Problem concerning ableton live and audio latency

[sine143]

alright, so I'm a bedroom dj/music lover/song writer myself, and well, honestly i just wanted to open up the demo of ableton and give a go at some live synths and digital drum kits (akai lpd8 actually makes me want to use it as a drum pad)

Long story short, my external sound card (digidesign Mbox 2) seems to be running at obnoxiously high latency, and still has some audio break ups. My input latency is 160ms, and my output latency is 113 ms.... so its pretty impossible to try and play anything through ableton.

Anyone got any tips?

[DJ Phatso]

Are you on MAC or PC ?

On MAC, you should be able to able to modify the sample size directly in Live (Preferences > Audio > Under Latency). Simply grab the orange line and move it to like 10 ms to start and see from there.

On PC, you may be able to do the same thing, or you may have to do it in the MBox control panel (ASIO buffer size or similar).

Obviously, in either case, be sure to have the latest drivers for the Mbox

[Monika.mhz]

If the audio is breaking up though, you've probably got a bigger problem than the latency being too high. Giving us more info on the problem will certainly help!

[sine143]

Alright, I'm on PC, so the only way I can control the ASIO buffer size is with the mbox control panel. regardless of what value I put in that box (128 to 4096) I have audio drops, or random repeats of notes. I have actually had some trouble finding drivers for the mbox, as the disk that came with it (along with protools LE and Reason adapted) simply will not work in any of my laptops. The disk refuses to start spinning. This has not been a problem on any of my desktop systems

I've disabled the inputs for the time being, and I was hoping that would fix the problem, but that's a no. I've not had problems of this magnitude within traktor, and surely not in protools, although my latency has had to be quite high (20ish ms) inside traktor to avoid audio dropouts (when the internal sound card will operate fine at around 12ish).

I'd love to give more detail, buttt I'm kinda pretty far in the dark on the situation, and dont really know where to begin, other than what I have noted.

[LiveFastStephen]

"System Performance Tweaks

Under Start > Control Panel > System, select the Advanced tab. Click the Performance "Settings" button and select the Visual Effects tab. Choose ?adjust for best performance? and then select the Advanced tab. Under Processor Scheduling, select "Background services" to ensure lowest latency with ASIO-based drivers (ASIO drivers run as background services in Windows). Select "Programs" under Memory Usage to ensure that enough RAM gets allocated to your applications."

source: http://www.audioforums.com/windows-xp-optimization.php


there are alot of youtube videos describing latency, sample rate, bitrate, all that, the settings you need depend on your computer, & involve some testing (listing for pops and stuff) so it's best to learn, as to just going off anyone's assumption/advice (not that it should be unappreciated)

[sine143]

Thanks a lot. I've already done the things you've described above (guess I should have said that, saw a post a couple weeks ago, think it was monika). I've done some tweaking with my computer to optimize my latency within traktor, and it runs great on my desktop (which is xp), and it used to run great on my laptop (when I had xp), but now I have 7, cause it was free through my university, and I couldnt find my xp disk when I replaced my hard drive.

However, like I said, it is much worse now that I've started to play with ableton.

[LiveFastStephen]

ah! since you ungraded to Windows 7... Any time you get a driver problem try this
search & download the latest driver, now that's its downloaded right click the Set Up file & click properties, now click the "Comparability" tab, check the "run this program in compatibility mode for" box, & select Windows XP (Service Pack 2), hit apply then OK & run the driver set up.

[LiveFastStephen]

& yea I'm aware he's running Windows 7 not XP,
just for anyone that might think I got confused hahah Im not.

the compatibility mode for XP (SP2) just runs on 7 better then the default for driver not yet made specially for 7.

[BentoSan]

Your using the ASIO drivers and not the WDM drivers right ?

[sine143]

yeah, I'm using the asio, just downloaded the wave drivers last night, and will probably give them a go later today...