Live has slowed down into a horrible stuttering mess!

markone · Post by **markone** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:47 pm

Hello,

I'm working on a song at the moment which has around 20 tracks, all of 8 bar length. They are pretty much all midi with different VST effects on them. They are all frozen, so essentially Live is just playing back 20 audio files at the same time (and I believe it is therefore irrelevent what plug ins are being used). There are also about 3 VST effects being used on sends that are still active.

If I loop the 8 bar section of all 20 tracks for instance it will not be able to play all tracks at the same time. The audio will drop out and stutter all over the place. The looped area has to play over for a few minutes before it begins to play it properly.

I have a PC that is pretty much optimised, and only contains audio programs / files (no internet or other rubbish).

The sound card has been set to a very high latency aswell.

The main specs of the machine are as follows

D09516 Dimension 5100
Dimension 5100 Pentium 4 Processor 630 with HT technology (3.00GHz,
800MHz fsb, 2MB cache)
1024MB Dual Channel DDR2 400MHz (2x512) Memory
250GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive

I have partitioned my drive. Would it be more efficient if Live was saving the frozen files to a partiction of the drive that did not have the operating system on?

Would it be more efficient if Live was saving the frozen files to an external drive?

How would people go about upgrading this machine (more ram, duel core processor instead) to better deal with the situation?

Any help would be appreciated

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:52 pm

When was the last time you defrragged? Dumped temp files?

Do those two things and see if things improve.

ew

markone · Post by **markone** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 4:04 pm

Will defrag later and dump temp files too. Was actually gonna check if dumping temp files might damage anything, but presume it won't?

ewistrand · Post by **ewistrand** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 4:20 pm

Nope, it won't. You've saved what you're working on, after all.

Also, when you're done with both of them, check how much free space you have on your drive. If you're under 25% free, it's time to either 1) move things off the drive, or 2) get a new drive. Windows gets cranky with under 25% free, and under 15%, there's not enough room for system tasks.

ew

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 4:23 pm

de;ete our prefences file mate

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 4:36 pm

what SJ said, yes.

markone · Post by **markone** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:09 pm

By deleting the preferences files is that pretty much the same as clearing out what I have in 'documents and settings' or is there a difference?

Mesmer · Post by **Mesmer** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:03 pm

you can read this very recent discussion, before deleting anything:
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=68300

it will make me sleep better at night.
-h

Akshara · Post by **Akshara** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:41 pm

Deleting preferences is a Mac thing, doesn't really translate to a WinPC. Your system seems fine spec-wise and should be able to handle the project you have. Some thoughts that immediately come to mind...

Having a second internal hard drive for audio recording only could be a big help here, especially in regards to track count and playback. Before completely rearranging your system, the first thing I'd do is buy a dedicated internal drive and place it by itself as a primary drive on the second drive channel of your motherboard, either IDE or SATA. Basically, don't install it as a slave to your OS drive or CD/DVD drive.

Audio glitching can be caused by several things:

I'm presuiming you have a quality audio interface, probably PCI card based? If so, make sure you have the latest drivers for it.

With PCI cards, it's important that the audio card be installed on it's own IRQ slot and not sharing a slot with the graphics card. This can cause glitching in playback. When the computer boots up, look at the list of IRQ slots and see if your audio card (usually "Mulitmedia Audio Device") is sharing an IRQ number with anything else. If so, try uninstalling and moving the card to another PCI slot. Though it depends on the motherboard, many systems will have one slot that automatically gets assigned a unique IRQ, often the 3rd slot. Try moving it one slot away from the graphics card, leaving an empty slot between them. You may want to research your motherboard manufacturer's forums for this issue.

If there are any applications polling or running in the background, this can cause glitching. Try to disable any startup programs or background processes that are unnecessary. Also, setting Processor Scheduling to background services rather than applications can make a big difference.

Here is an excellent resource site for optimizing WinXP for audio. Just do as many of the tips as possible in the Tuning Tios section, and you should see some better performance. Also, look through the Hardware section for tips on drive selection and IRQ settings...

http://www.musicxp.net/index.php

Hope some of this helps. If you get the system optimized and are running a dedicated audio drive with a quality audio interface, these type of problems should go away. You're system is more than adequate for what you're trying to do, in my opinion anyway. Getting pro audio performance is a delicate balance that requires a combination of things to attain.

Good luck.

3dot... · Post by **3dot...** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 6:52 am

...sounds like a HD problem...

have the project read from a different Hd than the OS and Live...