Ableton Forum

ok, can anyone shed light on this? I hope so...

I've needed a new computer for DJ'in with. I use Plugins that are PC only and I've never used a MAC before so thought of sticking with what i know. I've looked at laptops, shuttles and SFF's and tried to decide whats best to tour with. I decided on the following and built it last night:

ASUS PUNDIT P1 AH1 Micro ATX barebones
AMD ATHLON 64 4600 Dual Core
1GB Geil RAM (gonna upgrade to 2GB tomorrow)
Western Digital RAPTOR 36gb HDD 10000RPM
Presonus Firebox soundcard
Windows XP PRO
Live 6

Windows loads up in a very few number of seconds and so does ableton. However, I seem to be getting quite a few crackles and pops? and when i load task manager to see performance using ableton, i can see spikes in the CPUs???

The PC seems to be running a little hot 62 degrees on CPU? so i'm removing the CDROM (dont need one anymore) and adding a shit load of cooling in its place to see if this helps.

Can anyone help? Do i need a second HDD for all my data? I've tried the ASIO4ALL driver to see if that helps but it doesnt seem compatible with my setup?

Cheers Guys...

What buffer size/latency setting are you using (in your audio preferences) Lee?

to be honest, i've tried loads of different settings... samples rates, etc... is there a recommended selection??? I've just took the CDROM out, the HDD and CPU are both quite hot. dont know if thats the cause?

I was looking at putting a PCI sound card in and using my firebox as emergency backup - would this help?

cheers...

The heat issues your computer is experiencing could definitely be hampering it. I would handle that first. I've never tried a pc shuttle before so I can't recommend anything.

A pci card would help in terms of latency. A firewire or usb device will virtually always produce just a little more latency than a pci audio interface because of a sizable buffer they use to send and receive signals. I'm not sure if it will fix your problem though.

Oh, and you shouldn't need an extra HDD.

Do you have the multi-core option switched on or off? What kind of set are you running?