Ableton Live dropouts when needle dropping

For discussion on the topic of Ms Pinky's "Pinky VST" plugin
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monosylabik
Posts:45
Joined:Mon Dec 11, 2006 9:46 pm
Ableton Live dropouts when needle dropping

Post by monosylabik » Sun Dec 20, 2009 1:24 am

Hey there,

I just found some weird behavior with Pinky VST. I'm using a 4 minute AIFF file to use the 1 min divisions in the vinyl as cue points, but quite often, when I take the needle off the record and move it elsewhere, I get a dropout in Live. I've found that if the sample file is in the same folder as the Live set, it's just a small click or short silence, but if it is located in another HDD, the dropouts get way longer.

I'm on a 15" Macbook Pro 2.4GHz using Live 8.1 with the buffer set to 144 samples. I tried making the plug in buffer size "As Audio Buffer", 256 samples, turning multiple processor support on/off, and I still get the same behavior.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem?
dlpinkstah
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Post by dlpinkstah » Sun Dec 20, 2009 8:28 pm

What's the CPU usage reading in Ableton when this happens?

Two things I would recommend trying:

1) Increase Ableton's audio buffer size (under Prefs-->Audio-->Latency) to something like 256.

2) Also try encoding your AIFF file as an MP3 instead using iTunes. The reason for doing that is to avoid forcing your harddrive to fetch more data than it's speed can allow. By using an MP3 file instead of an AIFF you greatly reduce the amount of data that must be fetched off the hard drive per sample of audio output. The main constraint in this situation is most likely harddrive data fetching speed, not CPU number-crunching speed.
monosylabik
Posts:45
Joined:Mon Dec 11, 2006 9:46 pm

Post by monosylabik » Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:26 pm

Thanks a lot, that makes sense. Now I also see why I was having trouble with 24 bit files. I'll give it a try later.
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