Weird problem with audio dropping out all the time.

[Pitch Black]

@ pitch-black:

do you use more than 1 midi-controller with one laptop? i work with 2 midi-controllers with much midi-assignments and have noticed, that some interactions with the midi-controller can also release drop-outs and cpu-overloads.

so my view is: audio lookahead, caching algorithms in combination with midi-controllers.

Thom,

We are actually using 4 MIDI controllers and Live on two computers, but all the MIDI is pre-merged before it gets to the computers via an M-Audio Midisport 8x8, so each computer is, in effect, receiving a single MIDI controller. Each computer only has one MIDI interface activated in preferences.

I haven't noticed any specific dropouts that seem to be linked to MIDI controller activity. In my case, it seems to be related to Set size.

[unions8]

I have the same problem on my Notebook Toshiba Core Duo 2 GHz. And it's definitely Live's issue. I haven't got a simmilar problem with any other ASIO application on the same computer with the same driver and latency settings... I'm thinking of buying an external FireWire soundcard, but it seems it won't help :-/ Did anyone try to write directly to Ableton?

[Vaishiyas]

same here!

on a Macbook CoreDuo 1,86. 2Gig Ram allmost if the cpu is on 23 % there are comming from time to time some small dropouts at 512 Samples Latency....at 1024 Samples latency i dont get it so much,but unter 512 will be much more better for playing live.....the set contains live 2 Gb auf audiomaterial.

Soundcard is an M-Audio Fast Track Pro Usb!

so definatly its a bug,at 90% cpu intesivity i can accept but not at around 20%!

...waiting and waiting

[karll]

Im having the same problem using a mac book with m-audio firewire audiophile, ableton just cuts off all audio after a short while, its very frustrating, i contacted ableton support today and am waiting anxiuosly for a reply....

[annihilator.1]

Having same probs as described above , for example i'll create a tune that runs fine without any glitches while making it but when that tune is loaded fresh from a reboot live will glitch at almost every change of clip.

Related is that i have noticed that live is putting extra / unneeded points on clip envelopes at the start and end of a clip meaning that a click occurs when that clip is triggered.


WinXP

[Vaishiyas]

some news mayby...or still waiting for live 9


i think it looks like ableton need a warm up phase ...like

....activate all loops,song u have in a set for a 1st time....and mostly
in the 2nd start of each clip it wont happend again(the glitches)....but...

...can this be real for a programm we spent such a money...i mean its called ableton live not ableton to Live-Pre Cache..or?

hope this will be fixed soon

[lifeisdream]

I wrote to ableton support and they said that the bug is related to how osx uses it's memory and that it take a little while till the system understands how much memory
should be reserved for Live.
They said to set the CPU simulation in the Audio Preferences/CPU usage simulator to the max and activate the test tone for a second or two.
and that should fix it. . hopefully this will help. but I don't want to have to do this on live gigs.

[SimonFD]

I've been getting this problem too. I thought it was my audio interface drivers so I updated them but there was no improvement. I tried using just the core audio OSX drivers & a midi controller keyboard but the problem is still there so it must be Live that's at fault. I don't have any problems in any other software (e.g. Garageband)

The weird thing is that it only seems to have started happening recently. It's a real bummer 'coz it's shaken my faith in the very thing I loved about Live which is it's rock solid stability.

I've also been getting some crazy latency problems where the software was showing 15.9ms overall latency but when I recorded a guitar part it was more like 50ms plus! Not good.

I never had any of these problems before, it's like some bug in the Live code has just awoken...spooky!

Hope they fix it soon.

[nobbystylus]

I wrote to ableton support and they said that the bug is related to how osx uses it's memory and that it take a little while till the system understands how much memory
should be reserved for Live.
They said to set the CPU simulation in the Audio Preferences/CPU usage simulator to the max and activate the test tone for a second or two.
and that should fix it. . hopefully this will help. but I don't want to have to do this on live gigs.

hmmm... interesting... i will try this out at our next gig for sure... still seems crazy..

[drumroll57]

Alright, I am really concerned about this as I have a very similar setup, and about to embark on a tour where
audio might have to play from one computer for several hours. Here is a suggestion for those fortunate enough
to run on OS-X

You will need a second Mac running OS-X, any old model sitting in the closet will do, connect it to the main
one via ethernet and make sure to set up your networking parameters so that the second machine can log in
to the main one. (Static IP recommended).

Make sure to enable System Preferences > Sharing > Remote log-in in the main machine's control panel.

Then use the second computer to log into the first one using ssh (secure shell) via your Terminal window.
(Applications > Utilities > Terminal on the second machine)
Once you are logged into the main computer from the old machine via ssh, type 'top' at the command line.
This will give you a sort of remote control into the processor activity, processes running, percentage of memory
they use, and so on.

While you run Live on the main computer, have someone else watch the terminal window on the second machine's
screen, and try to ask them to observe carefully at the point you know audio will likely drop out. That person should
be able to see which processes suddenly spike, and therefore understand what is causing this condition.

Not sure that this would work, the only downside of running 'top' on the main machine is that it will use up to ~10%
or processor cycles to give you good monitoring.

One thing I have found on the Mac is that the 'mdimport' process can sometimes hog significant amounts of memory
and processor cycles. This process is related to 'Spotlight' catalog indexing, and comes on automatically every so often.

Strange that no one from Ableton has really commented on this....

D.

[Tarasmil]

Friends, I have the same problem:

drop outs of very low cpu loading tracks just when passing through them the first or the second time. When I passed later it doesn't drop out. Seems that OSX is not consciouss of what resources has to reserve for Live.

I've monitored the cpu load with the Utility coming with OSX and the cpu load is larger than shown by Live. Besides the amount of ram devoted to Live is 700 MB (!!), with very few samples loaded.

I've adressed the problem to the technical support and they haven't given me a solution. Is there any official response from Ableton out there?

I've tried the "tone" method explained above but it doesn't help me either..

OSX 10.4.9, Firewire Audiophile, 1GB RAM

Thanks

[sam i am]

I freed up about the amount of hard disk space I'd need for a set, then reduced the Maximum Cache Size to less than this amount. It seemed to alleviate the problem. I had a glitch the other night as my set reached the limit of my disk space & the disk space was less than the Max. Cache Size (it wasn't at a gig, I was just prepping the set & had increased the amount of data on my hard drive during time-coding)

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61460

[earthlinger]

same dropout problem here since live 5.2 mbp 2 ghz core duo, osx 10.4.9, fireface 800

[Tarasmil]

I don't know if I'm going to give useful clues or bring more confusion to our problem. Investigating I've found this:

1. Ableton Live (based on the information given by the Utility coming from MAC OSx) loads my CPU with a frigthening percentage of 85%, while the cpu indicator of Live gives me 30 %.

2. With the same Utility I've found that the amount of memory used by Live is 800MB (!!), with no more than 10MB of samples used, and few plugins.

All of that done with a light set: 8 tracks, 10 "light" plugins.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
iMac, core 2 DUO, 1GB RAM, 7200RPM, 250GB HD

[orlandorr]

My guess is the audio lookahead or caching algorithms have a glitch somewhere. I may roll back to 6.05 to confirm that this didn't happen then.

-M

This is totally whats happening.. Live is not Pre-buffering or caching or whatever you want to call it as the song is playing.. The song starts from the top and there is no disk activity and then it gets to a certain section of the song and decides "Oh shit, i should load all of these files right now.." and then it freezes with the hard drive light solid orange..

I can run the same files in live 5.2.2 and not experience the problem.. I can also run the same exact files in reaper and watch the hard disk read amount through the snazzy performance meter that program has.. It says I'm pulling 5.09mb/sec while playing back 22 88k wav files. No glitches, no hangups, no problems. So, its definitely something with Live 6. I tried all version from 6.0.1 to 6.0.7 and it happens on every single one of them.

Confirmed. This is a problem that has been bugging me for months and I hadn't the slightest idea of what could be the cause. I even bought a new E-MU 0404 USB thinking that it could be the audio driver. Not.

Now I'm back to Live 5 and the problem is solved. Rock solid even when it uses only one processor core. But now I have to convert some projects back to Live 5!

I have an Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 1 GB DDR2 800, 120 GB HDD, Windows XP x64, so you can see that it occurs in PC and Mac.

People, Live 6 has serious issues.