Need help.. disk usage to high

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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MiKe_ULTRA
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:41 pm

Need help.. disk usage to high

Post by MiKe_ULTRA » Sun Apr 04, 2021 11:53 pm

Hello,
I'm facing a strange issue with ableton 11.0.2
I have to do the mastering phase of my project.
I load all stems in individuals tracks.
I put all track to RAM.
When I play the song... I have a disk warning (on the upper right corner.. you know !)
I don't understand why.
I have 32 GB of RAM with only 1/3 used.
I have 3 ssd. One for live and plugins, an other with live cache folder and an other with live temp folder.
Processor use while playing : 8%
I cannot do my mastering session anymore. It is just impossible. As soon I start playing the song, I get a disk alert and the half of stems are not played.
Any clue ????

Scuz my english.

jestermgee
Posts: 4500
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:38 am

Re: Need help.. disk usage to high

Post by jestermgee » Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:10 am

- Mac/PC (i'm guessing PC as u'd need to sell your house for that much Ram for Mac)
- Mobo model, CPU model, RAM make and Mhz, Audio Interface Model... etc!
- How many stems?
- What is the size of your stems (length and MB/GB)?
- Samperate/bitrate of stems?
- Are the stems running from one of your SSDs?
- Screenshot of your project?

The "Disk Usage" is not only about the disk, but how much data can be pushed through the pipelines and there could be other bottlenecks in your system or for all I know you may be trying to run 100 tracks of 1 hour long 192khz wav files.

Have you also looked in task manager at the disc/ram activity in sys monitor to see if you are indeed hitting issues.

Also, the performance of your SSD could be an issue if you have a QLC/TLC type of SSD and try processing a lot of real time data through it, write speeds of these especially as they fill up can really be impacted.

Lastly, if you are loading the samples to RAM in Live have you left your project for a moment to see if the issue improves as it can take some time to load the samples into RAM and you may be having issues if this is occuring in the background.

MiKe_ULTRA
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:41 pm

Re: Need help.. disk usage to high

Post by MiKe_ULTRA » Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:31 am

jestermgee wrote:
Mon Apr 05, 2021 12:10 am
- Mac/PC (i'm guessing PC as u'd need to sell your house for that much Ram for Mac)
- Mobo model, CPU model, RAM make and Mhz, Audio Interface Model... etc!
- How many stems?
- What is the size of your stems (length and MB/GB)?
- Samperate/bitrate of stems?
- Are the stems running from one of your SSDs?
- Screenshot of your project?

The "Disk Usage" is not only about the disk, but how much data can be pushed through the pipelines and there could be other bottlenecks in your system or for all I know you may be trying to run 100 tracks of 1 hour long 192khz wav files.

Have you also looked in task manager at the disc/ram activity in sys monitor to see if you are indeed hitting issues.

Also, the performance of your SSD could be an issue if you have a QLC/TLC type of SSD and try processing a lot of real time data through it, write speeds of these especially as they fill up can really be impacted.

Lastly, if you are loading the samples to RAM in Live have you left your project for a moment to see if the issue improves as it can take some time to load the samples into RAM and you may be having issues if this is occuring in the background.
Hello jestermgee,

I'm on PC ;)
MB: MSI x570 ace, CPU AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32 gb of g-skill 3200 mhz memory, SB Live z (asio driver), ssd are all samsung 850 evo
I have 22 stems 96khz/32b (284mb each)
All stems are on one of my ssd (in the samples/imported folder of Ableton)
Only light plugins for the moment ( some compressors and EQ )
The ressource monitor doesn't show anything special. Disks just stays at 0% (when playing)

a weird thing:
I did a first master of this track in December, last year, with Ableton 10 and I didn't have this problem ( with a ton of plugins ) my processor was at 90% (yes... I said a ton of plugins:) with no issue.

last news:

I just did this test: I disengaged RAM option on all stems and it plays fine (for the moment). ???

scuz my english :oops:

jestermgee
Posts: 4500
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:38 am

Re: Need help.. disk usage to high

Post by jestermgee » Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:45 pm

Yeah don't confuse CPU/Processing with "throughput" of audio, this is the difference between the CPU meter (how much the processor is calculating audio) and the Disk meter (how much data is being streamed to the audio interface). As this appears, disk overload isn't always specifically the disk, it is just an indication of something limiting the throughput of data.

Nothing in your specs screams any real issue, 22 tracks of audio isn't a huge amount, I was more interested if you were one of the insane that runs with 192 for multitracks but seems fine to me.

Interesting it is when you have RAM engaged. Unless there is some bug with Live this could indicate an issue with your ram or a bottleneck between the RAM and the audio output. One thing to check is if the RAM is running with the correct settings in the BIOS. I have had a PC build with DDR3 2400 RAM that in the BIOS was only running at 1200Mhz so I had to manually set this. Maybe something to check.

If it runs fine when RAM is off i'd go with that since streaming from SSD is just as good as RAM if it can manage, not like a HDD where you can start having glitches and such if the drive has to seek too much. But if you are ok with pulling things out of a computer check your RAM is installed correct. I assume you have 4 x 8GB sticks but if you have 2 x 16GB check the manual and make sure they are inserted in the correct DIMM slots for your motherboard.

Other than this i'm not really sure.

MiKe_ULTRA
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:41 pm

Re: Need help.. disk usage to high

Post by MiKe_ULTRA » Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:15 pm

Hello,
thank you for your advice and the informations you gave me.
I know more than before, particularly about the disk warning in Ableton.
It's no more an issue for me.
Have a nice day.

scuz my english

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