Slow loading DJ project, HD overloads, fun times

[Wesley]

So I was mixing today, and I started getting hard disk overloads resulting in drop outs. Loading the project takes 3-4 minutes now, it's got about 160 tracks in it, mp3's @ 320 & WAV, in subfolders. Using a G-tech Mini Firewire-800 drive.

This wasn't happening before, it's a new thing, not sure what's causing it. Is my drive dying? I've never dealt with this on a Mac before, the drive isn't old or anything.

After a project loads super slowly (as if it's reading these files for the first time and redrawing waveforms or something) it performs normally.

Before I rebooted I was getting overloads after less than 4 seconds. I was at a point where I could not play, triggering a clip would play it, but 4 seconds later, drop out, HD overload. So I shut down, came back, took forever to load up the clips, now I can play all the tracks at the same time with no problem.

Anybody been here, done this?

-Wesley

[Wesley]

After defragmenting and running ONYX Ableton loads in 10 seconds and the entire project in less than 30 seconds.

I emailed tech support and the only thing they suggested was free space. I'm only using 40 out of 250GB on an external Firewire800 drive (7200rpm).

Has anyone ever heard of USB devices or USB hubs affecting hard disk overloads?

-Wes

[Tarekith]

Try increasing the size of your decoding cache in the Live preferences.

[Wesley]

Oh hey, what's up man?, it's Wesley D. from LivePA, thanks for the suggestion. I actually had this setting turned off. I've never had this HD overload thing happen until very recently, and at the moment it's not happening at all, but I suppose I should let Live have some cache.

The manual doesn't exactly state whether or not this decoding cache is completely necessary, I'm guessing this is where Ableton parks WAV conversions of MP3 files? It says the only purpose is for "compressed samples". Seems odd it could work with it disabled if it is in fact needed, but I completely overlooked this setting.

Thanks again for your response, I've just created a new cache folder on my audio drive and I'll keep an eye on it and see if this problem goes away.

Cheers,

-Wesley

[Tarekith]

Yeah, if you're using MP3's live decodes everything to the cache as wav files. So if the cache gets full, it has to dump some o fthat to make room for new mp3's. In general I always suggest people just convert their MP3's to wav right away and use those since Live is going to do it anyway, saves a lot of the hassles we see on the AbletonLiveDJ.com forums.

[Wesley]

I've read about live doing the internal conversion, but how was it working before when I had it disabled? Was it all living in the RAM? That would explain why I could go on for 1-2 hours before noticing an issue.

It's definitely alarming though to see my start-up time go from under 1 minute, to over 5 minutes with HD overload and dropouts, then back to under 1 minute with no dropouts. Only difference was disconnecting USB gear, defragging (which Apple says is unnecessary) and running ONYX.

Hopefully adding the cache will prevent this problem from returning. And maybe I'll either convert or just spring extra for WAV files from now on.

-Wes