Can anyone recognise this audio glitch problem? short video included

glitch at around 14th second mark

tempo seems to be slowed after the glitch then slowly it recovers?

any ideas? this happens several times in an hour

Buffer Audio Size to me on its Limit…
(or Processor charge)

it can happen some time… Start to record and editing your thing further… At some point you need to go Audio.
And Good beat by the way :wink:

Hello William!

As you see Ableton’s load meter is about 45%. Actual CPU usage is lower.

Both Ableton’s and Electron devices’ buffer sizes are 256.

And this is a top spec MBP 2015, 3,1GHz i7, 16GB RAM, SSD.

I’ve also opened a quite similar set in a 2009 macbook which substantially has lower resources and I did get the same glitch but almost as much as this newer MBP.

Any ideas?

What audio interface are you using?
Are you using the latest drivers for it?
Could also be a USB bottleneck?

My audio interface is Apollo Twin (thunderbolt) and I use the latest drivers indeed.

Elektrons are connected with the Elektron’s hub and according to overbridge control panel the bandwidth is not exceeded.

It’d be a weird bug if Audio interface stretches the time. It sounds like the tempo of the Rytm momentarily gets slower. Very weird.

What’s more weird is I saw this happen in a 2009 macbook too, but I thought it was computation power. Now, it is happening again on a 2015 MBP.

Sounds like the OB System lost Sync and then recovered. Check your Buffer Sizes for both the Audio Interface and the OB System. They MUST match. Could easily be that your OB Buffer is 256 Samples, but your Audio Interface uses 64 Samples (because its so awesome :smiley: ). This would definitely lead to such problems.

If this doesnt help, check the OB Sync itself. By default it’s set to Tempo. Switch it to Clock, or (if you work with the Song Mode) to Song Pos and see if that helps.

Both Ableton and OB has buffer size of 256.

I always set OB’s sync mode to Song Pos.

Anyway, I’ve did a few more (very painful*) experiments.

I’ve took Apollo, Ableton and Overhub out of the equation.

Now Rytm is connected directly to the mac and I use Reaper as the DAW.

I’ve recorded my screen with Soundflower this time, meaning that the recorded audio should be coming directly from the OB plugin -> DAW Engine -> video.

  • Since there was almost nothing much left in the equation, I’ve decided to backup my Rytm and give it a factory reset. I’ve did that and when I tried to restore the backup it turns out it’s just a 16 byte file. I had a solid backup from 3 months ago but I’ve lost 3 tracks :confused:

Just for the record, the activity monitor isn’t fast enough to show the smallest CPU spikes it just shows a windowed average.

It certainly sounds like you have buffer dropouts, I would test with no other USB devices attached (use onboard audio or Rytm as soundcard), close all other applications, certainly no screen capture and work from there. You can also try disabling WiFi/networking etc

Reaper can also be problematic with regards to OB if you have Anticipative FX processing enabled (Preferences > Audio > Buffering). Really Ableton is a better host for testing though, try a clean set with just the OB plugin and channel layout.

Sadly OB is sensitive to the tiniest stalls in CPU or USB, good luck!

Good point that activity monitor is not fast enough to catch spikes.

Even though that’s why buffers are for, 256 sample buffer is just 256/44100 seconds and much faster than what activity monitor could catch anyway.

If OB is so sensitive to CPU starvation can it be reliably used in a live performance really? Or people just use hardware mixers? I don’t think this can be the “norm”, otherwise it’d represent the product very poorly.

It’s funny because I’ve did some heavier sets on Ableton with all live gear (Rytm, Four, Sub37) and I don’t remember getting frustrated with this problem before.

I feel like I’ve broken something but don’t have any idea what it is.

And I agree that Reaper is not a good control group :slight_smile: I’ll stick with Ableton.

Quickfire remark: Are you running at 44.1? Try 48, since this is the native sample rate iirc.

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Yup with Overbridge session always be at the plugins operation so 24 bits 48000 khZ
BTW a new Overbridge software probably come this fall and it should probably make make things better. :wink:

That does sound like buffer issues.
Or you are clogging USB port bandwidth which happens a lot in laptops.
Also 48 will eat a lot more.

And FYI external gear doesn’t need to be feeding same rate as the audio interface is running.
I have a setup with things running at 16bit (Rytm for example) and A4 @ 24bit both using overbridge. it all goes into cubase which is powered by focusrites running @ 24bit with 64 latency. No issues whatsoever.

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Same issue here ever since… I plugged in my new thunderbolt interface (Focusrite 8preX).

Now wondering if thunderbolt is the problem :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

I get this all the time, it drives me nuts. It isn’t Thunderbolt because I get it using a USB interface as well. I’ve had to revert to direct MIDI control and audio in via the analogue inputs.

Yup, that’s the solution.

Using analog inputs.

It requires and interface with many inputs however, so it’s not budget friendly.

I’ve ended up buying a hybrid hardware mixer. So, I’m jamming without any computers and I can multi track record if I need to.

Elektron devices’ sound is great but OB has a long way to go unfortunately.

And after the last firmware upgrades to the devices, sometimes the devices also freeze :confused: so that’s also alarming, i hope it doesn’t get worse.

Iv been having this exact same problem with digitakt, dosn’t seem to matter if buffer sizes are matched, and i only use one other usb device and thats to connect my mac to a focusrite and then my speakers.

Really confused about how to sort it out, digitakt only has 1 l/r audio so cant multitrack via audio, has to be usb. Iv been just using the digitakt as its own interface could this be why?

Also mac/ overbridge/ firmware all as upto date as can be.

whats more is it happens even if i skip out ableton and just try to record straight into overbridge