Audio via USB into Ableton Tips?

Play
1

Hi All, I’ve only recently started using audio over USB recently (with Play+), and wanted to post my experience - I’ve had several issues getting things to run smoothly, but here are some things that seem to help:

  • I can only establish a sync-playback / playhead w/ Live and the Play+ if I’m using a faster cable (100W / 40Gb/s type C to type C - direct in to my MBP). Not using the Polyend type 2.0 cable provided w/ the Play. Chaining the connection thru any usb hubs or extentions also seems to cause significant issues w/ connectivity and sync

  • Anything less than a Buffer size of 128 samples in Live causes drift / sync issues in my projects

  • still getting occational audio glitches and distortion with these settings - don’t have any solutions for this

Anyone else dealing w/ these issues or can confirm my troubleshooting here? Is there more official documentation on this from Polyend that I missed?

thanks!

Specs: Apple M4 Max MBP / 128gb Ram + Live Suite 12 / Play+ current firmware

2

Hey @avrepublic, you’ve pretty muched nailed all the pitfalls.

  • Definitely use a 3.2 usb cable if possible
  • Depending on your hub you will be fine, but ideally it’s a 3.0 upwards hub - haven’t had issues with mine so far
  • Make sure you are using 44.1khz 16-bit for sample rate, anything above might cause issues as well.
  • 256 as buffer size has worked best for me.

These have worked pretty well for me on a Windows PC. On Apple devices (M1 Airbook and a M1 iPad Pro), i’ve only used it via a direct connection, but with great success.

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@sandroid thanks for the extra tips! I’m using a CalDigit Element hub, which should be pretty quick, but sometimes Play doesn’t even show up in my settings if I have it chained thru. But as long as things are working direct in, not a big deal.