Disk Dropouts

General
1

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing a major issue with Ableton Live 12, which I have been able to reproduce on two different Macs. I use AbleSet to control my live setup and I’m encountering unexpected disk overloads, leading to audio dropouts during performances.

My Setup:

• MacBook M3 Max & second Mac with M1 Pro

• Ableton Live 12 Suite (latest version)

• AbleSet controlling track playback, MIDI & automation

• Internal SSD with plenty of free space, no external drive used

• Buffer size tested from 128 to 512 samples

• Sample rate: 44.1 kHz

• No VST plugins active, only native Ableton functions

The Issue:

• During my live show, a disk overload occurs after some time , even though CPU usage is only around 2-4% .

• The D-symbol in Ableton starts blinking , and all audio tracks experience short dropouts .

• The issue is unpredictable but seems to happen more frequently in medleys with many tempo changes.

• It still happens even with Warp disabled on all tracks and with a reduced project size (originally 45 GB → now 20 GB).

• AbleSet is actively running and controlling various aspects of the show.

What I Have Already Tried:

:white_check_mark: Rebuilt the entire project from scratch → No improvement

:white_check_mark: Disabled Warp on all clips → No improvement

:white_check_mark: Disabled the tempo track (set a fixed tempo instead) → No improvement

:white_check_mark: Reduced project file size (fewer tracks, shorter files) → No improvement

:white_check_mark: Tested Ableton with no plugins at all → No improvement

:white_check_mark: Adjusted buffer size between 512 and 128 samples → No improvement

:white_check_mark: Tested running the project from an external SSD → No improvement

:white_check_mark: Haven’t tested yet: Running Ableton WITHOUT AbleSet

My Suspicion:

Since the issue occurs on two different Macs and persists even after optimizing the project , I suspect that AbleSet might be interfering with Ableton’s disk streaming process .

Possible reasons:

• High API polling rate in AbleSet → Overloading Ableton’s audio engine?

• AbleSet’s network/UDP communication → Delaying file loading?

• AbleSet’s clip control or MIDI triggers → Causing unexpected disk reads?

My Questions for the Community:

:question: Are there any known issues with AbleSet causing disk overloads in Ableton Live 12?

:question: Is there a way to reduce AbleSet’s polling frequency or API requests?

:question: Has anyone else encountered this issue and found a workaround?

I would really appreciate any help or insights! :raised_hands:

I tested the project without locators, and it seems to be working for now. So, maybe the locators are causing the problem.

Thanks in advance!

2

Hey @Saschpak, welcome to the forum!

I’ve heard of similar issues before, usually these disk dropouts are related to Live being overwhelmed with the number of locators. Usually, saving and reopening your project file after adding new locators or modifying existing ones solves the issue.

It’s a kind of hacky workaround, but for now, I haven’t heard of any other solutions, unfortunately.

If you like, you can DM me your project file or upload it to my support inbox so I can try to reproduce the issue on my machine (M1 Max MacBook Pro).

I hope this helps and look forward to your reply! :slight_smile:

3

Yeah a similar issue happens to me after I use the automatically place locators tool like Leo is saying. But my workflow now is:

place locators > collect all & save project > quit live > reopen project and continue.

2 Likes
5

Thank you!

However, the issue doesn’t arise after placing the locators. It occurs randomly within the project after saving and reopening it.

6

Just adding one more thought here. One of my bands uses one large project with all of our material and multiple versions/medleys of some songs; our project is 15GB and 24 hours long (yes, I realize that is totally crazy). AbleSet works SO well at managing all of this.

Two things I have to do to make sure playback is smooth due to a GUI issue in Live:

  1. zooming in a good bit (so only a song or two are visible at one time)
  2. scrolling down in Arrangement view to the bottom of that window (where I mostly have busses without any audio files).
    If I’m scrolled up with the majority of my audio channels visible, I can get playback issues (usually first noticed as lagging video output).

I don’t know if this would help your issue, but it’s worth a shot.

1 Like
7

I used to have all my songs in one Ableton file (setlist) (it was about 50GB) and had the same issues. Have you tried using Ablest Project File option? It is awesome. We have over 250 songs. It indexes them and then loads them one at a time on-demand. Never had an issue since

1 Like
8

hi everyone. thanks for your posts. same happened to my system. does anyone know if it helps to reduce the general workload on the computer (e.g. close other programms, increase buffer size etc.) to this specific problem?

9

Just adding here that in 12.1.1 I am still experiencing this issue and since my gig requires locators to fire off song changes… I’m not sure exactly how to run a show confidently. What are effective steps to sort of “clean” other than loading the show again? Has anyone found a solution that helps them sleep at night? thanks

Tim

1 Like
10

Hey @Timrosemusic, welcome to the forum!

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s an alternative to the workaround of saving and reloading the project after letting AbleSet add all locators.

As this is an issue with Live, I’m not sure I can do anything about this, I’m afraid :confused:

11

Hey @leolabs The issue actually doesn’t occur right after setting the locators. Instead, it happens randomly in the middle of the project while the show is running — long after the locators have been set and even after the project and the Mac have been restarted.

12

Hey @Saschpak, in that case, it might be best to contact Ableton directly so they can take a look at your project :slight_smile:

13

Hey Leo. Unfortunately, Ableton support wasn’t able to help either. After a lot of trial and error, I definitely think the issue is with the locators. Do you have any experience or guidelines on how many locators a project should have at most? I currently have around 520 in the project.

14

I’ve seen some customers with over 3000 locators in their project, so 520 seems like a reasonable number.

I’m not sure if this helps, but could you try zooming your project file in while playing so that only a few songs are visible at a time?

If too many locators, clips, etc. are displayed at the same time, Live’s UI thread can start to lag. This usually shouldn’t cause audio dropouts since audio processing runs in a separate thread, but it could be a contributing factor.

15

I have been experiencing audio dropouts too for the first time today, not sure if I was zoomed in, so definitely going to pay attention to that, but on my B machine (identical mac mini M1 16gb) no disk issues were present. Unfortunately this does not interfere with the sine wave so my playaudio1u does not change to scene B. Any troubleshooting advice? , def going to do the zoomed in runthrough this week and I’ll let you know.

16

Hey @Didigonzo, welcome to the forum!

That’s an interesting observation! So the audio engine itself still worked which meant the LifeSine plugin was able to output audio, but Live wasn’t able to read and output audio from clips.

I’m not sure what could be causing this yet, unfortunately, but I’ll keep looking into it!

1 Like
17

Yes, I’m experiencing the exact same issue. Clicktrack and Lifeline are still sending audio. Here’s a short video showing it happening.

3 Likes
18

Yup exactly my situation as well… have you tried zooming in ?

19

I think I’ve tried everything… but I’ll try again just to be safe.

20

Okay yes. Same Problem… If I delete all Locators the Problem is gone btw

21

Interesting, so @leolabs , looks like it could be a locater issue in the current version of Ableton/Ableset? Has anyone tried downgrading to an earlier version of Ableton 12?