Audio hick ups: sound card or computer problem?

saaman · Post by **saaman** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 11:32 am

I am experiencing regular audio hick ups with Live 6. I have a M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496, with the latest drivers installed. On a 3.4 GHz Dell PC with Windows XP.

If I raise the DMA buffer size to 1024 samples the problem is gone. But that results in a rather high latency.

Can anyone tell whether this is a sound card problem or a computer problem. Or Maybe there could be yet another cause.

Thanks for any help.

riverside · Post by **riverside** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 2:14 am

if the hickups are going away when you increase the buffer size than you probably have a hard drive that is too slow .... check your hard drive's speed

it's best to use a hard drive that's dedicated to audio .... i use an external drive at 7,200 rpm and i can can get the buffer size (and latency) much lower than when trying to use my laptop's internal 5,400 rpm drive

good luck

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 2:26 am

haha everything's big in texas!!!!!!!!!!11! (try 7,200 and 5,400)

midiocrity · Post by **midiocrity** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:57 pm

I'm having the same problem with an audiophile 192, but I'm pretty sure it's a problem in Live (same latency works fine in Sonar, EnergyXT and FLStudio).

One thing I've noticed is that if I start playing something that produces unwarranted snap crackle and pop, and then click on a menu so that the menu is hanging down (say the Options menu), I get smooth playback while the menu is hanging.

Any Delta/Live6 users that can duplicate this behavior?

midiocrity · Post by **midiocrity** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 5:12 am

As an update to my previous post, now that I've had time to troubleshoot it a little more I've been able to narrow down my dropout problem to Live6 + Nvidia + Dual displays. Unless you have dual displays our problems are probably not related and have nothing to do with M-Audio.

When I get a chance, I'm going to start a new thead and post my findings for anyone that is interested (after I search the fourm to see if anyone else has already reported the problem).

Sharkcellar · Post by **Sharkcellar** » Thu Nov 13, 2008 4:30 pm

I've been having this problem. I've tried shutting off AVG and playing around with the buffer. I can't seem to stop it. I used to have Live running smoothly on a much slower machine with less RAM.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:14 pm

midiocrity wrote:As an update to my previous post, now that I've had time to troubleshoot it a little more I've been able to narrow down my dropout problem to Live6 + Nvidia + Dual displays. Unless you have dual displays our problems are probably not related and have nothing to do with M-Audio.

When I get a chance, I'm going to start a new thead and post my findings for anyone that is interested (after I search the fourm to see if anyone else has already reported the problem).

I can confirm that Live 6 (LE in my case) does not like nvidia+dual screens. I get massive spikes on DPC Latency tool when navigating Live's UI, dropping down menu's etc. The problem does not exist when I use Reaper.

I did seem to stabilize it by uninstalling the nvidia drivers, forcing a generic driver (which was unusable) reinstalling the nvidia drivers and adjusting the graphics hardware acceleration slider (right click desktop>properties>settings>advanced>troubleshoot). I have done some short tests and it seems OK, but I have yet to give it a good work out.

@midiocrity, did you ever start that thread? I know of other that have had problems with Live and nvidia drivers. Here is a thread I started outlining my issues, which turns out to be a similar topic, Live 6+nvidia drivers+dual screens and trying to trouble shoot it. http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight= I was getting crazy audio dropouts with a brand new quad core machine.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:18 pm

Sharkcellar wrote:I've been having this problem. I've tried shutting off AVG and playing around with the buffer. I can't seem to stop it. I used to have Live running smoothly on a much slower machine with less RAM.

Hey Sharkcellar, do you have dual screens?

Sharkcellar · Post by **Sharkcellar** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:24 pm

Nope I don't have a dual screen setup, though my video card allows for it.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:42 pm

Sharkcellar wrote:Nope I don't have a dual screen setup, though my video card allows for it.

I am running an nvidia 9400 card. I don't know if you have time, but check out the thread I started (2 posts ago). I was getting crazy audio drop outs and big latency spikes on a quad core beast, but using the same audio interface on an old P4 lappy I had no problems.

Even if you are not using dual screens, the nvidia drivers have been found to be problematic for other users when using Live.

One solution was to set up a dual boot with generic video drivers for the audio boot.

Like I say, I seem to have settled down the drop outs and crazy latency spikes by uninstalling and reinstalling the nvidia drivers and playing with the video hardware acceleration slider.

I would be very much interested in following your case. I am slowly but surely finding others with similar problems, the common theme being the nvidia drivers+Live, but I have not found much documentation or acknowledgment by many people, including Ableton.

Incidentally, these problems have occured for Live 7 users as well.

Sharkcellar · Post by **Sharkcellar** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:48 pm

gjm,

Thanks for that illuminating bit of info. Yeah, I didn't have this problem on my old P3 1ghz desktop. It may have been slow but it didn't dropout like this. What a bummer. I'll check out your older post.