Ableton CPU on Windows 10

First of all, I'm very new to Windows. I don't know what or where everything is so bear with me pls.

For some reason the CPU bar on Ableton fills up really quickly. I can only use 1 or 2 plugins before the audio starts glitching and stuttering. It's borderline unusable.

I tested it on a Macbook Pro with the exact same specs and it works fine.

I have ASIO4ALL v2 with the sample rate set to 44100 and buffer size on 512

What am I doing wrong here?

Have you tried increasing the buffersize to see if it even makes a difference? That's all I can come up with, sorry.

Check your computer power saving options. Make sure they are turned off.

Thanks, both of those things helped but didn't fix it. It doesn't happen as frequently now at least.

Multicore processor? Make sure that multicore support under the CPU tab in settings is on. 

It is on

What is your Ableton CPU meter showing when it is glitching?

  On 9/11/2016 at 8:23 PM, WNS000 said:

What is your Ableton CPU meter showing when it is glitching?

With only one MIDI instrument it goes from 1% to 20% for like half a second. It does that maybe every 5 seconds.

Check your DPC latency. Download meter for it and see if the spikes in DPC latency occur at the same time the audio drops out.

No, no noticeable spikes. Though this is what it looks like without and with ASIO

What are the exact specs of your PC?

Most likely you are missing a hardware driver or something along the lines of that. Try going to the default soundcard and see if that hogs the CPU as well.

  On 9/11/2016 at 10:32 PM, Entorwellian said:

What are the exact specs of your PC?

 

Most likely you are missing a hardware driver or something along the lines of that. Try going to the default soundcard and see if that hogs the CPU as well.

I updated the audio driver but still nothing. 

No audio but this is what it looks like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzvrcO1kfec

  On 9/11/2016 at 10:11 PM, Kidrodi said:

No, no noticeable spikes. Though this is what it looks like without and with ASIO

 

This is pretty bad and not normal.

Are you on notebook or desktop?

If on notebook, turn off your wi-fi and try again. By "turn off" I mean temporarily disabling it via Device Manager. Your DPC then should be under 500 all the time (and even less).

really hard to tell from a distance. network thingies could really mess things up regarding latency..so @moment you are using the built-in soundcard?

i use this app to check for latency problems. it's a bit techy..

http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon/

sometimes it's an unrelated service, which causes all those drop-outs.

  On 9/12/2016 at 2:11 AM, WNS000 said:

 

  On 9/11/2016 at 10:11 PM, Kidrodi said:

No, no noticeable spikes. Though this is what it looks like without and with ASIO

 

 

 

This is pretty bad and not normal.

 

Are you on notebook or desktop?

 

If on notebook, turn off your wi-fi and try again. By "turn off" I mean temporarily disabling it via Device Manager. Your DPC then should be under 500 all the time (and even less).

Maybe disable antivirus temporarily as well?

If latency is a real issue (hence your need for ASIO4ALL) it may be worth biting the bullet and getting a proper audio interface. However if latency *isnt* a problem (i.e. you're pretty much doing everything without any external mic/line input) maybe worth just seeing if the choice of DirectSound is worth sacrificing the realtime-ness for CPU stability

  On 9/12/2016 at 11:27 AM, mcbpete said:

If latency is a real issue (hence your need for ASIO4ALL) it may be worth biting the bullet and getting a proper audio interface. However if latency *isnt* a problem (i.e. you're pretty much doing everything without any external mic/line input) maybe worth just seeing if the choice of DirectSound is worth sacrificing the realtime-ness for CPU stability

Interesting. I am getting more stable and quicker sound processing with ASIO4ALL than with my external Presonus Audiobox interface. I guess USB 3.0 is not that quick yet?

That's weird, USB3 should be plenty fast enough - I've a USB2.0 interface (Saffire 8i6) and even on the rare times I do stuff at 96khz there's no issues (I tend to do most stuff at 88.2 as downsamples to 44.1 nice and easily :) ). Granted I have my buffer size at 512, but that only equates to like 20ms latency (and I don't really do too much live processing of external inputs)

I've always seen ASIO4ALL to be a hacky method of getting ASIO-ish latency for onboard devices (it's what I used to use before I got my previous Audiofire device) but not something that should really be used if your card does actually support ASIO

ASIO4ALL grants me very stable 64 buffer operation until I go crazy with effects. It has always been superior latency-wise and stability-wise to my interface.

I'm just using a laptop with the built-in sound card, no external interface or anything.

I've tried disabling wi-fi and the antivirus but no difference.

The DPC latency seems to be fine now, doesn't surpass 1000 no matter what I do though I don't know what changed but fair enough.

Also if I turn off ASIO4ALL the glitching disappears, which wasn't the case before. Again, I have no idea what happened.

So I should just get an audio interface then?

Thanks for all the help guys btw, It's been a real headache this thing...

Be aware that audio interfaces are hit and miss compatibility-wise. Be prepared to change a few before you find one that does not glitch and pops occasionally or all the time. It depends on your notebook's HW and drivers a lot.

ASIO4ALL should be fine for everybody with a healthy computer so I would not be surprised if you had even more problems with an audio interface tbh.

Kidrodi did you ever get this figured out? I'm gonna be running Ableton on Windows soon and I'm curious what the problem was for you (assuming you figured it out/fixed it).

  On 6/1/2017 at 11:19 PM, auxien said:

Kidrodi did you ever get this figured out? I'm gonna be running Ableton on Windows soon and I'm curious what the problem was for you (assuming you figured it out/fixed it).

In my experience, the only advice regarding ASIO4ALL that is legit in this thread is from mcbpete

  On 9/12/2016 at 11:27 AM, mcbpete said:

If latency is a real issue (hence your need for ASIO4ALL) it may be worth biting the bullet and getting a proper audio interface. However if latency *isnt* a problem (i.e. you're pretty much doing everything without any external mic/line input) maybe worth just seeing if the choice of DirectSound is worth sacrificing the realtime-ness for CPU stability

If you need to use ASIO4ALL then either you're using a sound card that's built into the motherboard, or you really need to get a decent audio interface instead of the less-than-Behringer-quality one you're using.

Having tried ASIO4ALL with multiple audio interfaces and sound cards, performance is always better with officially supported ASIO drivers from the manufacturer, in my experience.