Glitchy disk streaming?

I imported an Ableton project with a lot of audio clips. So many that error messages about low memory were shown. I was able to choose the disk streaming option for the clips that weren't loaded, so no problem with that.

However when I launch clips for the first time, there's always a short glitch in the start. At most there's only eight clips playing at once. Has anyone else bumped into this kind of issue?

I built this project specifically for a live set, so I'm thinking if I should use it this way at all.

The installed SSD not new, it's a few years old. Would a newer, faster SSD handle this better? I'm not convinced this is the issue though, as the clips will play without a glitch once they have been launched once.

zenguru wrote:I imported an Ableton project with a lot of audio clips. So many that error messages about low memory were shown. I was able to choose the disk streaming option for the clips that weren't loaded, so no problem with that.

However when I launch clips for the first time, there's always a short glitch in the start. At most there's only eight clips playing at once. Has anyone else bumped into this kind of issue?

I built this project specifically for a live set, so I'm thinking if I should use it this way at all.

The installed SSD not new, it's a few years old. Would a newer, faster SSD handle this better? I'm not convinced this is the issue though, as the clips will play without a glitch once they have been launched once.

There's a known issue with importing Ableton ALS projects (currently it doesn't take into account your disk-streaming setting). Akai are working on a fix. I'm sure your SSD is fine.

EnochLight wrote:There's a known issue with importing Ableton ALS projects (currently it doesn't take into account your disk-streaming setting). Akai are working on a fix. I'm sure your SSD is fine.

Sorry my question was misleading.

The real problem is not how the ALS project imports to Force, it’s the glitchy sound when triggering clips that are streamed from disk. It only happens when triggering the clip for the first time.

There’s a short moment, like half a second or less, during which there is no sound or the sound is kind of choppy. It’s very noticeable on a kick drum loop, because you can’t hear the first kick at all.

Well the clips seem to play now without glitches after saving the project and then loading it again. Problem solved!

zenguru wrote:Well the clips seem to play now without glitches after saving the project and then loading it again. Problem solved!

And then it came back Seems quite erratic. I think I'm going to try a new SSD.

zenguru wrote:

zenguru wrote:Well the clips seem to play now without glitches after saving the project and then loading it again. Problem solved!

And then it came back Seems quite erratic. I think I'm going to try a new SSD.

First question: where have you set your disk-streaming Temp scratch folder to in your Force preferences? Did you leave it at the factory default, which is the (extremely limited in size) factory storage, or did you change it to a folder on your SSD (the preferred option)? Also, if you have updated your Force firmware, make sure you do a "reset" in the Force preferences afterwards. Often that clears up glitches.

Right now with ALS import, all audio is (attempting to) load into RAM, which can be an issue with larger ALS sets. Saving your Project to your Force afterwards should kick it to streaming from disk, assuming you have that turned on.

EnochLight wrote:First question: where have you set your disk-streaming Temp scratch folder to in your Force preferences? Did you leave it at the factory default, which is the (extremely limited in size) factory storage, or did you change it to a folder on your SSD (the preferred option)? Also, if you have updated your Force firmware, make sure you do a "reset" in the Force preferences afterwards. Often that clears up glitches.

Right now with ALS import, all audio is (attempting to) load into RAM, which can be an issue with larger ALS sets. Saving your Project to your Force afterwards should kick it to streaming from disk, assuming you have that turned on.

I have changed the temp disk streaming folder to SSD, so that should be ok. I didn’t reset the settings after 3.1.1 update, I will try that one. Thanks for the tip!

All audio clips are streaming from disk after I loaded every one of them manually. Are you saying that saving the project first as a Force project (and ignoring all the memory errors) and then opening it should load all the clips from disk automatically? I do have disk streaming enabled.

Resetting preferences didn’t fix the issue.

It’s seems like everything works normally in the beginning. After launching 15 scenes or so, the problems start. I’m able to avoid the glitch if I go to clip mode and select all the clips that are going to play next. Then the clips will play normally. Not something I would like to do while performing live, though.

It seems like some of the clips will take a short time for the waveform to be rendered on the clip view, while some of them are already rendered. I wonder if Force loads the waveforms into memory, but only a limited number of them can be held there at a time. Then when triggering multiple clips that don’t have a prerendered waveform in memory, Force first ”renders” all of them, which might cause a short audible hiccup. And the ”rendering” happens even without being in the clip mode.

Just my thoughts. I wish someone could try if this is reproducible on another Force. Or maybe I just need to replace the SSD.

zenguru wrote:Resetting preferences didn’t fix the issue.

It’s seems like everything works normally in the beginning. After launching 15 scenes or so, the problems start. I’m able to avoid the glitch if I go to clip mode and select all the clips that are going to play next. Then the clips will play normally. Not something I would like to do while performing live, though.

It seems like some of the clips will take a short time for the waveform to be rendered on the clip view, while some of them are already rendered. I wonder if Force loads the waveforms into memory, but only a limited number of them can be held there at a time. Then when triggering multiple clips that don’t have a prerendered waveform in memory, Force first ”renders” all of them, which might cause a short audible hiccup. And the ”rendering” happens even without being in the clip mode.

Just my thoughts. I wish someone could try if this is reproducible on another Force. Or maybe I just need to replace the SSD.

I mean, I'd be happy to try it on mine, but I'd need your exact ALS project so I could attempt to recreate the issue. How long (time-wise) are the Clips that you are disk-streaming? Are there any Drum Programs or Keygroups in your set? For the record, Keygroups and Drum Programs (that are played repeatedly) should be kept in RAM, as you'll saturate your disk bandwidth if you try triggering a bunch of stuff at once. But for reference, I've streamed between 20-25 (can't remember) audio files that were an hour long, all at once, without getting any glitching by loading the first 8 into audio tracks, and the other 12-17 into a Drum Program, and triggered them on the first downbeat.

Before adding new features, akai needs to smooth this kind of stuff out ASAP. Smooth disk streaming is what makes the old OCTAtrack still relevant today.

EnochLight wrote:I mean, I'd be happy to try it on mine, but I'd need your exact ALS project so I could attempt to recreate the issue. How long (time-wise) are the Clips that you are disk-streaming? Are there any Drum Programs or Keygroups in your set? For the record, Keygroups and Drum Programs (that are played repeatedly) should be kept in RAM, as you'll saturate your disk bandwidth if you try triggering a bunch of stuff at once. But for reference, I've streamed between 20-25 (can't remember) audio files that were an hour long, all at once, without getting any glitching by loading the first 8 into audio tracks, and the other 12-17 into a Drum Program, and triggered them on the first downbeat.

Sorry, I can't share the project, but it's 8 audio tracks, 76 audio files spread over 30 scenes, 4.3 GB in total. No samples. Not too fun trying to replicate this just for testing, I think

The glitching occurs only when triggering a scene. The sound disappears for a moment - it's very short but still audible. After that it plays perfectly.

DokBrown wrote:Before adding new features, akai needs to smooth this kind of stuff out ASAP. Smooth disk streaming is what makes the old OCTAtrack still relevant today.

Yes, unfortunately Akai has not learned anything... I owned an MPC1000 13 years ago, it was the same problem back then: bugs are not fixed, new buggy features are released. I already forgot all of this, I can't believe I'm experiencing this same again.

Well, I think it might be because of the SSD. As I wrote earlier, the waveforms for the glitchy clips are not prerendered when launching them. Force needs to "read" the clips from start to end before it can render them, while at the same time it needs to also play them. That might cause too much traffic for the SSD to handle.

I'll replace the SSD soon and report here if it helped or not.

Ok, I think replacing the SSD removed the problem. I can now see how the waveform starts to render when I launch a scene and it completes the rendering before the clips start to play.

I wonder if I could have just increased the launch quantization, so that there would have been more time for Force to "be prepared" before the launch kicks in. I had it on 1 bar. But for anyone who's having issues like this with a little bit older/slower SDD, I would just recommend upgrading.

As a side note, I really didn't see any improvement in project saving time though...

Congrats on getting your issue fixed! So it looks like it wasn't an Akai issue/bug at all, it was a poorly performing SSD? Did you compare the read/write performance specs of your old SSD compared to your new one (like is there that much of a difference)? Was your old SSD "really old"?