windows vista: dropouts

daveberger · Post by **daveberger** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:48 pm

I was a fool and bought myself a brandspanking new PC laptop with very good tech specs but windows vista for an OS (i've already looked into downgrading to XP, seems to be impossible).

live 6 is running and everything seems to be fine but i keep getting audio dropouts due to hard disk overload, even when running no more than five tracks and hardly any plugins. could this be a compatibility issue with vista as the processing power and RAM of the machine are well above live 6 requirements?

any suggestions would be much appreciated.

anyone got a Mac to give away? no? bummer.

MarkH · Post by **MarkH** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 6:08 am

I had the same problem at first. Is Live dropping audio every 30 to 45 seconds, where each drop lasts about 1/4 of a second? If so, do this. I posted it on the TC Konnekt thread.

<--snip-->
Something that I think is a Live issue and not a TC issue, set Live's application priority to High. The fastest way to do this is load Live, press CTRL+ALT+DEL, Start Task Manager, Processes, right click Live 6.0.10.exe and set priority to High.

If you want to make Live always run at High priority (I recommend this!) and don't want to CTRL+ALT+DEL every time you launch Live, do the following. Right click your Live application icon and Send to Desktop (Create Shortcut). On the shortcut, right click the icon and select Properties. There is a box called Target. It probably reads something like:

"C:\Program Files\Ableton\Live 6.0.10\Program\Live 6.0.10.exe"

Change it so Target reads:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "runhigh" /high "C:\Program Files\Ableton\Live 6.0.10\Program\Live 6.0.10.exe"

This will always launch Live as a High priority application. Leave the quotes around the actual application path.
<--snip-->

I had to disable Aero because my TC Konnekt driver would cause crackles and pops. I realized that I was using the nVidia driver that came built into Windows and after installing the latest nVidia driver from nVidia's site I can enable Aero again.

daveberger · Post by **daveberger** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 1:53 pm

hello mark

thanks very much for your time.

i've done what you describe but am still getting dropouts on some tracks. the Disc Overload Indicator actually lights up quite regularly but live does not always drop out.

its in the same places on the track (i'm mostly using arrangement view) and I can hear the harddisk starting up when it happens. I can actually hear that every minute or so as i'm typing this and even as i'm merely lookin at the screen not doing anything. my laptop is a HP pavillon dv2500 notebook with intel core2 duo CPU, T7100 @ 1.80GHz and 2GB RAM.

how do I disable aero? i've already optimised visual display for maximum performance.

could the problem have something to do with where on the harddisk i've saved the projects and audio samples? nothing unusual, just a couple of folder levels into the C drive. plus with the laptop being brand new, there's only few programmes installed and hardly any user date on the harddrive.

This is driving me insane. need the thing to work for the band and the way we're set up at the moment we can't gig withough it. nightmare.

thanks again. dave

daveberger · Post by **daveberger** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:52 pm

I've just noticed my memory usage with nothing open shows around 840MB. Surely thats not normal even for vista standards?

MarkH · Post by **MarkH** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 7:46 pm

The way to disable Aero - Right-clik on the desktop -> Personalize -> Window Color and Appearance -> Open Classic Appearance and select Vista Basic.

Your memory usage does indeed sound higher than it should be. Do you have. On the desktop, right click Personalize -> Screen- Saver -> Change Power Settings and make sure you have energy saver at the Highest Performance.

daveberger · Post by **daveberger** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:01 am

Memory usage is now on 780MB... might try and get dual boot set up and run live on XP. Any other ideas? thanks

Herne · Post by **Herne** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 10:59 pm

90% memory usage is normal in Vista, this is used for PreCaching [SuperFetch], if a program requests memory it is released to the program. This is nothing out of the ordinary. Just Google for Superfetch, and it's explained in full on he MS Vista site.

Adding to the other tips: 2GB RAM is a good idea, as is disabling power saving for ALL USB controllers and devices. Run Live from your Windows disk, and sample sets from an external USB2 or firewire drive for best performance.

The problem as you have described it is the TCKonnect driver, and not Vista.