Multicore support needs a big overhaul

[pencilrocket]

Having more than 4 cores is useless for everything except 3D renders and complex encoding. The time to send the information to each 12 cores between the ram, HD and cpus will nil any of the 12 cores advantages. Even Adobe admit that 4 cores is the sweet spot for top speed.

Visual application handle volumes of data. Synth require volume of the caluculation. The large volume of the calculation doesn't necessarily mean the volume of the data huge. Your argument seem to be meaningless to me.

[H20nly]

1 step behind the pack..
took me a long time to realize that this is the way to go..
live one or two years in the past (technologically)..
let them youngsters spend their $$ on 'cutting edge' tech for me to buy a year later when something newer comes along..

this is what i do... typically when i go processor shopping there is the one i want... and the one i settle for (where price meets performance), then when i go back, i either get the one i was looking at last time or sometimes even get one better for the same price i payed the time before. there are so many options now that wading through them is hard, sure, but finding one that is powerful and priced right is easy... that's one PC advantage that Apple won't overcome. they refuse. not that their choices are bad, but less options means more rigid price points.

I'm really looking forward to getting back to my FL Studio license once they release FL for Mac.

after trying the latest demo a bit.. and was left generally impressed..
if I had the extra $ .. I would probly buy it..
tons of fun.. and very powerful..reasonable price
performance was very smooth as well..no hiccups whatsoever !
(which is saying much..seems I'm somehow "used to" gui freezes for any simple action )

that program is solid. it has never crashed on me. it also launches in about 3 or 4 seconds - even on an old 1.8 AMD core..

i used the same cracked version 3 that so many of you probably used... i then bought the version 5 producer bundle and have kept it up to date. i skipped a rev or two, like 8 and current 10 (i think), but all those other versions have been a solid go to in a pinch.

if someone comes over and starts railing on a guitar or bass i drop a 4 or 8 bar drum beat with occasional downbeats in FL in minutes - add percussion (as separate patterns)... export those stems to Live 8 (group tracks baby!) and hit record on an armed audio track with the stringed instrument that's presently hot... i have a ton of material that's never been played before or since that i recorded like that. plenty of my own too. FL was a big part in grabbing it... so was Live (i make drum beats there as well) but FL has never let me down...

i could rewire, i know, but i've found that handling just good old rendered audio is simply one of Live's strengths. denial is futile. *shrugs*

to add to that... Guitar Center sold me a sample DVD for 1 cent (literally a penny) when i grabbed version 5. it has a world samples section (among others) that has some awesome percussion to start saucing up the foundation later.

oh and... these are life time upgrades. i payed about $150 U.S. dollars 6 or 7 years ago with 5 revs along the way. that pace reminds me of another software company... they charged a little more for all of their updates though.

so would i.

[Ryanmf]

ATTN: EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD WHO ASKED IF OP CONFIGURED HIS SETTINGS PROPERLY

Are you dense? Did you even read the post? He's using a Mac, so no, he's not using Asio4All. He stated specifically that he set the buffer size to 512 samples, which is perfectly reasonable when trying to optimize to prevent audio dropouts. Finally: He opened seventy fucking instances of U-he Ace in Reaper at the highest quality setting without issue. Did you think that was just dumb luck or something?

[ze2be]

Hmm. At what version did Ableton add multicore suport? It might be time for an update.

@Ryanmf: I respect if you feel anger for whatever reason. But realy, its not nesesary in this thread!
We are all stupid here

Just my 2c

[pencilrocket]

ATTN: EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD WHO ASKED IF OP CONFIGURED HIS SETTINGS PROPERLY

Are you dense? Did you even read the post? He's using a Mac, so no, he's not using Asio4All. He stated specifically that he set the buffer size to 512 samples, which is perfectly reasonable when trying to optimize to prevent audio dropouts. Finally: He opened seventy fucking instances of U-he Ace in Reaper at the highest quality setting without issue. Did you think that was just dumb luck or something?

Noob. When you critisize others' test do it by youself and post your result here. Nobody want to hear your noobish conjecture.

[Vance]

Having more than 4 cores is useless for everything except 3D renders and complex encoding. The time to send the information to each 12 cores between the ram, HD and cpus will nil any of the 12 cores advantages. Even Adobe admit that 4 cores is the sweet spot for top speed.

As for me, since I switched from reason to Live in 2009 on my i7 860 3.6ghz, I never had a single drop out using Asio4All. You sure it's not your comp/sound card/latency configuration?

Did you even read my original post? The essence of the test that I ran was that with everything else constant and with latency set to a reasonable amount, Ableton can only handle 24 tracks before massive dropouts kick in, whereas Reaper can handle 64+. If there were a problem with my system, do you think Reaper could handle that many tracks?

I don't mean to be harsh here, but your perception of how Live runs on your own system on a daily basis makes absolutely no difference here. The one thing that would contradict my own observations would be someone with a comparable (i.e. multicore) system where Live and Reaper are neck-and-neck in terms of track counts, in a test similar to the one I described in my original post.

What I'm examining here is Live. Not my system, not my sound card or its drivers. Live and how well it handles multicore processing loads, versus other sequencers, is what we're discussing here. I know exactly how to set up a computer to run audio, so don't interpret this thread as a cry of "ZOMG how do I make a computer run Ableton derpa derp derp".

[Ryanmf]

ATTN: EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD WHO ASKED IF OP CONFIGURED HIS SETTINGS PROPERLY

Are you dense? Did you even read the post? He's using a Mac, so no, he's not using Asio4All. He stated specifically that he set the buffer size to 512 samples, which is perfectly reasonable when trying to optimize to prevent audio dropouts. Finally: He opened seventy fucking instances of U-he Ace in Reaper at the highest quality setting without issue. Did you think that was just dumb luck or something?

Noob. When you critisize others' test do it by youself and post your result here. Nobody want to hear your noobish conjecture.

Please read my post again, and you'll learn that I was criticizing people who were questioning the results of the test, not the original tester. You should probably brush up on your English before getting into arguments in the language.

Ze2be: Sorry man, but this was a really interesting post with a rather unique test that outlines some serious issues with the DAW we all use. Just like you think my "anger" is unnecessary, I feel the replies from people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about, or replies where it doesn't matter whether the poster knows what they're talking about because it's evident in the response that they couldn't be bothered to read the original post, are equally unnecessary.

[3dot...]

Hmm. At what version did Ableton add multicore suport?

6

[dbfs]

Having more than 4 cores is useless for everything except 3D renders and complex encoding. The time to send the information to each 12 cores between the ram, HD and cpus will nil any of the 12 cores advantages. Even Adobe admit that 4 cores is the sweet spot for top speed.

As for me, since I switched from reason to Live in 2009 on my i7 860 3.6ghz, I never had a single drop out using Asio4All. You sure it's not your comp/sound card/latency configuration?

The kids are making shit up again...

More processing power is more processing power is more processing power... Where the fuck are you reading this garbage you're regurgitating? The National Enquirer?.

Theres no fuckin sweet spot for how many core you have. Thats the most ri-god-damn-diculous thing I've read on here in awhile... Pat yourself on the back for spreading more bullshit and disinformation out on the web. We don't have enough of it!

[3dot...]

I heard somewhere that the feature offering No audio dropout is related with the proccessing. It is when changing routing, insert effect/instrument and etc. To achieve this feature Live is probably handling audio signal odd way comparing to other daw. This may be the obstacle to obtain better multicore support, and cause less efficient multicore processing than that of the others.

I think flStudio is adding an extra general buffer..
(which is sortof cheating)
it accounts for everything running smooth where Live would freeze the gui..

[bartosz szczesny]

Better/more modern multicore support is absolutely my #1 wish for the next version of Live. I really hope they dramatically improve the situation.

+1 !!!!!!

[Bizon]

Having more than 4 cores is useless for everything except 3D renders and complex encoding. The time to send the information to each 12 cores between the ram, HD and cpus will nil any of the 12 cores advantages. Even Adobe admit that 4 cores is the sweet spot for top speed.

As for me, since I switched from reason to Live in 2009 on my i7 860 3.6ghz, I never had a single drop out using Asio4All. You sure it's not your comp/sound card/latency configuration?

The kids are making shit up again...

More processing power is more processing power is more processing power... Where the fuck are you reading this garbage you're regurgitating? The National Enquirer?.

Theres no fuckin sweet spot for how many core you have. Thats the most ri-god-damn-diculous thing I've read on here in awhile... Pat yourself on the back for spreading more bullshit and disinformation out on the web. We don't have enough of it!

LOL, Classic.

You Sir are a comedic genius.

[masterblasterofdisaster]

Having more than 4 cores is useless for everything except 3D renders and complex encoding. The time to send the information to each 12 cores between the ram, HD and cpus will nil any of the 12 cores advantages. Even Adobe admit that 4 cores is the sweet spot for top speed.

As for me, since I switched from reason to Live in 2009 on my i7 860 3.6ghz, I never had a single drop out using Asio4All. You sure it's not your comp/sound card/latency configuration?

The kids are making shit up again...

More processing power is more processing power is more processing power... Where the fuck are you reading this garbage you're regurgitating? The National Enquirer?.

Theres no fuckin sweet spot for how many core you have. Thats the most ri-god-damn-diculous thing I've read on here in awhile... Pat yourself on the back for spreading more bullshit and disinformation out on the web. We don't have enough of it!

Some computational efforts are readily amenable to multi-threading, some are not - nor does computational efficiency always scale linearly when parallelization is of benefit (so yes, there can be a 'sweet spot', where diminishing returns are seen after so many cores are utilized). Not BS.

That said, the assertion that having more than 4 cores for anything other than 3D rendering or 'complex encoding' as being a waste isn't correct, either.

[Ryanmf]

Some computational efforts are readily amenable to multi-threading, some are not - nor does computational efficiency always scale linearly when parallelization is of benefit (so yes, there can be a 'sweet spot', where diminishing returns are seen after so many cores are utilized). Not BS.

That said, the assertion that having more than 4 cores for anything other than 3D rendering or 'complex encoding' as being a waste isn't correct, either.

Hooray, information! Nerds win! Nerds win!

Though I think we can all agree that when the software is incapable of even recognizing all the hardware, let alone properly utilizing it, the entire debate is moot.

[ze2be]

It is an interesting test, and I would love some more real facts on the topic regarding Live, and in general. (Please no fighting folks, it leads to no use) So.. Im not a computer expert, but I can check out some pc geek forums etc. Wiki, and toms hardware perhaps.