Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
altmuse
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:29 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by altmuse » Sun Sep 12, 2021 9:43 am

I seem to have this issue worst when at a venue. A month or so ago I was in an old gallery in Santa Fe. The other night at Calarts in the wild Beast . The PUSH II couldn’t get enough juice. They put me in a separate line. But still, I was running almost nothing, a Kontak patch, a Reaktor patch… when I used to run 32 Loopers live in 4.1 w a Kontak piano and an Ableton piano combined for an hour!

Richard1965
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Joined: Tue Apr 24, 2018 1:10 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by Richard1965 » Fri Oct 29, 2021 8:29 am

Just to add my experiences which includes the intervention of Ableton support. I have had similar issues with Live 11 but purely in terms of the GUI not functioning in every way. All faders/controllers/graphics had considerable lag to the point of being unworkable.

The CPU meter was 7% and audio was fine with no glitches. I have an i7 with 32Gb RAM, dedicated graphics card and a focusrite audio interface. I tried the same project in Live 10 - no problem at all. Even loaded more plugins to the project.

I submitted status files to Ableton and carried out their stress tests with ableton files they sent me and the CPU was LESS in Live 11 than 10 and no problems evident with either but the stress test only used ableton plugins for obvious reasons. I can only assume something has changed in the way that Ableton 'manages' 3rd party plugins but also External instruments as I ran a project purely with 2 external instruments and had the problem in live 11 but not live 10.

Ableton's response was that i had too many sound card drivers and should check to make sure all 3rd plugins were up to date. I can confirm that the issue is still prevalent even having removed audio drivers and using latest 3rd Party plugins.

I am now at a loss and hope that Ableton look into this as something has changed between 10 and 11 and it is crippling anything i try and do.

kitekrazy
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Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by kitekrazy » Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:31 pm

I still have this extremely slow loading times on one system. This existed in Live 10. I'm not sure if it hates my AMD FX6300 or my SanDisk SSD. There is something odd and I don't know if ut's software or hardware

I've tried the usual fixes that are suppose to increase loading times but doesn't work. I might have to see if there are older audio device drivers still installed. It's not plugin related.

No issues on other machines.

MEIC101
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Joined: Thu Nov 18, 2010 4:20 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by MEIC101 » Thu Nov 04, 2021 4:07 am

Live 11 is broken probably. I also have incredibly high cpu usage and audio drop outs. Didn’t have any problems with beta or trial my previous Live 10 was also running smooth. But Live 11 is a disaster. No more fun making music here((((( I got 2,8 ghz i7 16 Gb ram OS X Catalina

.marc.
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Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by .marc. » Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:01 am

same... but its also no fun to work with another daw... all looks and feels so hard to understand... so i wait for every new version, in hope all my problems with cpu-usage are gone. but yes. i also lost fun. some times audio dropouts with 3 tracks of abletons own synth or something.

i'm in contact with the support over month's now. options.txt modified, system completely reinstalled, all plug-ins up to date, ableton only on the system and so on.

i7, 16 GB RAM, Big Sur

KiraCura
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Joined: Wed Jul 14, 2021 4:03 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by KiraCura » Wed Mar 09, 2022 8:57 pm

I now have gone from 8 cores (16 threads)
To 18 cores (36 threads) with my new I-9 10980XE CPU. (Also have 32GB DDR4 Ram)

Given this, I still have to use Razer Cortex (my original work around to decrease Abletons crazy CPU usage).

With my new CPU & Razer Cortex.. Ableton 11 runs at 2-4% idle (nothing loaded.)
With medium to heavy projects: 20%-40%

Without Razer Cortex:
Medium to heavy projects: 40%-60%

So… still… Ableton 11 hates something that is running on my Pc… and the only way to fix it is to have Razer Cortex close various unnecessary programs… because one of them makes Ableton 11 mad.

That is what I have concluded. I hope this helps others. Razer Cortex is a FREE program that closes programs, tasks, services that your PC does NOT need running. It frees up RAM for the most part.
But I’m saying I utilize it to just close a program (I am unaware of which one) that interferes with my Ableton. Because RAM isn’t an issue for me. But yeah.. I’ve been doing this since 11 launched. Because they still haven’t fixed it.

Mark Williams
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Location: Kent

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by Mark Williams » Wed Mar 09, 2022 10:10 pm

Works like a dream on my 8GB M1 Mac Mini. :)
Live 11, M1 Mac Mini, Push 2, Scarlett 18i20 & ADA8200, Softube Console 1 Mk2, Deepmind12, Hydrasynth, Cobalt 8M, Moog Subsequent 25, IK Uno Synth Pro, Plethora X3, Nord Drum 3P

Mooij
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Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:40 am

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by Mooij » Fri Jul 22, 2022 10:50 am

Having this problem …. I was using Ableton 11 for about a year when suddenly it started giving out and cpu overloads… can’t use it now!! All I did was back up my sound library onto my external… and then ableton just said nah dawg 🫠 … i’m on Mac. Just tested Ableton 10 and that shit works like a charm!!! Fuck my life i have TONS of new projects and cant continue themmm

Tarekith
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Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by Tarekith » Fri Jul 22, 2022 2:21 pm

Start Live and give it some time to index everything on the external drive, or keep all your related files like the Live Library on your internal drive. Probably better performance that way anyway.
Tarekith
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j_mc
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 2:11 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by j_mc » Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:44 pm

Ran a few tests. Ableton is running very high cpu to start. Where Logic is taking up only around 3-5% for 3 midi tracks and 2 audio tracks, Ableton running one midi track is at 9-12% with notes and instrument loaded. Ableton's CPU meter says about 34-37%. If scroll in place is in effect, depending on the amount of zoom, CPU usage will double or nearly triple. A midi track without an instrument and without scroll in place increases cpu usage by about 0.5%. Scroll in place on the arranger track seems to only mildly impact CPU by about 0.5-1%. However, scroll in place in the editor will cause 9-18% increase in CPU. Ableton's CPU meter will still read around 1% and once again no instrument loaded. Scrolling in place from arranger with no midi notes causes CPU usage to increase 9-10% and the Ableton meter will read 0-1%. If notes are added with instrument loaded, scroll in place from editor doubles CPU usage from 8-10% to 16-20%. Ableton's CPU remains constant at 30-35%. If notes and instrument is loaded and scroll in place is from arranger my computer will read 18-24% CPU, but Ableton's meter will only slightly increase to 38-41%. However, at around 37% on Ableton's meter is where audio dropouts, popping, and clicking begin to occur. If notes and instrument is loaded and scroll in place is active in both the editor and the arranger there is strangely a drop in CPU usage by 2-3% to 16-19%. However, the Ableton meter increases by 1-2 % and consistently pegs 40-42% CPU usage which causes constant popping and crackling. Scroll in place from arranger or editor in Logic and Bitwig have absolutely no CPU usage effect. Or, it is so minimal it does not register. Notes higher on the roll in tone or held for a longer time causes more CPU usage than increasing the number of notes. There also seems to be a buildup effect. Breaking a clip down into smaller segments caused higher CPU usage and Ableton's CPU meter reached peak usage at a much faster rate. A single clip slowly builds to peak CPU on Ableton's meter then causes crackling. CPU usage from my Mac builds quickly and remains pretty constant throughout a single clip. Freezing tracks lowered CPU usage on my Mac from 18-24% to 14-18%, but on Ableton CPU it lowered by more than half to around 18-19%. Still, a single track using that much CPU is unacceptable.

g_audio
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2022 2:40 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by g_audio » Tue Oct 18, 2022 8:25 pm

Tipmaster1 wrote:
Mon Aug 30, 2021 8:32 am
Hi guys,

I had the same issue, CPU always spiking on moderately complex projects, even though I have an i9 10900K.

check out this vid, step 3 fixed it for me (I know this vid was made for Live 9, still worked for me):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97vVx4isOQ
Yes, and this is because something is severely broken here. I have yet to see software where I have to run my CPU at full speed without letting it downclock in idle. For what reason?

But, it is the case here. Also it shows that the CPU calculation is severely wrong from the beginning all through to the end or the threading does not work correctly or whatever is behind that.

Just a simple test shows this. Let the CPU downclock "normally" to 5%. I don't remember the synth I had running, one track in Ableton and I had spikes of up to 40% of CPU usage for this one track :( Yes yes we know the readout is now different, but this is not the culprit or the issue. No synth uses this amount of CPU. We are talking of an all-core overclocked 4.9GHz 6-core/12-thread CPU here. And one track with one synth and no effects.

Then just switch the CPU so it cannot downclock, even while this track is running. And whoops we are down to max. 2% CPU usage on the meter...

juveplu
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Sep 17, 2023 2:21 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by juveplu » Sun Sep 17, 2023 2:24 pm

This Razer Cortex has a dangerous virus - Win32/Worm - High Danger. Do not install it.
Checked with private security software and can't be tricked or stopped from detecting here

And in this forum for REASON, after tests with REAPER, they say that REAPER was developed to use very little of the processor and there is no such problem.

https://forum.reasontalk.com/viewtopic.php?t=7501594

So it's not us who should look for the solution, but the developers because everything depends on them and considering that Ableton 10 also behaves better.

Developers should read this, try REAPER and find out why it is drawing less consumption?
The ball is in the developers' court and we will wait for an update with a solution to this issue as soon as possible.

Rivanni
Posts: 400
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: Unusually high cpu usage in Ableton 11

Post by Rivanni » Mon Sep 18, 2023 10:25 am

A comparison between Reaper and Reason is irrelevant to the performance of Live.

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