Ableton Live 9 now available!

[MBTC]

I realized I had a light version of Ableton Live 8, so I've been checking it out, learning the Live way of doing things etc.

One of the things I noticed was that CPU-intensive plug-ins start making cracking and popping noises if I push them even a little. For example something like Diva I tried the same patch being played the same way on Live8 and FLStudio. The ASIO driver for my Saffire Pro 24 has what I assume is a fixed buffer size of 384 and 9ms latency (I'm not able to change the setting either in Live or FLStudio, whereas it is adjustable if I use the Creative X-Fi Asio driver) but the symptom sounds similar to when latency is set too low. The CPU meter will show about the same % in each application, but the sound difference is like night and day, very clear in FLS and sounds like the monster synth Diva can be, whereas in Live the same synth crackles, cuts out, sounds like its robbing notes. I'm 100% sure the settings are the same in each plugin instance, same PC, same audio interface, etc.

I know its probably solvable with a setting somewhere and is not Live itself, but since I can't change latency / buffer size I'm not sure where to start. I seriously doubt there is any sort of compatibility problem with the audio interface or driver, because Ableton/Focusrite seem to have kind of a partnership here and Live is basically what the audio interface recommends by shipping a Live Lite CD with it.

I know this isn't the Ableton support forum and I've already been searching for clues there, but I thought I'd look for suggestions here as part of my research.

UPDATE #1: One thing I keep forgetting is that my latency / buffer settings are settable in the Saffire Mix software, then it applies to the ASIO settings for all apps. So I went back and experimented with different values and got same results. Plugin buffer size is set to same as audio interface.

UPDATE #2: Above I said if I start "pushing things a little". Pushing things a little to me might be overkill for some, but I noticed the popping before I started setting up ridiculously CPU intensive scenarios to reproduce and test. One that I've been using is the patch called "BS Mono Trancer" for Diva (under Patches > BrontoScorpio), then I change Mono to Poly and Accuracy to Divine. This is a brutal supersaw patch that will quickly put a major load on the CPU for sure, but this plays in FLStudio fine with plenty of room for more sound. Some of the less CPU intensive patches will play without pops of course. I can also reduce pops by choosing a ridiculously high buffer size, but that's no good because the latency is too high to play effectively (and there will still be pops even at 1024!)

[Berni]

[quote=MBTC;302758]I realized I had a light version of Ableton Live 8, so I've been checking it out, learning the Live way of doing things etc.

One of the things I noticed was that CPU-intensive plug-ins start making cracking and popping noises if I push them even a little. For example something like Diva I tried the same patch being played the same way on Live8 and FLStudio. The ASIO driver for my Saffire Pro 24 has what I assume is a fixed buffer size of 384 and 9ms latency (I'm not able to change the setting either in Live or FLStudio, whereas it is adjustable if I use the Creative X-Fi Asio driver) but the symptom sounds similar to when latency is set too low. The CPU meter will show about the same % in each application, but the sound difference is like night and day, very clear in FLS and sounds like the monster synth Diva can be, whereas in Live the same synth crackles, cuts out, sounds like its robbing notes. I'm 100% sure the settings are the same in each plugin instance, same PC, same audio interface, etc.

I know its probably solvable with a setting somewhere and is not Live itself, but since I can't change latency / buffer size I'm not sure where to start. I seriously doubt there is any sort of compatibility problem with the audio interface or driver, because Ableton/Focusrite seem to have kind of a partnership here and Live is basically what the audio interface recommends by shipping a Live Lite CD with it.

You can adjust buffer size/latency in Live's preferences.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Berni

You can adjust buffer size/latency in Live's preferences.

Yeah, I wrote an update about that (see above). The reason the values were locked (read-only) in Live is because with a Firewire Saffire audio interface, you have to change it in the Mixer control.

But still, even with ridiculously large buffer sizes I still get crackles and pops with CPU heavy synths, yet I can do same in FLS without any problems. I did a lot of reading on the forums and some folks seem to never get past this point in Live This would be a deal breaker for me.

I saw one guy say that if you have more than one sound device (i.e. in my case the external audio interface plus an internal sound card) you have to be sure your system sounds are sent only through the regular sound card while Ableton uses the pro audio interface. I tried everything short of physically removing the soundblaster card. Maybe I will do that today. But it's frustrating to run into something like this that works fine in FLStudio.