CPU OVERLOAD

[DM1000]

hey guys I'm new to this so I don't know if this has been answered already. ( I've looked through the forum and haven't found my question yet.

I'd like to mix a song in ableton I've done It has 36 tracks. They are wave files and the song is about 4:oomins long.
There are no effects on this at all yet. My ableton can't even run the song without making crack and dropouts. I've tried freezing, switching tracks to RAM use, deactivating tracks I'm not focusing on at the moment, soloing and playing only the tracks I am focusing on and still it won't run the tracks smoothly. This also happens when I use a lot of effects

My computer is Mac OSX 10.5 with a 2GHz intel core duo and 2 GB 667MHZ SDRAM

My question is how can I speed up my CPU to be able to play track/efx heavy songs? DO I need to upgrade Ram? I've heard that won't actually make ableton any faster.

Also I'm not running any other programs in the background either. I don't want to have to switch the waves to mp3s as that will devalue the sound. Also I don't think it will make much difference with the CPU load.

How can I increase my CPU??

HELP!?

[t1mp]

questions:

soundcard using?
updated drivers??
audio settings in live?
stereo or mono tracks?

[handojin]

welcome to the forums, hey i know u

raise your buffer, live/preferences/audio settingg/hardware setup
higher buffer= more headroom for your cpu,
lower buffer= less latency, less cpu performance

not sure but you might get glitches too if you run out of ram,, check your system performance through activity monitor,, ie when its crappin out go to activity monitor and note cpu usage and not out of memory or disk access slowing u down

[DM1000]

Hey K is that you under Love&Electrik? NICE! It's M

tried the buffer thing didn't fix it. I went from 125 samples to 601 samples.

I've got stereo and mono tracks.

Not sure what soundcard I'm using or how to find out... but I have a pre Sonus Firebox hooked up as the input and output device through firewire and I'm using CoreAudio as my driver if thats what you mean.

When u say check your system performance through activity monitor are you meaning that little bar up in the left hand corner of ableton next to the "midi" word that has the (#)% ?
OR
is it something in system preferences on the Mac apple window ?

when the dropouts and glitches occur the bar is only at 14% but the "D" box to the right of it blinks red

I think my drivers are up to date but i will check on the ableton website.

Is this supposed to happen? Or will I be able to fix this problem with more Ram or something else?

[handojin]

waddup m!
good to see you here

ahh,, d= disk activity.

recommend running that project off an external drive,, firewire prefered,
no need to look in activity monitor now,,,its your disk performance
some people upgrade there internal drives to 7200 rpm for better performance but its always a good idea to run big projects of a fast external drive for this reason,
run of a firewire drive or even usb2 should fix that, its only big projects that do that right?
talk soon man hit me on fb if u want