After 10 years with ableton I just tried Studio One...

[Donnie]

Studio One is definitely a good secondary DAW for certain tasks, but honestly I haven't had any problems with large projects since I went Live 9 64 bit.

[dna598]

I keep wanting to use studio one but it doesnt have slice to midi and a good sampler. Neither does it have the equivalent of racks which i can't live without for instant parallel instruments and fx.

yeah shame Live sputters and clicks when it cpu hits beyond 50%. im waiting on that improvement.

When I think about it ive had my i7 920 cpu since 2009, and Live still doesnt use it to its full (mutli-thread) capacity. CRAZY!

[Royalston]

For 90% of projects I use an internal 500gb Samsung Pro SSD...so I would have expected there not to be bottlenecks there - unfortunately performance sucks. My test with the 50 rendered files was done using an external HDD. The files used for both the Ableton and Presonus mixes were kept in the same place (I did not collect to a folder). Drivers being used are for Lynx Hilo - a great soundcard - but I have the same problems with the built in soundcard.
This problem has been going on so long, I had assumed my (fast) computer was not fast enough (I have written to support many times) - but in Studio One everything seems to run super smooth. An example for me is the Fabfilter Pro Q plugin. In ableton, the the redraw rate on the spectrum feels sluggish, the plugin response is slightly slow -In Studio One, it's like a different plugin - the spectrum is fast and bouncy and the eq nodes respond instantly. Ive never been able to use OZone in a larger project - it just makes Live crap out - Studio had no problem using several instances.

The studio one demo is active btw, download and install it and you get a demo Key via the installer itself (even though the website says keys are not available at this time). I haven't tried the deeper functions of studio one yet - I just mixed in it.

I dont want to mix in another program - I love the way sampler and simpler work plus I know Live's other plugins inside and out, but the performance is terrible for large complex projects, which mine generally are.

[eyeknow]

I wouldn't want to go one or the other. If push comes to shove, I'll export things out of live and mix in S1.

It's funny, because I do have more issues with CPU on S1 than with live.

[Michael Hatsis]

Ive been using Live since v2. and as the OP says, there's a point where a project just gets too big that it just falls apart. Things start popping and crackling, navigating racks is super slow, saves take forever.... Happens to me all the time. quite frustrating. I'm still on v8. Seems worse in v9.

Here is an article written by Jon Margulies which gets into this a bit
http://hobo-tech.com/technologies/livet ... d-glitchy/

[sowhoso]

If you want a very light hosts for heavy plug in use in Mix/mastering stages you should also check reaper.

i've been using reaper since before ver.1 (almost the beginning). i only use it for mixing now. it gets bogged down too

after awhile reaper transport glitches (PLAY, STOP etc), like tearing sheets of paper, and playback starts to "hem and haw." i rarely have more than 3-4 plugins per track (20-30 tracks, mostly Waves, Slate and IK plugins). i got tired of looking for the best Pref setup

any DAW can have these problems and you have to freeze, bounce, whatever

window 7 64bit
intel i7-2600 3.4GHz
16 GB RAM
projects and audio files are kept on separate drives

[jestermgee]

I'm interested to know in these cases where performance seems to fall apart, are the machines being used dedicated to production or are they general machines too?

Just curious because I have a very powerful i7 overclocked and super cooled. I have a hot-swap SATA bay which I use to swap out my entire OS drive for production, video editing and general usage (games and programming etc).

I have rarely had issues (though most tracks would have 40 and under tracks max) but I do use lots of instances of heavy CPU stuff like Omnisphere, Komplete etc.

I can get the CPU meter in Ableton to about 80% before I get a sniff of an issue and I have rarely a crash, slowdown or jerk (probably jynxed it now).

Onething is I keep the OS and compurter super clean in its files and software. I only install what is needed to run the music production environment and uninstall everything that doesn't fit the need. I have OS backups incremented and occasionally roll back and update again to clear out cobwebs.

I've had issues in my younger days where hardware drivers, attached USB devices, background updates and virus scans have all affected the performance which is why I spent a LONG time getting a proper dedicated and tuned machine and I think that is what pays off. Also, I cannot get distracted and start playing games or something if I have to shutdown and swap disks.

[mareproduction]

I'm interested to know in these cases where performance seems to fall apart, are the machines being used dedicated to production or are they general machines too?

Just curious because I have a very powerful i7 overclocked and super cooled. I have a hot-swap SATA bay which I use to swap out my entire OS drive for production, video editing and general usage (games and programming etc).

I have rarely had issues (though most tracks would have 40 and under tracks max) but I do use lots of instances of heavy CPU stuff like Omnisphere, Komplete etc.

I can get the CPU meter in Ableton to about 80% before I get a sniff of an issue and I have rarely a crash, slowdown or jerk (probably jynxed it now).

Onething is I keep the OS and compurter super clean in its files and software. I only install what is needed to run the music production environment and uninstall everything that doesn't fit the need. I have OS backups incremented and occasionally roll back and update again to clear out cobwebs.
So you have one Win OS for Ableton and another for everything else? You turn your computer when you swamp entire OS? What hot swamp unit do you recommend?
Thanks
I've had issues in my younger days where hardware drivers, attached USB devices, background updates and virus scans have all affected the performance which is why I spent a LONG time getting a proper dedicated and tuned machine and I think that is what pays off. Also, I cannot get distracted and start playing games or something if I have to shutdown and swap disks.

What hot swamp unit do you have? You turn off computer before swamping? So you have only one hdd for ableton with no Internet?
Thanks

[jestermgee]

Ah, should have said quick swap. I have to shut down the machine obviously.

I have a fixed storage drive which is shared between all operating systems and dedicated OS drives for each machine setup. Just pop in and out which OS I want to run.

[dna598]

Just pop in and out which OS I want to run.

kewl

[mholloway]

Royalston..

FWIW, I run both S1 and Ableton Live 9 on newish iMac and though both perform well, Ableton always out-performs S1. I can load -way- more big plugins (including ozone, etc) and get a high track count with no dropouts or sluggishness in Ableton long after S1 has started crapping out.

I'm not a super-tech guy so I can't really explain why. But just thought you should know somebody has the exact opposite experience between these two programs.....food for thought, maybe something's up with your live 9 installation or system or god knows what..

-M

[Tarekith]

Wow, that's exactly the opposite of how it is for everyone else I know. I can load way more into S1 before I get drop outs, it's not even a close comparison in terms of number of tracks or plug ins.

[H20nly]

what if it's something really silly... like... the one that was installed first has less issues

gremlins theories... making tech support love their job since Xerox.

[eyeknow]

At performances: Didn't we have a test not all that long ago and post the results? Or was that in the older beta thread? Yeah, my memory sucks

[jestermgee]

I think this topic in some form has cropped up dozens of times (Live sux in department X compared to DAW Y) and in almost every case the findings are always inconclusive.

Every environment is different and it sux for some, works for others like almost all software. That is just how software is.