Crackling when running SC into Ableton Live

Questions
1

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing audio issues when I use SC to control Ableton. Can’t seem to figure out what’s the problem…
Maybe someone with more experience can help out!

All the info:

I’m using Live 10 Suite on Windows 10 64 bit on a Microsoft Surface. On the SuperCollider side, I am reading microphone input (from a Focusrite Scarlett), and using that to control a Pattern in SC. The Pattern outputs MIDI data to a LoopBe internal MIDI cable, which Ableton reads to play MIDI instruments.
The problem is that I get a ton of annoying crackling when the MIDI instruments play in Ableton. I tried cranking the buffer size up to 1024 and that didn’t help. Tried headphones vs. speakers, tried adjusting performance settings… nothing. The CPU meters on both programs are staying low, so it doesn’t seem like a performance issue per se…
Anyone else had a similar issue? It seems that when SC is open (server booted), I get crackling in Ableton, even when SC isn’t sending Ableton any info… when I close SC, audio is fine. Somehow SC and Ableton are competing for the same resources… or something… ?

Any advice is appreciated, and thanks.

2

Little update: I found I also get crackling playing basic SynthDefs from SuperCollider if Ableton is open at all, even without being connected through an internal MIDI cable. Somehow just having both programs running is causing some issue.

3

I have discovered that this issue only occurs when the Server is booted. I can run patterns OK and the sound is fine, but without the server running I can’t use my microphone - right?
Any tips on why the server might be causing issues?