TDAbleton Connection problem over Ethernet LAN Mac to Mac

[gordharris]

My Setup:

Ableton: MacBook Air M1, Ableton Live 12 suite 12.3.6

TouchDesigner: Mac Mini M4 Tahoe V26.4

Testing Version: TD 2025.32460 Commercial, TDAbleton 2.6.5

Network: Direct Ethernet cable from Belkin USBc to Ethernet on Macbook Air M1 to Mac mini M4 ethernet in port, manually assigned IPs

Macbook Air M1: 192.168.50.2 Subnet mask 255.255.255.0

Macbook Mini M4: 192.168.50.1 Subnet mask 255.255.255.0

Firewalls: All OFF No anti virus software

Ping between machines: OK - works both ways, no dropouts, always works

File exchange between machines: Ok can share pix, music etc both ways

TDAbleton connects fine when both Live 12 and TouchDesigner on Mac Air M1

TDAbleton connects fine when connecting both with my WiFi network

What I’ve tried:

• lots of googling, you tube, forum searches
• disabled wifi both macs
• set nework service order Ethernet on top, both machines
• reinstalled TDAbleton per wiki instructions multiple times & updated all components
• let TouchDesigner and Ableton Live 12 suite access on local networ
• set all users for read.write permissions
• it connected once successfully after changing TouchDesigner In Port to 5000 and pinging in TDAbleton worked but I have never been able to repeat that after rebooting macs

Issue:

Cannot get a consistent reliable connection on TDA Master in Ableton on Mac air between Touch Designer on Mac mini with Ableton port 58888 default and Max port 51111. Surprisingly AbletonSong seems to work even though TDAbleton Package shows no connection!

The Out address in TDA Master in Live on Mac air seems ok at 192.168.50.1 for Mac mini
The Out port seems ok at 5000

Tried multiple ports (default and random), but TD still doesn’t connect properly

Reinstalled TDAbleton in Mac Remote Scripts multiple times, ensured the latest version etc

My theory: has something to do with mac ports and I really don’t understand how to know what ports are in use on Macs?, or else some weird permissions issue? But I am frustrated I can get TDAbleton to work on wifi or both on same machine but not over hardwired Ethernet.

Can anyone explain how to check if it is a port issue or a permissions issue? I don’t really want to use a wifi connection for a live set. Does anyone have ethernet working like this?

Would appreciate any guidance from Ivan or other network gurus gurus please on how to troubleshoot this. On my third day of tests here…pulling my hair out….

Thanks all!

[gordharris]

One interesting new piece of evidence for network administrator types: When I bought, downloaded and ran a program called Network Port Scanner to try to see what was going in my Mac mini M4 ports, TD Ableton suddenly connected ok! Attached is the report it came up with overnight showing my port 5000 for Touch Designer and a bunch I do not know anything about. Is it possible there is some missing step in TDAbleton to “free up ports” or something like that? How exactly do these ports work on Macs and where is the best place to learn about them? Any guru advice welcomed.

Thanks.

[gordharris]

After that one time connection, it has not worked again. I have read that 5000 is in the registered ports range, so I will try 50000 for dynamic/private range. Is anyone using Ethernet successfully between macs and TDAbleton? If so please let me know how.

thanks all.

[Ivan]

I have not been able to figure anything out, but I haven’t had 2 macs to dive deep on. This summer I should be able to take a look. Sorry about the long delay on this!

[gordharris]

@Ivan thanks for responding. I understand the difficulty in replicating odd setups like mine. But just 5 minutes ago I just got it to reconnect again from complete reboots so I think I am ok now. I spent all day reading up on ports etc but even though it is not in the recommended “dynamic/private ports” range of 49152 to 65,535 when I went back to Touch Designer In Port 5000 (in registered ports range of 1024-49151) when I connected with transmit on in TDA master it instantly connected and actively changed the TouchDesigner In Port to yellow 59152 on TDAbleton page and started working. Still rather mysterious to me but if it works again I will stick with it. If it works several times in a row I will call this solved. but perhaps for other beginners at networking a few more words on what all these ports mean and which ones we should leave alone and which ones we should change when it does not connect automatically would be helpful. I love TDAbleton once I connect ok so thanks for a great program. Here are my current settings that “work” while connected in screenshot.

[gordharris]

No cigar. These setting worked once then failed to connect on consecutive tries after complete shutdowns and reboots. I am puzzled why when everything is working and I save both programs it suddenly ceases to work on rebooting. Not very deterministic. Does anyone think there is any merit in trying older builds of TD than 2025.32460 with TDAbleton? Is anyone in the world succeeding at running TDAbleton and Live on Macs consistently and reliably (ie works every time) over hard wired ethernet LAN? Giving up on my reliable consistent Ethernet network dream for TDAbleton…. Is BitWig more reliable maybe?

[Ivan]

This is frustrating. I will definitely dive in again as soon as I have access to 2 Macs. Should be in the coming week or so.

[gordharris]

Thanks Ivan. After further wifi testing I found the connection success rate for TDAbleton was 10/10 for an essentially empty Live 12 set with just TDA master on a new empty TD network. But with my full music set 0/10 with my complex full touchdesigner visuals set. And 4/10 with a dead simple touch designer test network. Therefore I have abandoned TDAbleton for now. I will use the Ableton Link CHOP instead to control my visuals in TouchDesigner at a jam this Friday night.

But I would definitely prefer TDAbleton for my art show coming up next spring, which I have to start coding soon. And the ping times over wifi were orders of magnitude longer than Ethernet.

I would just try to make TDAbleton on ethernet as repeatable and tolerant as possible with a reasonable live set of 3 songs with roughly 24 tracks and average of 6 scenes per song. If connection could work every time these last tests suggest running smaller, completely separate Live12 sets for each song rather than this JH3 set with all 3 in one als set. Good luck in your testing. I sure hope you can solve it.

[Ivan]

Would you be up for making your live set and network available to us for testing? Graphic and audio resources are probably unnecessary, just the structure… you can send a zip or link to download to ivan@derivative.ca

Just to make sure we’re testing the same thing

[gordharris]

Sure. I will get you something tomorrow from older set as I am packing up now for jam tonight and am about 40 versions later now for Ableton Link on wifi. No time right now…

[immerglotzer]

Not sure if it’s the same problem but I have also had problems with Mac’s and network ports. Something weird about the order of the services. No matter what I did, only manually changing the order of the services (order itself doesn’t matter) worked for me. It somehow activates the Ethernet ports. I then discovered that a script with the sys module that changes the order and then back solves it. It runs on startup.

[Ivan]

Interesting! Can you share your script? Would love to know if it solves @gordharris’s problem

[Ivan]

ping again for your live sets. I’m having trouble reproducing and could use your test case. If you wouldn’t mind doing a “Collect All and Save”. I don’t need any audio files if the set is too big. Zip or link download to ivan@derivative.ca, or I emailed you my gmail address if you want to share via Drive.

I am pretty sure it’s not an issue with your toe file, so don’t worry about that for now…

[gordharris]

Thanks Ivan for gmail address. added you as share on google drive for full live set. Hopefully you got that tonight. Also previously sent toe file on gmail. With this ethernet setup I had trouble reproducing anything - seemed to change every time. Hope this helps.

[malcolm]

Hey, we just tried this here but no luck reproducing the issue. The two macs were able to connect to each other without issue.

Two things I’d ask you to try. In a command prompt, check what the value for this is:

ulimit -n

If it’s something low like 256, can you try increasing it using

sudo launchctl limit maxfiles 128000 524288

Reboot,and then confirm that ulimit -n shows a large number.

I also notice that you are using broadcast for this. How is your network setup? Are the source and destinations on the same switch, and is the switch setup to forward broadcast packets or possibly is it blocking them?