Ableton Forum

I just picked up a new Toshiba Satellite S 4094

Intel Core ProcessorT225
1536 MB DDR2 SDRAM
120GB(5400 RPM) HDD

and am experiencing audio glitches when Ableton is in play with my M-Audio Firewire Audiohile soundcard unless I run 1024 on the Asio/WDM buffer speed. Ive troubleshooted and found no problems when listing directly through headphone output on computer while Audiophile is disconnected. So it is not a direct problem with Ableton. No spikes are occuring in the CPU meter.

I have an older PC laptop with half the ram and processor speed and have no problems with this same soundcard running at 256 on the Buffer speed...so I do not understand why I need to set the buffer speed so high on a faster more powerful computer. I spoke with a tech person at M-Audio but he was pretty clueless to why this is... I had someone who knows alot about computers & audio tweak out my new laptop and prevent much of anything unnecessary from running in the background. That didnt solve the problem. So he hasnt an answer either.

Someone , Anyone have a clue on what is going on here?

I guess we need to look at the obvious things, just to check.

here's my guess.

In my audio preferences there are 3 types of asio driver 'multimedia', 'directx' and 'echowdm'. Only the last one gives me 128 buffer size.

do you have the correct asio driverselected? IE not some non-specific 'multimedia' version. Obviously yours would be 'M-audio wdm asio' or something.

do you have the latest m-audio firewire driver installed on that machine?

Harddrive set to DMA?

Angstrom wrote:I guess we need to look at the obvious things, just to check.

here's my guess.

In my audio preferences there are 3 types of asio driver 'multimedia', 'directx' and 'echowdm'. Only the last one gives me 128 buffer size.

do you have the correct asio driverselected? IE not some non-specific 'multimedia' version. Obviously yours would be 'M-audio wdm asio' or something.

In the M-audio preferences its says Asio/WDM. In Ableton the only preferences I get is no audio , MME Direct X & M-Audio FW ASIO. I have it set to ASIO.

Adam @ Ableton wrote:do you have the latest m-audio firewire driver installed on that machine?

Hey Adam , I dled the drivers off M-Audio site. My older computer has the original drivers that came with the CD. Im almost tempted to uninstall the new one and try the older one.

btw you are Adam Jay...correct? f you hold a mirror up to my user name...you may have heard of me. LOL.

Aural Chaos wrote:Harddrive set to DMA?

This Im clueless about.. explain further to me ?

mada-x wrote:if you hold a mirror up to my user name...you may have heard of me. LOL.

You should check your sample rate as well.

If it is above 44,100 it will most likely choke your computer.

Best,
AB

mada-x wrote:

Aural Chaos wrote:Harddrive set to DMA?

This Im clueless about.. explain further to me ?

Stands for direct memory address-it's a way to get info from your drive in the quickest way possible, and it might default to a different setting.
Check out the properties of your drive in the control panel (and probably a good idea to check it in your BIOS setup as well)

Adam @ Ableton wrote:

mada-x wrote:if you hold a mirror up to my user name...you may have heard of me. LOL.

LOL... So Adam I hear you are master with this Ableton thing....Do you have any answers on this problem for me? I have a live PA this weekend and for now I will keep the buffer speed at 1024 for that and will keep my fingers crossed that it wont start glitching. Im not much into glitchy techno.

Aural Chaos wrote:

mada-x wrote:

Aural Chaos wrote:Harddrive set to DMA?

This Im clueless about.. explain further to me ?

Stands for direct memory address-it's a way to get info from your drive in the quickest way possible, and it might default to a different setting.
Check out the properties of your drive in the control panel (and probably a good idea to check it in your BIOS setup as well)

Ill have someone check that out for me. I dont like to play around with that part of the computer. I wiped out a hardrive on a computer a few years back
playing around in there.

anti-banausic wrote:You should check your sample rate as well.

If it is above 44,100 it will most likely choke your computer.

Best,
AB

Its set at 44,100. Damn this is frustrating. Makes no sense to me. Get a new computer with a shitload more power and the thing doesnt work correctly. Mean while my old one works perfect and the computer itself is in shambles.
My friend is using Ableton on the same computer as my new one but with one of those Indigo sound pmcia cards and he has no problem.
Wtf..M-audio?

Actually it is still glitiching occasionally at 1024. So I dont think the buffer speed is the problem here.

arrrrghhhh!!!!!!!

Hey mada-x...Here's how to change your IDE settings to DMA:

From: http://tweak.us/cms/article_XP_Tweaks_Page2

Chances are your IDE devices may be set to PIO only. Here's how to check and change these settings.

Open the Device Manager (right-click My Computer, then Properties). Choose the Hardware Tab, then Device Manager. Expand IDE/ATAATAPI Controllers. Double-Click Primary IDE Channel and under the Advanced Tab, check your settings under Device 0 and 1 and change the Transfer Mode to DMA if Available.


Do the above for the Secondary Channel also.

Cheers