[newbie] CLIPPING and CRACKING sound

[g0ldr4k3]

hello, finally yesterday I installed AL3 in my mbp pro 15" with an i7 2.2ghz and 8gb with ssd drive.
I was sure that the mac was still great but as soon I started to play (almost every sound) I was so angry to listen cracks and pops ...with a TON of cpu load.....
If I use mainstage it all works perfectly.
what am I doing wrong? is my machine too old ?  (do I need an enterprise 1701D computing power? )
thanks for your help!!

p.s. no external audio card for now.

[trippyz]

Have you tried it with your charger plugged in?

[MajorFubar]

Analog Lab 3 will run (albeit not incredibly happily) even on my ancient 2010 core 2 duo Mac Mini with its standard 2GB of RAM, so it's definitely not a case that your mac is under specified. Sounds like something else other than AL3 is gobbling your processing power. Have a look at the Activity Monitor when you have AL3 open and see what's gobbling your processor resources.

[LBH]

I don't know much about MAC. But perhaps it's not good to use the standard soundcard.
However you should be able to do some also even if 2.2.GHz CPU is'nt a lot.

So beside the above - can you tell which buffer and samplerate settings your soundcard has?

And can you tell, if you have issues with any sound or only some sounds, and/ or when you play one or many notes?

Are you running multiple applications at the same time?

Are you sure it's CPU issue and that you are not just overdriving you soundcard or something like that? Have you checked the CPU performance?

have you optimized you computer for audio performance?

[g0ldr4k3]

Have you tried it with your charger plugged in?

No i was on battery. Can i connect the keylab88 via USB And power It via power connector?

[g0ldr4k3]

Analog Lab 3 will run (albeit not incredibly happily) even on my ancient 2010 core 2 duo Mac Mini with its standard 2GB of RAM, so it's definitely not a case that your mac is under specified. Sounds like something else other than AL3 is gobbling your processing power. Have a look at the Activity Monitor when you have AL3 open and see what's gobbling your processor resources.

Sounds cool...i Am using 10.13 high Sierra and You? I Willis try this night and Keep you posted

[MajorFubar]

Sounds cool...i Am using 10.13 high Sierra and You?

Same. My old Mac Mini is too old to run Mojave. Least not without a dubious third-party patch.

[g0ldr4k3]

well...i decided to reinstall highsierra from scratch....but since it is a macbook pro midified with 2 hard drive and no dvd anymore it is rather difficult from apple's restriction or whatever....i tryed to download el capitan but it is impossible...tonight i will try again...

[trippyz]

Try using AL3 with charger plugged in

[g0ldr4k3]

Try using AL3 with charger plugged in

I already tryed but the result was the same....so I'm installing from scratch but.....I have a lot of problems because of the modification....I hope...otherwise it's the logic board that has problems.... 

[gphantom]

I used to have problems with an older sound card (I'm stingy when it comes to audio) but, I decided to upgrade to an ASIO card and it makes a big difference.  That is definitely an upgrade to invest in first.  My system is an ASUS mother board that is at least 8 years old but with a quad core CPU and 4 gigs ram.  I also added some SSD drives (one for windows XP - Some software doesn't run in Win7 and above, one drive for Windows 7 and another for Windows 10 which allows me to use whatever OS I need at the time)
So, try a new ASIO sound card (I have an Audigy) and then a SSD drive.  If you have 4 gigs of memory or more, you should be OK.

[g0ldr4k3]

I used to have problems with an older sound card (I'm stingy when it comes to audio) but, I decided to upgrade to an ASIO card and it makes a big difference.  That is definitely an upgrade to invest in first.  My system is an ASUS mother board that is at least 8 years old but with a quad core CPU and 4 gigs ram.  I also added some SSD drives (one for windows XP - Some software doesn't run in Win7 and above, one drive for Windows 7 and another for Windows 10 which allows me to use whatever OS I need at the time)
So, try a new ASIO sound card (I have an Audigy) and then a SSD drive.  If you have 4 gigs of memory or more, you should be OK.

ok thanks for the effort but you missed few things:
I don't use windows, I have a macbook pro so OSX (I was talking about 10.13 high sierra) and I already have 8gb and an SSD....

how ever yesterday night I finally reinstalled from scratch....but it was really painful ....very very slow ....in the we I will reinstall arturia (now i'm on a job trip) al3 and we will see.... but i'm not too confident....

ps I already made all the modification to speed up high sierra so no animation no transparency no useless notifications....

[MajorFubar]

yesterday night I finally reinstalled from scratch....but it was really painful ....very very slow ....in the we I will reinstall arturia (now i'm on a job trip) al3 and we will see.... but i'm not too confident....

Sounds to me like your computer has a physical fault. Could be faulty SSD drive, or RAM, etc. No fully functioning Mac of your computer's specifications should run as badly as you say yours is running.

The oldest computer in my possession running Analog Lab 3 is a nine year old Mac Mini with a Core2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM. It runs Analog Lab 3 perfectly. The specification of your MBP lays my Mac Mini to waste. In fact it's probably better specified that my 2013 i5 MBP I used recently to record a live band in a studio, recording 12 tracks at once into logic Pro, two of them Midi tracks each running an instance of Analog Lab.

If flattening your computer and rebuilding it from scratch doesn't solve your issues, it has to be because of a physical fault.

[LBH]

I wonder why you have'nt answered this:

I don't know much about MAC. But perhaps it's not good to use the standard soundcard.
However you should be able to do some also even if 2.2.GHz CPU is'nt a lot.

So beside the above - can you tell which buffer and samplerate settings your soundcard has?

And can you tell, if you have issues with any sound or only some sounds, and/ or when you play one or many notes?

Are you running multiple applications at the same time?

Are you sure it's CPU issue and that you are not just overdriving you soundcard or something like that? Have you checked the CPU performance?

have you optimized you computer for audio performance?

Perhaps you have hardware performance issue. But audio optimizing is one thing that might help. Here are 2 guides, there are more out there:
https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/206116964-Optimizing-Mac-OS-X-for-DAWs
https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210296445-Mac-Tuning-Tips-for-Audio-Processing

Also my other questions can be relevant for the performance you exsperience.

[MajorFubar]

I wonder why you have'nt answered this:

Probably because, with the utmost of respect, it's a bit of a red herring, in the context of the OP's problems. Any fully functioning Mac made in the last ten years will p*ss all over running just one single instance of Analog Lab 3, including Macs running a completely stock build with standard sound cards. It's going to be a different story if any part of the hardware is faulty though, and that's where my suspicious are heading if it turns out his rebuild doesn't fix anything.