Recently I've been getting lots of pops, audio dropouts for half a second or more, and occasionally Ableton Live goes full Decimort on me. I'm assuming this is a 'buffer crash' because this is what it used to sound like when it happened in Samplitude (though Samplitude would at least notify me. Live doesn't seem to notice). When this happens there's nothing I can do except close Live and restart it. What a bummer it is though, knowing I might be interrupted at any moment.

The pops and dropouts happen in S1 too, but less. This might be because I use less cpu power to process vocals. It might also have something to do with midi, because I have noticed that it happens a lot during midi input in Live.

I'm not talking about super short buffers here. It happens at 512. It happens at 128 and 256 too though. It also happens regardless of whether I'm using my dedicated driver (Mackie Onyx Blackjack) or Asio4All.

If anyone can help me pinpoint the culprit I'd be extremely grateful.

Win 7 x64
i7 6700k
DAW, OS and plugs are on 250GB SSD Samsung 850 Evo; other stuff is on a 2TB WD Black

 

There can be a few possibilities. Do the pops/drop of half a second in your audio happen all the time or does it happen rarely?
Idealy run the windows task manager (or better "process hacker" a equivalent freebie with more options, it's my default task manager and it runs all the time) and see while you play midi and hear those pops if a process other than your daw makes your cpu spike. It can be a windows service (then the cpu load will be in svchost) or a few softwares or process running in the background (backup service for example) while you do audio.
If it's not a running programm/process that mess things up, it can be a faulty driver. Or your audio interface failing you. Is it old ?
Do you have this problem since day one ?
You shouldn't have this at all unless you go down at 64 with several hungry synths, but other than that with your setup it's odd.

 

Last edited: Jul 24, 2016

The pops occur once every few minutes. The drop outs... I wouldn't call it all the time but it definitely happens in every producing/mixing session. Usually multiple times.

Cool. Trying this now.

Old no, but it is cheap. But would this happen with my DAW if it were the interface? Wouldn't it be more of a hardware problem? Because the thing where my DAW playback is ridiculously downsampled like it's being played back through Decimort seems like an obvious in-the-box problem since it resolves after closing and reopening Live.

And no, this problem is brand new. Like the last couple weeks.

 

Yeah it's not a hardware thing from what you're describing. Just for the sake of trying, maybe change your audio interface on another USB port.
And the symptoms you describe are exactly what I used to get with my old build when using CPU hungry vsties or fxs that it couldn't take or when another process outside the daw was running and hitting my cpu hard, it's lost Asio buffers, too much going on. Even now with things like aether or kaleidoscope at x4 oversampling it becomes too hot, which is why I put them on my other build with Vienna, or else I have those lost buffers again. It's like the sound is crashing. You shouldn't have that at all with your build unless you do crazy things and push it very, very hard.
Try putting your audio interface latency to the maximum, just to see if that calms things down, it would confirm that something is going on in that area.

 

Last edited: Jul 24, 2016

And the fact that it happens less in S1 (but it happens regardless) when you use less power tends to confirm this, I think you gotta a process in the background that's screwing things up.
What's your CPU load at rest , no daw running ?

 

It's interesting because there are no cpu spikes - resource monitor shows that I'm only using 14% of cpu (while curiously, Ableton shows 41% which I thought seemed high, despite it being a large project)

I closed down all the processes I wasn't using, opened up ableton, put the buffer to 1024 (this was before I saw your post about maxing it. I'll try that but I suspect little to no difference) and the pops were still there. Still no idea wtf is going on.

 

Well I'm not sure what is and isn't abnormal, but there are two thing that catch my attention. NT Kernel & System using 146 threads (just seems like an awful lot for something using next to no CPU) and System Interrupts (not sure what that is, even after googling it) is among the top processes using CPU. But again, it's using almost none... its jsut that nothing else is really using any.

 

Those two are normal process, if they don't cause CPU spikes they shouldn't be at fault.
Do you have those cracks and drops when you use Harmor for example in its stand alone edition, nothing else running ?

 

I'll check on the standalone thing. I think the problem might be Acon Digital Equalize. The mixed phase mode defaults to 20ms latency, which I can live with while I'm mixing, but it must be fucking with the buffer somehow. I just deleted every instance of it from this project I'm using as a test subject, and since then no dropouts

 

I spent $60 on that damn plug.

Thanks for all the help bro

 

That's the winner then, you got the sucker, that's cool. I should have thought of that, equilibrium can bring problems with many instances in FIR...Not in other phase responses though you might find settings at which you don't have this behavior.
for the video, but those things happen we rarely put 20 instances of one plug in our daw when we test them we use it on a track or two and if we like it we buy it.
Maybe write an email to acon some other users might have experienced this and there might settings where it runs better.
But at the same time it's a good experiment in a way, when you have sudden weird behaviors with your audio retracing your steps back is your best bet. Here it gave you your answer.
I'm glad you found the culprid