Ableton Forum

When I play back up to 4 audio clips I begin noticing clicks at the beginning of my clips as they repeat. If less than 4 clips are playing, I don't hear the clicks at the beginning of the loops. But while isolating the clips one by one, I sometimes hear random clicks every now that then during playblack. These particular clips are live instrument recordings, so I have Gates on the tracks to eliminate the signal noise; however, even with all effects turned off, I still notice the clicks. with only about 4 clips with moderate effects playing my CPU usage is around 30%, so I don't think my system is being overloaded.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

make sure the Fade button is on in each of the clip properties; also, if you're experiencing clicks due to system issues, try putting the clips into RAM by turning that button on.

If that doesn't fix it, it could be something else causing the clicks...on some laptops, I've seen this caused by network or wireless cards. Disable as many external peripherals as possible and see if you're still having issues.

Sounds like you have two sources of clips.

The first is just loop points not lining up-- you loop may end on a value of +37, and may start on a value of -55. That rapid jump in values = an audible click.
You may have really quiet clicks on all of your tracks, and when you get 4 inaudible clicks adding up all at once = suddenly audible!

"Fade", as nebulae mentions, fixes this. (a crossfade would be better...)
but the one trouble with this is if you have 4+ tracks all doing a sudden fade out and fade in at the same time, now instead of getting a click you get a blip.

I try to offset my loop points so that not all of my tracks are looping on measures 8,16,24,32,40.... try looping some on measure 7 or something. This means you have to record a little bit of extra audio at the start or end of your clip.

Now, your other clicks... ? dunno. You were right to think a gate could cause them. You don't have a mystery instance of "Vinyl" active somewhere??

check your audio clips, tho.

ZOOM way in. Can you actually see a click in the audio when it happens?

It'll look like a sudden spike or stairstep when you've zoomed in enough to be able to see individual samples (audio drawing looks more like tetris than a smooth blob.)

Actually, you dont even have to do that. try playing the same section over again when you hear one of those 'other' clicks... does it repeat? then its in the recording.

I guess I should have added that I already tried loading the clips into ram, making sure that Fade is on, and disabling my audio interface to see if I would have the same problem on other speakers. Unfortunately, none of those remedies helped. I should further mention that the "clicks" are sometimes at different random points. And sometimes I don't hear them at all. The clip might play fine a few times, then suddenly click on the third loop, or it might be clicking at the beginning of each repetition and suddenly not click on one pass. It's very odd.

Any other suggestions??

Does the "D" in the top right corner of Live flash? If yes, my suggestion is to check your disk is not fragmented. Just a thought ...

The "D" isn't flashing, so hopefully my hard drive isn't at fault.

I too am experiencing the exact same thing--clicks at the ends of loops that are not 100% repeatable in Live 6.0.10--sometimes the click will happen, sometimes not. I'm working in arrangerview, fwiw, and I can playback the same little portion over and over and get clicks sometimes, and no clicks other times--very peculiar.

My specs are in my signature below, and I've tried this with my RME soundcard on two Toshiba laptops that are virtually flawless with Live to date. I have the clips set to RAM mode, Fade is turned on, the Disc light isn't flashing. I've even tried all combinations of warped/not warped, Hi-Q/no Hi-Q, RAM/not RAM, and fade/not fade--no luck. The source audio is definitely not the problem--no clicks there. Rendering the audio to disc also results in erratic and unrepeatable clicks (ie each render has the clicks in different quantities and locations)

Any insight would be useful. My current plan of attack is to make a new set with one track and no effects and try that with the problem clip/loop on both systems, starting with Live 6.0.10, then trying previous versions to see if it is a 6 issue (I've been using live since the release of 2 and this is the first time I've had this problem). I'm going to try rendering multiple versions of the track on the various machines and phase invert them to see if the renders are consistent. I'll report back on all that, but in the meantime any ideas or things to check would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

Ryan

I get this as well. It is intermittent as mentioned, and I have had this in Live 6.0.10 and 7.0.1. I've noticed it more in 7 since I started playing around with the new suite's instruments. Some of them take a while to load and will 'sometimes' create loud pops and volume bursts on a loop point, and then they seem to settle down. It seems I have a stigma in which pops and crackles will follow me

I have also noticed on both mac (live 7 demo) and pc (full studio setup):

1. Go into Live's preferences -> audio tab
2. Turn test tone on
3. Drag tone volume up and down

I hear pops and crackles with different times in between no matter what the CPU or buffer size is set at. If a simple test like this doesn't produce a clean sound, I don't know what to expect otherwise.

crap, you are confirming a sneaking suspicion I have that this problem didn't occur in 6.0.7, and has never happened once to me in four years of using each version of Live starting with 2. I will try out your test tone test, and do the other tests I mentioned, particularly with previous versions of Live.

this is definitely a buzzkill--the tune that it happened to me on was my Herbie Hancock remix for the recent contest. Sure makes me look like an amatuer turning in a track with pops all over the place, but a deadline is a deadline....Someone/Ableton needs to figure this out and fix it asap, as it makes rendering good tracks out of Live impossible for me at the moment...I will report back after testing later in the week and hopefully have some more scientific results to help pinpoint the problem (my current hypothesis is that Live 6.0.10 and 7 are the problem).

thanks for your input, Magnetotron.

There are several other posts about clicks pops and cpu spikes that show up in L7 that were not in L6 please check the link http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=79360. This is the most prolific posting group on the subject. I believe it has something to do with the midi signals but there is certainly a lot of problems like this with L7. I am disappointed.

dancerchris wrote:There are several other posts about clicks pops and cpu spikes that show up in L7 that were not in L6 please check the link http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=79360. This is the most prolific posting group on the subject. I believe it has something to do with the midi signals but there is certainly a lot of problems like this with L7. I am disappointed.

My problems are primarily with Live 6.0.10 on two different systems. I need to do some tests with 6.0.7, because I feel like it didn't have these issues. I've played with the 7 beta, but haven't bought it yet, so I guess I should demo 7 to see if this set the problem exists there as well....more to come

On the click and pops issue--I did more testing last night, and found that Live 6.0.10 produces these random, not 100% repeatable click with loops in arrangerview, but Live 6.0.3 does not.

Something Ableton has done to the code has apparently caused issues starting with 6.0.10 and rolling into 7. I'm pretty surprised this has slipped under the radar--it's a total dealbreaker in terms of getting a professional sounding mix out of arrangerview.

I will do more tests and post more results, but the 5 minute test of opening the exact same set on the exact same quality system in 6.0.10 and 6.0.3 proved that something in 6.0.10 is messed up and causing clicks, while 6.0.3 is fine. Ableton needs to look into this asap--it is not my machines or system, it is the software, I'm now 100% sure of that.

i've been experiencing very loud clicks/pops and occasionally prolonged glitch noises with the cross fader in live 7.0 it appears to link to a sharp cpu spike. i am only running two audio clips in the set. the glitches also transfer over to the rendered audio when i export.

dustplanks wrote:i've been experiencing very loud clicks/pops and occasionally prolonged glitch noises with the cross fader in live 7.0 it appears to link to a sharp cpu spike. i am only running two audio clips in the set. the glitches also transfer over to the rendered audio when i export.

not quite what I'm experiencing, but I get the click in my renders as well, which is a total dealbreaker...the bizzare thing is that the clicks are not consistent if I render out multiple versions of the same song--they clicks happen in different places (and sometimes the same) in the different rendered versions.

Anyone with this problem--please test your problem sets in Live 6.0.3, and see if there are no problems there--the more we can pinpoint when this went wrong, the more likely Ableton can sort this MAJOR problem out...