Strage Stuttering Lag - have a gig in 3 hours...help?

COSM · Post by **COSM** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 8:54 am

Heyas,

I've had this problem for a few weeks now. What happens is about 40 minutes into my set of continuous audio (I have one set with all my clips in a huge session view), live will skip/stutter for a second when playing clips... everything is fine until a point where clips just take a minute to think before they play.. I get a CPU spike and the audio cuts out very breifly (enough to be a huge issue).

If I close live and restart immediatley, load up the set and continue everything works fine.

It happened performing live last week, but sorted itself out after a few minutes.. its just happened again now as I am practicing.

I run my set at about 20-30% CPU and never go above 40%...

Any ideas? It's a real pain as I gotta play in about 3-4 hours at a pretty big gig and looking for a fast solution!

thankyou

-Tom

Amaury · Post by **Amaury** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 8:59 am

Hi Tom,

Can you think of anything that has changed between the time you had no issues, and now?

Maybe you should also send a mail to support with the usual files, that could help too.

Regards,
Amaury

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 9:05 am

I get this too, after about 30-45 minutes of continuous playing in my live set (which is all in one als file as well)

I've found that I have to set my buffer larger than normal and it fixes it. i.e. I usually run 512, but I have to use 768 for my liveset.

djod · Post by **djod** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 9:36 am

Try putting some files into ram around the 40 minutes area, are there more clips then in the rest of the set? Are you recording audio during your set? Are you recording your set?, this can course problems, will long audio files and buffering. Is your disk full? If your disk content has changed its performance could also be different ( outer rings are faster then inner rings )

Good luck.

COSM · Post by **COSM** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 5:10 pm

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I did read them before I played but was in such a rush i couldn't thank you before I left.

I didn't change anything and just hoped for the best, which worked out. It didn't happen, which kind of pisses me off in a way as it now means its not a static problem and I have to fully figure out what's happening.

Thankyou for the suggestions

gig went perfect

-Tom

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 8:56 pm

Computers are really weird.
Perhaps it's some sort of automated process that your OS tries to run? I know OSX runs a few things in the middle of the night sometimes.

muthafunka · Post by **muthafunka** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 1:23 am

Speak to Pitch Black too, they're masters of the mega-set and I think may have experience w/ something similar.

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:08 am

Not masters any more since moving to OSX and Live 6 (from OS9 and Live 4) for our live gigs. We've had the same problem. We gave up trying to sort it out (we were 48 hours from leaving for an overseas tour) and ended up splitting the set into two halves, with an iPod joiner for 60 seconds. Not an ideal situation at all.

I added to this thread here: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 1&start=12

Tom, you're on PC eh? That would seem to point to it being a Live issue, and not an OS one.

Amo, any comments? This seems to be well-documented problem...

-paddy

vinkalmann · Post by **vinkalmann** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:38 am

What's the temperature of your machine like after playing for 40 minutes? Does it seem overly hot?

Amaury · Post by **Amaury** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:39 am

Pitch Black wrote:Not masters any more since moving to OSX and Live 6 (from OS9 and Live 4) for our live gigs. We've had the same problem. We gave up trying to sort it out (we were 48 hours from leaving for an overseas tour) and ended up splitting the set into two halves, with an iPod joiner for 60 seconds. Not an ideal situation at all.

I added to this thread here: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 1&start=12

Tom, you're on PC eh? That would seem to point to it being a Live issue, and not an OS one.

Amo, any comments? This seems to be well-documented problem...

-paddy

Hi,

Still hard to say, as we would need to actually be able to reproduce the problem which did not yet happen (even though trying, letting machines run for hours etc..). But we'll try harder, and keep you informed.

Regards,
Amaury

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:57 am

maybe you're not being EXTREME enough on your tweaking!

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 8:20 am

I can happily FedEx a Live Set to Berlin for Abletons to abuse. Someone in the office must have access to a MBP and a Fireface400.

A random thought, and I don't know if I'm barking up the wrong tree here, but when triggering and tweaking the sh!t out of a large Live Set for 1 - 2 hours, does any "overload" accumulate due to Live constantly updating its Undo file to disk? Is there something going on here that gets "full" after a while...?

I don't want to spread disinformation, just throwin' out hypotheses...

M. Groc?

COSM · Post by **COSM** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:12 pm

Paddy thats the first thing I thought of when it started happening. My sets have changed recently resulting in quite a lot more small processes happening while playing... and it just feels like I've run out of room somewhere.... the audio plays fine... i can still tweak and grind... but when its time for a new clip to come in it spikes from 20% cpu up to well over 100!

The other reason I think this, is because after an immediate restart of just Live, not my computer, everything goes back to normal and I can pick up where I left off.

I am on a PC.

The machine isn't overheating. As I said, my sets don't use a hell of a lot of processing.

I'm also willing to go to some lengths to make sure this doesn't happen again. Next time it happens I will take special note of what goes on...

rikhyray · Post by **rikhyray** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:51 pm

I had similar problem 2-3 times in last 2 years. Mailed the sets to Ableton, never found what it was, why, what really happens but what you write describes it rather accurately.
Looks like something accumulates, some weird data, no idea what it might be. My practical solution, I reconstructed such set as new, using the original as reference but only dragging the original sounds. It worked, that is why I am saying it looks like accumulation of some unwanted data. I had it happen in different versions 4,5,6 with different soundcards and computers.

John Sweet · Post by **John Sweet** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:05 pm

I use big sets too, and I've had the same problem. I don't use quantizing, so clips are usually right there when I hit 'em, but maybe once a night they won't be. There'll be a dip that feels like an eternity (but is probably just a second or less) then everything comes back playing in time but not feeling in time after the gap. I never push my CPU past 50%, so that's not it. It sorta feels like Live loses my hard drives for a second.

Another one I get every once in a while is the mysterious slowdown. The tempo display looks right, it's close, but it's wrong. I can't prove it, but it's there.

When I'm superstitious I pre-listen to everything to try & minimize this. I also try to scramble all my MIDI controls before playing any audio, as you can sometimes get dips when you hit a control for the first time like it's "waking up."

I've had it since I started with the superset approach on version 5.