Ableton Forum

I just installed live 10 on my MBP (early 2015, i7, 16gb ram).
I'm currently working on a session with 2 tracks of NI Kontakt (samples are purged), 4 audio tracks and a small amount of AU plugins.
The CPU spikes are unbearable (running with 512ms latency...). Live is constantly creating glitches, cpu usage is flickering between 27 and 51%. Live 9 could handle this kind of session without any problem. Turning of the WiFi doesn't have any effect...
Any recommandations from the swarm intelligence ?
If not I would recommand to stick to live 9 when it comes to important or professional use...

This is strange.
Actually I came here because I had the same problem:
when testing some Arturia CS-80 presets, I noticed a cpu load of 40%, just with one audio track and the Cs-80 track.

So I made a test with Live 9, and this is what came out, surprisingly:

Arturia CS-80 patch 'Zone Cutoff'

Live 9
9% (idle), max 40% (played a note)
Live 10
2% (idle), max 11% (played a note)
so actually, Live10 is much better cpuLoad-wise!?

I then loaded my previous project (which had the 40% cpu load), and, after reloading, cpu load now reaches a mere 11%.

So the question is: what made Live jump to 40%?
maybe it's because I did some parameter tweaking with the Push?
And after reloading all is fine again?

win10, 8gB, cpu i5 4460, 1150 mainboard

royston wrote: So the question is: what made Live jump to 40%?
maybe it's because I did some parameter tweaking with the Push?
And after reloading all is fine again?

Could be, but it could also be background processes you don't think about using up the CPU leaving less for Live. The audio engine load is not a good indicator of CPU usage. It's better to make a longer test and use an application dedicated to measure CPU usage. In this case in one core as one single track in Live will be used only by one core.

deckentokken wrote:I just installed live 10 on my MBP (early 2015, i7, 16gb ram).
I'm currently working on a session with 2 tracks of NI Kontakt (samples are purged), 4 audio tracks and a small amount of AU plugins.
The CPU spikes are unbearable (running with 512ms latency...). Live is constantly creating glitches, cpu usage is flickering between 27 and 51%. Live 9 could handle this kind of session without any problem. Turning of the WiFi doesn't have any effect...
Any recommandations from the swarm intelligence ?
If not I would recommand to stick to live 9 when it comes to important or professional use...

Are running the laptop from the battery?

Everything ok here, nothing unusual

iMac i7 4.0 Ghz
32 GB RAM
High Sierra OSX

2017 MBP Pro i7 3.2 Ghz
High sierra
16 GB RAM

thanks cpyatak for helping and the detailed report (i,m on 9.7)
you are getting good results but it seems that others seen strange cpu spikes.

i have some live gigs coming up so i think i wait upgrading to 10

JAMM wrote:thanks cpyatak for helping and the detailed report (i,m on 9.7)
you are getting good results but it seems that others seen strange cpu spikes.

i have some live gigs coming up so i think i wait upgrading to 10

Oh yeah, definitely wait if you have gigs coming up. If what you have now is rock solid, stick with it until you have the time put into optimizing and/or ableton solves the issues. Just because I'm not having issues doesn't mean they don't exist, clearly a lot of people are seeing some sour stuff. Also, you said you're getting close to maxing out already, so I'd definitely stick with what's working.

I think my good results may come from my work flow -- I try to stay live as much as possible, and use Ableton to bring everything together (hardware and software). I'm seldom using more than a few VSTs, and I use Live's native effects almost exclusively. Some of that is because I know my machine has limitations -- I've known for a while that I'd have to drop some coin on a computer upgrade sooner or later -- I'm hoping to be able to wait until the issue with the Intel Chip performance thing is fixed.

I hope this gets ironed out for people soon.

I'm starting to think this is a Windows 10 issue.
By going to Power Options, advanced settings, power management, and setting the minimum processor state to 100% from 5%, Ableton Live 10 stopped having any CPU related issues.
The thing is, I don't really fancy having my CPU usage at 100% all the time even when I'm not using Live.

thanks cpyatak for the info.
I'm waiting for the next 15 MBP so until that moment i try to manage with my old MBP;)

didn't miss an update sins version 4.0 so for shure gonna buy 10 but install it laterrr;)

The Beta had those issues, multiple reports -

Unrelated to Windows 10

Also in reasonably sized projects, try and do clip slip-editing, pretty slugish!

Just hope it will get fixed in an upcoming update

mariolemon wrote:I'm starting to think this is a Windows 10 issue.
By going to Power Options, advanced settings, power management, and setting the minimum processor state to 100% from 5%, Ableton Live 10 stopped having any CPU related issues.
The thing is, I don't really fancy having my CPU usage at 100% all the time even when I'm not using Live.

If you want to use software such as live you kind of need to tailor your machine for that kind of software and one of the very first things windows users should ALWAYS do is disable any CPU throttling/parking and sleep features. If you choose not to, you will have issues.

jestermgee wrote:

mariolemon wrote:I'm starting to think this is a Windows 10 issue.
By going to Power Options, advanced settings, power management, and setting the minimum processor state to 100% from 5%, Ableton Live 10 stopped having any CPU related issues.
The thing is, I don't really fancy having my CPU usage at 100% all the time even when I'm not using Live.

If you want to use software such as live you kind of need to tailor your machine for that kind of software and one of the very first things windows users should ALWAYS do is disable any CPU throttling/parking and sleep features. If you choose not to, you will have issues.

Or you can use a freeware like Process Lasso, set Ableton Live 10 as a high performance process, and have a normal computer.

Im getting high 60% CPU usage on Mac Pro 2008 quad core when using Wavetable at high settings (i.e. a lot of Poly and Unsion voices).
Is that normal now?
I have Buffer Size set at 256, Sample rate at 44100Hz.

I'm not getting any glitches, just very high CPU usage.

I can set Wavetable to use 3 Poly voices and 3 Unison shimmer voices, which will reduce my CPU down to about 30/40%.
Activity Moniter s telling me Live is using approx 170% with around 70% + CPU idle.....


Im guessing multicore use is now standard as there is no setting in Preferences anymore??



Ok, reading the manual helps me answer a lot of these questions. I see Wavetable is inherently CPU intensive.......ok, no worries.

mariolemon wrote: Or you can use a freeware like Process Lasso, set Ableton Live 10 as a high performance process, and have a normal computer.

Then why not just do that then.

MBP 13" Late 2016 3.3GHz i7 w/ 16GB RAM...

New here... Started using Live 9 in December... Just upgraded to 10. Almost unusable.

Reaktor 6 on one MIDI track, Wavetable, Ping Pong, Grain Delay and Reverb on another... Playing a few chords on my Push 2 gets the CPU up to 65% which causes audio to break up. Granted I didn't have Wavetable in 9 but I never noticed CPU usage this high before.

AwA