Ableton + BCD3000 = Problems

[Guest Bad Influence]

After a weeks wait my BCD3000 arrived this morning. Eventually after setup/installation and a few minor problems I managed to get mixing using Ableton Live 6(0.1.) But there's still a few problems I'm having.

 

1. Sound keeps cutting out for a split second every now and again. I've varied the latency speed a few times but it doesn't affect anything.

 

2. Ableton seems have adopted this funny habit of crashing eveytime I try and using Beat Repeat in conjunction with the BCD's assignable controls. Something thats never happened when I've controlled it with my Edirol PCR-M50. First time I've seen the blue screen of death in a while with laptop actually.

 

Anyone got any tips?

[Guest Promo]

No idea but I fuckin' love the look of the BCD3000. I'd probably would have got one if I didn't have a my Evolution Uc-33 already.

 

Anyways what I can say is that Ableton does like to randomly crash or rather just close down.

[Guest skytree]

Hmm...I'm not familiar with your other piece of hardware, so unfortunately can't recommend anything for your second question.

 

Regarding your occasional sound drop outs:

 

(1) Have you been looking at the CPU monitor when these audio cuts occur? I'm wondering if it might just be due to running out of processor power.

 

(2) You said you varied the latency...does this mean you adjusted the buffer size? If not, it might be helpful to increase your buffer size to the largest setting possible, and seeing if the problem continues.

 

(3) How much RAM do you have? I ran into a similar problem when I had a measley 512 MB, but the glitch stopped when I upgraded to 2 GB.

[Guest Bad Influence]

1. Ableton's CPU Load Monitor stays at around a constant 2 - 4% with no fluctuations during the dropouts. Though I'll keep an eye on the Microsoft on in the Task Manager in future.

 

2. I'd thought about the buffer underun but the confusing thing about the BCD's control panel is that at the bottom is a slider named Buffer Under / Latency Speed. So I'm not sure if I am altering it or if I even can.

Would an increased driver error compensation in Ableton be of any benefit?

 

3. I'm only running 512Mb RAM. I'm looking into see if an upgrade to 1Gb would be possible of my system. Beginning to regret my decision of buying a laptop. Really should have gone with a desktop but was persuaded otherwise.

 

I'm beginning to notice that the Ableton is more likely to crash when I playing back through the master and altering any type of track effect. This isn't suprising as I've previously had problems with VSTs not loading properly and it is one those types of copies. :embrassed: Yes I'm a dirty dirty thief and deserve no better.....

[Guest Bad Influence]

The buffer size seems to be locked to 617 samples because of the BCD's ASIO output driver.

A RAM upgrade is entirely possible though. As far as I can see I'm able to upgrade to a total of 4Gb which seems a little unbelievable for a laptop to me but its getting done. Shouldn't be that expensive for some of the sites I'm reading. Thanks again, if I get anymore problems then I post em.

 

EDIT: Kept an eye on the Task Manager and processor load is only about 18 - 20% during playback then it fluctuates to around 40% after a dropout.

[pylonbitch]

try d/ling asio4all drivers.

 

load up.

 

problem possibly solved.

 

and i'd agree with evan that you need more memory.

[Guest Bad Influence]

try d/ling asio4all drivers.

 

load up.

 

problem possibly solved.

 

I already have ASIO4All but as the BCD has an onboard sound card its not possible to use the two in conjunction with each other.

 

and i'd agree with evan that you need more memory.

Try telling my dad that he thinks converting all the tracks to a lower bit-rate or to ogg would help. Rather improving my system.

[Guest volg4]

couple of things i would try....

 

start>settings>control panel>sounds and audio settings (im using classic view, so might be different for you)

click the audio tab, make sure your behringer is selected, also make sure 'use only default device' is checked

 

are you using another sound card? check theres not some kind of conflict, try disabling one....

 

check for driver/firmware updates for BCD and laptop and windows (youve probably done this already)

 

 

does your laptop have a HT cpu? = hyperthreading, mines does and that caused bsods with my bcr2000, only fix was a complete reinstall with HT switched off

 

also, make sure windows doesnt automatically restart when the bsod happens (system properties, advanced tab, startup and recovery, uncheck automatically restart)

now when you get the bsod, you can read the error and google it for any more hints.... itll be something like 'STOP 000000x10x usb.sys'

[Guest Bad Influence]

Cheers, after the last couple of bsod's. I've maanged to pin the problem down to the "BCD3000.sys" which is helpful. Lets me stop worrying about Ableton. I'm now beginning to worry about the BCD's driver though. Ableton now reports it as corrupt when I start it up after a crash. There's is no update for the driver yet but it's early days. Reckon I'll eventually get this sorted so I can blaze some choons. heh heh. Looking at adding an extra 1 - 2 Gb of RAM which'll fix the glitching. Thanks again for the help.