# Am I getting the best out of my IMAC & Ableton
**URL:** https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [January 14, 2011, 2:33pm UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355 "2011-01-14T14:33:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Mintaka](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/Mintaka)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2011, 2:33pm UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/1 "2011-01-14T14:33:05Z")
**Am I getting the best out of my IMAC & Ableton**
So I bought a new Imac 27 about 4 weeks ago having come from a PC background for years. However I have found the sound playback quality in Ableton to contain interferacance, glitches and pops.
When I use the reverb effect and very long effect there is lots of distortion and crackling. This is the same with a beat repeat etc
Sometimes the bass of a loop pinks and sounds glitchy rather than smooth, at other times it sounds flawless.
CPU is working at max 65% when I have 8 audio channels playing with effects on each channel. I expected there to be no glitches in play back as the Imac Spec is quite good (i5 4gb ram).
The latency is approx 9 sec and error compensation 0. The samples I have set to arround 200, I am not sure whether this is any good, however there seems to be no improvement when I adjust the values.
I am using a saphire pro 14 firewire sound card and a vestax vcm 600 midi controller and also novation launchpad.
Would being connected to the internet via wifi effect performance? Should I have certain programs closed whilst using ableton (I often have itunes open too)
I expected playback to be flawless, however at the momment it is omparable to the same setup I had with my 2gb windows pc.
Any advice / help would be much appreciated.
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### Author:  [@TommyQuiet](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/TommyQuiet)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2011, 2:44pm UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/2 "2011-01-14T14:44:12Z")
it might be your soundcard get the latest drivers etc… and yes turn wifi off
i came from pc to mac a few weeks ago and will never go back to windows for music/audio stuff,macs just work so yes just check your sound card and your latency mess about with the settings
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### Author:  [@mostapha](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/mostapha)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/3 "2011-01-14T18:04:12Z")
You mentioned distortion…where are your levels peaking?
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### Author:  [@Mintaka](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/Mintaka)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2011, 1:43pm UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/4 "2011-01-15T13:43:32Z")
> [@mostapha](#):
>
> You mentioned distortion…where are your levels peaking?
levels are fine all in the green (all volume set to maximum 0db, master with limiter)
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### Author:  [@PIX-1138](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/PIX-1138)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2011, 1:52pm UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/5 "2011-01-15T13:52:07Z")
> [@Mintaka](#):
>
> I have found the sound playback quality in Ableton to contain interferacance, glitches and pops.
> [@](#):
>
> it might be your soundcard get the latest drivers etc… and yes turn wifi off
> [@](#):
>
> macs just work
Am I the only one that sees a problem here?
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### Author:  [@Mintaka](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/Mintaka)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2011, 2:14pm UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/6 "2011-01-15T14:14:15Z")
> [@PIX-1138](#):
>
> Am I the only one that sees a problem here?
I checked my latency settings did the test using the test tone and the 80% simulated cpu usage…these were the values
input and out put latency 2.83 ms
overall latency 5.67 ms
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### Author:  [@mostapha](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/mostapha)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2011, 1:24am UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/7 "2011-01-16T01:24:50Z")
> [@PIX-1138](#):
>
> Am I the only one that sees a problem here?
No, but I can’t replicate his problems. He’s doing something wrong.
@OP,
You said your levels are all in the green and you’re using a master limiter…what are you individual channels actually peaking at…i’m looking for numbers here. And about how much limiting are you getting?
Also 5.67ms latency might be just a bit low. I have no such problems on an older macbook running similar things with 6ms latency and the FS Open firewire sound card. But, keep in mind that you do need to increase that value if you’re using a lot of effects or synths. 10ms is not unheard of, and it really doesn’t matter that much.
Other than that, my only suggestion would be to find a sound card that doesn’t need drivers. I’m not sure if your sapphire 14 does or not. I know I’m in the minority with it, but every single sound card I’ve ever had to install on OS X that required drivers gave me problems. I’ve never had problems with the Core Audio compliant interfaces that I just plugged in.
Also, what OS X and Live versions are you running?
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### Author:  [@MaxOne](https://forum.djtechtools.com/u/MaxOne)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2011, 1:28am UTC](https://forum.djtechtools.com/t/am-i-getting-the-best-out-of-my-imac-ableton/18355/8 "2011-01-16T01:28:03Z")
- 1 Core Audio compliant interfaces