (we'll try to fix this later)... we start playing.. and sunddenly, my live just stops playing.. an ext signal keeps coming but my live just dont play at all.. so he stops, hit play again.. im back there.. 1 min later.. im out again.. he stops, hits play... and a continous loop of this stupid erros keeps coming...

im just starting to belive that this soft just dont work... and that im wasting my money...

anyway.. i'd really apreciate if i can get some help about any of all of the problems that i found using this soft (first time in mi life that i have any kind of problem with an audio soft btw...)

must be some hardware trouble...
i played live with live sometimes...and saw many others playing with no problems...

j

i don't know any configuration that enables sure synchronisation between computer (ok - i didn't try all).
computers run out of timing as soon as cpu spikes appear. It only can correct such hiccups inside itself afaik.

I suggest you to get used to synchronize two machines with Live by hand:
set same tempo, train starting in time and re-setting the sync (pressing tap once only)
if you use midi equipment you can use pitchbend to push or slow the tempo temporarily: in master track set tempo limit to min -4 and max +4 BpM of your tempo and remote tempo by pitchbend ...

After some time you get used to it. (DJ's also never claimed the not-syncing record player)

must be some hardware trouble...
i played live with live sometimes...and saw many others playing with no problems...

and wich one of the hardware pieces u think it might be ? we tryed every possible configuration syncing 2 computers, and we had 3 computers to try that.. we also tryed with 3 different sound cards... and again, we used the same brands.
also.. i know that some people can play live.. bugs aren´t something that happens to the 100% of people...

i don't know any configuration that enables sure synchronisation between computer (ok - i didn't try all).
computers run out of timing as soon as cpu spikes appear. It only can correct such hiccups inside itself afaik.

I suggest you to get used to synchronize two machines with Live by hand:
set same tempo, train starting in time and re-setting the sync (pressing tap once only)
if you use midi equipment you can use pitchbend to push or slow the tempo temporarily: in master track set tempo limit to min -4 and max +4 BpM of your tempo and remote tempo by pitchbend ...

After some time you get used to it. (DJ's also never claimed the not-syncing record player)

thnx for the help... but its impossible to sync what we are making.. we are not playing exactly as djs.. we are not mixing beats during all the time... at some points, we have 5 or 6 loops at the same time, some times a little shuffled and without a kick or some constant beat... and its not only hard to sync that by ear, but u also loose the time to make some other cool stuff in that time (wich is in fact, one of the biggest advantages of getting everything warped and in perfectly synced without having to pay attention to that).


so... yesterday. we finally tryed to midi sync both powerbooks using the network in the audio midi setup. this got us the best results, but they were far from being perfect (and a gig with technical problems is not what i want, and for sure not what the people listening wants). now i think that the problems we had with this metod, are completly related to the problems i had before: the audio dropouts (or the jumps) that i suffer playing alone (this happens when i launch a clip, move a knob on my controller, etc, etc) now are translated as audio accelerations. its like (when i launch a clip for example) if the audio needed to catch up the midi sync and it raised the bpms (as in repitch mode, btw) for 1/4 second and then get back to normal... (again, this useless to play live...) (btw, his PB was hosting the midi sync)

ok.. it seems that everything is working fine now... here is what i´ve done in case u find it usefull:

1- backed up my projects, wavs, etc... but hadnt backued up my os x preferences
2- i zeroed my HD
3- partitioned it
4- clean tiger install in the first partition
5- reinstalled live and copied everything back to my second partition
(now i dont have any audio drop outs when i playi alone)
6- midi synced both computers using the network (this can be done from the audio midi setup utility)


i´ve done steps 1 to 5 before without any succes... but now it worked! (at least since i´ve done this 5 days ago)


btw... i hadnt installed (and i wont) any third party plugins on my mac... as i only use it to perform and not to produce