Ableton Forum

yikes...more problems

My RME Multiface arrived today, so I'm now running my live set via my Inspiron 8100 through it - and the peformance is MUCH worse than with the built-in sound card.

When I switch to a new scene, I often have CPU spikes into the thousands, with resultant audio dropouts every time.

This is awful.

Any ideas?

Dennis DeSantis
www.dennisdesantis.com

Dennis,

Latest driver ? (V2.32)
Win 2000 or XP ?
ACPI or Standard PC (device manager) ?

What kind of PCMCIA controller chip does the Inspiron 8100 have. If it's a Ricoh, it notorious for problems.

I have a no name brand P4 laptop with intel chipset(TI cardbus PCMCIA chip). Perfect from day one........

BTW....I dig your web site !

Yes, latest driver.
Win 2000
ACPI (it's a laptop. Is it safe to disable ACPI on laptops?)

The PCMCIA adapters are TI PCI-4451.

Thanks for your help.

Dennis DeSantis
http://www.dennisdesantis.com

As you probably well know, changing from ACPI to Standard PC helps problems with IRQ sharing.

You problem sounds like some thread/process is "stealing" away CPU time from the core task of handling Live and smooth audio playback.

Do you use windows update to ensure updated drivers, direct x components etc....?

I would try creating multiple hardware profiles.
One as is. (don't modify)

Trial profile, where you disable "extra" startup items. "Not required services" etc....

XP has msconfig to speed this up.

To do this in Win 2000 it's a manual/time consuming process.
Edit startup items in the registry.

Service enable/disable in admin tools.

Also in control panel\system\advanced\performance\settings\advanced\ try toggling processor scheduling and memory usage testing for results under the conditions that typically cause your kind of problem.

Sorry, I posted anon....duh!