Weird problem with audio dropping out all the time.

testube · Post by **testube** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 8:44 pm

Scratch what I said earlier about my mouse. It does still get frozen. I also just had to force another power off when Ableton locked after rendering a file.

testube · Post by **testube** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 3:20 pm

Well, I received a very quick response from Nico at Ableton tech support (thanks!) and he wants me to try a few things. He suspects some sort of midi feedback loop might be happening.

Unfortunately, I can't really test it, because guess what? The track is playing fine today. No hiccups, no stuttering, no dropouts, nothing. It plays the entire track straight through with no issues, even during the thickest arrangement areas. Windows task manager shows the program peaking at around 80% usage, as opposed to the 100% it was showing yesterday. I didn't change anything since I last played it with all of the problems last night, so I have no idea why it is working perfectly today.

This makes me want to leave my computer on all of the time so that it doesn't switch back to problem mode. The only thing worse than software problems are inconsistent software problems.

Has anyone else noticed that this dropout problem comes and goes?

I may try and get one of those laptop cooling platforms and see if that makes any difference. However, my studio only fluctuates about 5 degrees from morning to evening, so I don't think that a 5 degree rise in ambient temperature would cause this problem, but who knows...

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 6:35 pm

They have to find where the problem is.
Don't you think guys?

mauriziodami · Post by **mauriziodami** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 12:33 am

Dear Christian:

1)Yes I'm using Live 6.07
2) I've all the specific latest drivers for Windows Vista
3) I've 2 gigas RAM
4) I play waves 44100 16 bit
5) I play no more than 3 stereo tracks at the same time
6) The processor usage is always at about 3%

I've drops in audio, from 1 second to 5 seconds at least for 1 time during my gigs!
It's not a problem of Vista or Mac OS, it's a problem of Ableton!
maurizio

orlandorr · Post by **orlandorr** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 9:54 pm

mauriziodami wrote:Dear Christian:

1)Yes I'm using Live 6.07
2) I've all the specific latest drivers for Windows Vista
3) I've 2 gigas RAM
4) I play waves 44100 16 bit
5) I play no more than 3 stereo tracks at the same time
6) The processor usage is always at about 3%

I've drops in audio, from 1 second to 5 seconds at least for 1 time during my gigs!
It's not a problem of Vista or Mac OS, it's a problem of Ableton!
maurizio

You're right maurizio. I had a project with two audio tracks and 3 MIDI. After freezing all tracks except one Impulse MIDI track, it still would happen.

It always goes like this: press play, everything goes fine, almost no disk activity, and suddenly along the song the disk LED lits solid orange and Ableton goes crazy.

king dingaling · Post by **king dingaling** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:17 am

So I just got Ableton 5.0.2 and I'm experiencing the exact same things described in this post. But the thing is, I start ableton and click on a file just to preview and I get glitches and cpu overload out the wazzoo. I'm running macbook 2gh duo w/ 2gb ram and I can't even get a preview?!? wtf.

I haven't even had the chance to record and the program and failing miserably. What is going on? I am only posting in hopes of at least letting these problems be heard.

Sigh. No one wants to sleep instead of making music, but that's what is come to.

DJ VAKIS · Post by **DJ VAKIS** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:32 am

king dingaling wrote:So I just got Ableton 5.0.2 and I'm experiencing the exact same things described in this post. But the thing is, I start ableton and click on a file just to preview and I get glitches and cpu overload out the wazzoo. I'm running macbook 2gh duo w/ 2gb ram and I can't even get a preview?!? wtf.

I haven't even had the chance to record and the program and failing miserably. What is going on? I am only posting in hopes of at least letting these problems be heard.

Sigh. No one wants to sleep instead of making music, but that's what is come to.

5.0.2 it is not UB.You need the UB Live 5.2 for intel mac.It is paid version.

Amaury · Post by **Amaury** » Mon Jul 02, 2007 8:56 am

orlandorr wrote:
mauriziodami wrote:Dear Christian:

1)Yes I'm using Live 6.07
2) I've all the specific latest drivers for Windows Vista
3) I've 2 gigas RAM
4) I play waves 44100 16 bit
5) I play no more than 3 stereo tracks at the same time
6) The processor usage is always at about 3%

I've drops in audio, from 1 second to 5 seconds at least for 1 time during my gigs!
It's not a problem of Vista or Mac OS, it's a problem of Ableton!
maurizio
You're right maurizio. I had a project with two audio tracks and 3 MIDI. After freezing all tracks except one Impulse MIDI track, it still would happen.

It always goes like this: press play, everything goes fine, almost no disk activity, and suddenly along the song the disk LED lits solid orange and Ableton goes crazy.

Hi,

I'm answering this one, but as a general rule: you need to tell which computer you're using, and what system, what EXACT version of Live, and which hardware. There are different issue that could look the same. Sometimes, there are problems with Firewire interface on Mac OSX utilizing too much CPU, sometimes cache problems on a PC, sometimes the wrong version used on an Intel Mac. So it is important to separate the problems so that we can treat them.

We give a lot of attention to the Mac OSX memory allocation problem, though it not not entirely in our hands.

Regards,
Amaury

pickerin1 · Post by **pickerin1** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 9:35 am

Amaury, I am using Live 5.2 (universal binary i believe) on a macbook pro 2.2gHz OSX 10.4.10 and a Edirol FA-66 firewire audio interface.

I am shocked at the amount of tracks some people here can use - i literally get to about 5 tracks (3 audio, 2 midi, with a couple of audio effects on each) before my CPU load reaches about 90% and everything grinds to a halt. I'm guessing this is a different issue though, but it's very frustrating - if you have any suggestions please let me know!

I am also suffering the audio drop-out issue but i have a feeling it is not just live that is having problems (it happens with itunes too) see my thread in the bugs & problems section

cheers

-rory

Amaury · Post by **Amaury** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 9:50 am

pickerin1 wrote:Amaury, I am using Live 5.2 (universal binary i believe) on a macbook pro 2.2gHz OSX 10.4.10 and a Edirol FA-66 firewire audio interface.

I am shocked at the amount of tracks some people here can use - i literally get to about 5 tracks (3 audio, 2 midi, with a couple of audio effects on each) before my CPU load reaches about 90% and everything grinds to a halt. I'm guessing this is a different issue though, but it's very frustrating - if you have any suggestions please let me know!

I am also suffering the audio drop-out issue but i have a feeling it is not just live that is having problems (it happens with itunes too) see my thread in the bugs & problems section

cheers

-rory

Hi,

Lately, I hear from a lot of people that have one thing in common: a Mac and an Edirol FA-66. The fact that you also have problems in Itunes leads to the same conclusion: the problem must be hardware related.

You should try to work with the internal soundcard for some time, and see how that goes.

Regards,
Amaury

pickerin1 · Post by **pickerin1** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 2:17 pm

yup the internal soundcard is fine..

perhaps i should get a refund then. I'll try ringing edirol first

cheers

size32 · Post by **size32** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 10:34 pm

running 6.07 on a pbook G4 1.67 with 1G of ram using internal audio and am having the same problem. it seems to be partially relieved if i quit other memory hogging apps like firefox and thunderbird, but it does not disappear and as such makes live completely unusable for actually playing live.

my set has 10 tracks, most of which are frozen, but even those will briefly drop out when a new clip is introduced.

on top of this all i am having a possibly related issue in which random clips actually just don't play. these could be frozen or unfrozen clips. their signals register in the meter on the right of the arrangement but there is no sound. the only way to make the clip sound is to quickly mute and unmute it. anyone else experiencing this?

I am not using any VSTs or other plugins in this set. I love this software but this is such a serious problem that it is making me reconsider both using and endorsing it.

thomasv · Post by **thomasv** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:48 pm

size32 wrote:running 6.07 on a pbook G4 1.67 with 1G of ram using internal audio and am having the same problem. it seems to be partially relieved if i quit other memory hogging apps like firefox and thunderbird, but it does not disappear and as such makes live completely unusable for actually playing live.

my set has 10 tracks, most of which are frozen, but even those will briefly drop out when a new clip is introduced.

on top of this all i am having a possibly related issue in which random clips actually just don't play. these could be frozen or unfrozen clips. their signals register in the meter on the right of the arrangement but there is no sound. the only way to make the clip sound is to quickly mute and unmute it. anyone else experiencing this?

I am not using any VSTs or other plugins in this set. I love this software but this is such a serious problem that it is making me reconsider both using and endorsing it.

FYI, i have the same problem with randomly missing audio. Note that the same exact files do just fine in Live 5.
my setup:

Live 6.0.7
Mac G5 PPC
dual 2.0GHz
2.5GB RAM
MOTU firewire 828

unions8 · Post by **unions8** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:58 am

The crucial fact is, i use the same computer with other audio software witht pretty same computer setup and everything works well. But in Live I have this problem even with the single drum track nd single bass trackt with CPU load somewhere about 5 %. No matter if I preroll the clips or not. It occures regurarly on looped tracks once in cca 2 minutes. As you can see, the problem is definitely not in my computer but unfortunately in the Live itself. Sorry

But still, Live is the No. 1 for me, hehe.

Stepaan

thedeadsea · Post by **thedeadsea** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:46 pm

To quote a response from Ableton support in relation to this issue:

"Also I recently discovered a little shareware patch (I didn´t have time to try it out yet) which is supposed to be designed exactly for the purpose of changing the systems behavior, you might want to give it a try (it´s got a trial period):

http://www.activata.co.uk/products/ifreemem.html

I apologize for coming up with third party solutions, but since this is a pretty cheap one it might just be the thing for you if you need a fix asap!

If you try that one out, please let know how if it solved the problem."

I've just downloaded this app and am definitely going to give it a go - any one out there have experience with this doing the trick???

Tim.

Weird problem with audio dropping out all the time.

true.

Re: true.

same problem, plus tracks that just don't play

Re: same problem, plus tracks that just don't play

iFreeMem