SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
usernametaken
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Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2014 9:58 pm

SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by usernametaken » Sun Jun 14, 2015 4:50 am

Hello all,

I wanted to share this with you because I really couldn't believe it. Maybe it will help some of you with your issues if you have unexplained CPU spikes and glitching audio.

I have a desktop powerhouse I7 8GB with dedicated graphics fast SSD system drive and separate 7200 drive for audio recording and another drive for samples.

No problem right? Wrong. Live 9 has been a pain. The CPU meter jumping around all over the place in large and small projects. My audio was crackling and popping every now and then and I am sure this is the reason. I tried all the usual tweaks, buffer size, background services, turn off wifi etc etc. No luck.

Strangely I found that turning off multiprocessor support made things better. Not completely better but the spikes seemed to be reduced and CPU use was less. This seemed really weird.

The other thing. Other DAWs were fine. Studio One etc all run smoothly.

Anyhow. My system is a Dell. I remember looking in power options before and the system was set to 'Dell Balanced'. I didn't think much of it. Until I looked more closely.

For a desktop PC, Dell by default had put together a power profile that throttled my CPU down to 5% minimum and 100% max. It was as if I had a laptop on power saving mode. There was no need for Dell to do this and I never in a million years thought a high spec desktop would have a crippling power saving profile.

So I switched the profile to high performance. 100% min and 100% max CPU and loaded up ableton.

Suddenly no spikes, low stable CPU use and multiprocessor mode made things even better (as it is meant to!).

Now this doesn't explain why other DAWs were fine. But I guess Ableton is more resource hungry.

Nevertheless. Check and double check your power settings in windows because it could be that which is throttling your CPU down. It seems obvious now, but I really was shocked to find that my desktop was being hamstrung by a silly Dell power management profile.

Hope this helps some of you.

Mark

cotdagoo
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Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by cotdagoo » Sun Jun 14, 2015 11:35 am

Anytime I see someone post about buying a new computer that performs worse than their "old" system this is exactly what pops into mind..

How is Dell going to know what you plan on using the computer for ? :) They set a balanced profile that's a good starting point for the "average" user.

re:dream
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Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by re:dream » Sun Jun 14, 2015 2:44 pm

Have you looked at DPC latency? In my experience Dell machines have terrible DPC latency, related not only to power management but also to the video card.

Riley333
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Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by Riley333 » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:59 am

Kudos to the OP! This works on any PC not set correctly in the advanced power tab. I thought my Toshiba laptop was weak with ableton then I did the tweak mentioned by the OP and it's like 10x better! Thanks for sharing!! Riley :mrgreen:
HP DV7 4295us, i7 2630QM, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 1TB Internal, Windows 7 64bit Ultimate,RME Firface UC,Ableton Live, Sonar X1, Maschine.

.:xos:.
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:39 pm

Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by .:xos:. » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:01 pm

Holy s**** ! 8O 8O 8O
Where is the donate button, man...
I have a dell xps-8700 with 32Go Ram... I thought 60% cpu usage in Live was due to some heavy plugins consumption...
I'm down to 20% on the same live set and got back latency to the minimum...
Amazing, I feel stupid to not have check that.. but anywhay thanx a lot....

gide0n
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Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by gide0n » Mon Sep 19, 2016 3:33 am

Unbelievable. I just put about $1300 into building a machine, and spent four days trying to find out why it couldn't run the same sequences as my four year old i5... Life saver thread here. I was seriously about to start taking apart this box and start sending components back.

jamief
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Location: Awakend

Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by jamief » Mon Sep 19, 2016 10:47 am

Im having same problem with my mac I7 Quad 2.6 twin terabyte SSD. Its areal pain and i haven't found a fix.
Last edited by jamief on Sun Sep 25, 2016 7:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

JT Panda
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Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2016 10:00 am

Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by JT Panda » Tue Sep 20, 2016 10:01 am

jamief wrote:Im having same problem with my mac I7 Quad 2.6 twin terabyte SSD. Its areal pain and i have found a fix.
Whats the fix ? I need it :)

micksmuse
Posts: 114
Joined: Sun May 26, 2013 12:53 pm

Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by micksmuse » Tue Sep 20, 2016 2:15 pm

so i read the post and thought my nightmare is over. someone has finally addressed the issue i have been dealing with for a long time.

only to have my fix quickly negated by finding that windows 10 (my operating system) doesn't want me to manage anything and even if i used a "disable core parking utility" that i found that on reboot windows 10 would re-write them again back to the default and you need to reboot to make the changes take hold.

please someone/anyone let me know if this can be accomplished on windows 10 and if not how far back down the food chain i have to go to be able to do this. thanks.

yentzee
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Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by yentzee » Thu Dec 08, 2016 9:20 pm

old thread but thanks guys. just switches back from os x to windows and an actual dell xps 15 9550 was a bit better than my macbook pro from 2011.
now it works way better. still not that of a jump in performance as i was hoping for but way better than before changing power settings.

ikeaboy
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Location: Ireland

Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by ikeaboy » Wed Dec 21, 2016 5:19 pm

JT Panda wrote:
jamief wrote:Im having same problem with my mac I7 Quad 2.6 twin terabyte SSD. Its areal pain and i have found a fix.
Whats the fix ? I need it :)
Maybe this only applies to macbook pro's but try turning off Automatic graphics switching in Power management.

Stromkraft
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Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by Stromkraft » Thu Dec 22, 2016 1:51 pm

jamief wrote:Im having same problem with my mac I7 Quad 2.6 twin terabyte SSD. Its areal pain and i haven't found a fix.
Turn off app nap for Live in the Finder.
Make some music!

Shift Gorden
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Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by Shift Gorden » Thu Dec 22, 2016 2:58 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
jamief wrote:Im having same problem with my mac I7 Quad 2.6 twin terabyte SSD. Its areal pain and i haven't found a fix.
Turn off app nap for Live in the Finder.
Thanks, mate.

Trying that.

Hyperconfidence
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2015 1:34 am

Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by Hyperconfidence » Thu Mar 09, 2017 4:10 am

usernametaken wrote:Hello all,

I wanted to share this with you because I really couldn't believe it. Maybe it will help some of you with your issues if you have unexplained CPU spikes and glitching audio.

I have a desktop powerhouse I7 8GB with dedicated graphics fast SSD system drive and separate 7200 drive for audio recording and another drive for samples.

No problem right? Wrong. Live 9 has been a pain. The CPU meter jumping around all over the place in large and small projects. My audio was crackling and popping every now and then and I am sure this is the reason. I tried all the usual tweaks, buffer size, background services, turn off wifi etc etc. No luck.

Strangely I found that turning off multiprocessor support made things better. Not completely better but the spikes seemed to be reduced and CPU use was less. This seemed really weird.

The other thing. Other DAWs were fine. Studio One etc all run smoothly.

Anyhow. My system is a Dell. I remember looking in power options before and the system was set to 'Dell Balanced'. I didn't think much of it. Until I looked more closely.

For a desktop PC, Dell by default had put together a power profile that throttled my CPU down to 5% minimum and 100% max. It was as if I had a laptop on power saving mode. There was no need for Dell to do this and I never in a million years thought a high spec desktop would have a crippling power saving profile.

So I switched the profile to high performance. 100% min and 100% max CPU and loaded up ableton.

Suddenly no spikes, low stable CPU use and multiprocessor mode made things even better (as it is meant to!).

Now this doesn't explain why other DAWs were fine. But I guess Ableton is more resource hungry.

Nevertheless. Check and double check your power settings in windows because it could be that which is throttling your CPU down. It seems obvious now, but I really was shocked to find that my desktop was being hamstrung by a silly Dell power management profile.

Hope this helps some of you.

Mark

You rock mate.

My CPU was ridiculous.

I've noticed two settings in power options that could work better:

High Performance or Pro AudioVideo for low latency. This one specifically mentions working with DAWS.
DELL Precision 5520 32GBRAM 7th Gen Xeon E3, PUSH 2, Roland Duo Capture EX, AKG Mic, Novation Launchkey 49, Novation Launchpad 2. Plenty of Waves and NI Plug-Ins. Total noob with computer hardware, but a fast learner.

D05ound
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:53 pm

Re: SOLVED - CPU SPIKES IN LIVE 9

Post by D05ound » Thu Jul 20, 2017 2:09 pm

So everything is working fine on my dell laptop, 32GB RAM projects with 10 plugins sylenth/spire/massive etc...

Then I switch it on.. CPU crippled :[

Firstly thank you to all the users for the information on the battery, I changed it to high performance but I had the same issue, I then right click power icon, battery information, battery setting was set to express charge, changed to standard and then tried again. Now no CPU spikes, but this was a red herring, as I had unplugged the laptop from the battery which resolved the issue.

It appears the charger was an old one and did you actually charge the battery, it simply powered it, so I found another charger which did charge the battery and presto, no CPU spikes.

So it would seem when the battery isn't being charged more CPU is being used on the machine?

Anyway I can work once again, hope this experience helps someone out.

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