CPU Spikes when launching scenes for the first time(s)(Live 10/11)

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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lebasti
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:30 pm

CPU Spikes when launching scenes for the first time(s)(Live 10/11)

Post by lebasti » Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:30 am

Hi

I have a rather annoying problem with my live-performance-set. It consists of like 10 audio tracks (with mostly warped clips on pro), a Maschine 2-Instance routed to 16 audio tracks, 8 tracks with 4 u-he hive instances + 4 drumloop tracks and (finally) some tracks for clyphx actions. So something around 40 tracks. The whole set has around 150 scenes I think.

Now the problem is - when I launch some of those scenes I get a cpu spike / crackle pop when launching it for the first time (sometimes also the second time), after that the cpu spikes are gone. This is happening in scenes with and without virtual instruments playing (or changing chains). The problem seems to be the same in Live 10 and Live 11 (latest beta). It is independent of used audio interface (internal or babyface).
My system is a 2.8ghz macbook pro 15 (mid 2015). I had only 100gb of 1TB free in the first tests, but now I have 250gb free and the problem is still existent.

Anyone has an idea :)?

Cheers

Sebastian

EDIT: I use a moderate buffer of 256 with 44.1 khz. I tried removing all stuff besides the 10 main audio stem tracks - things remain the same, cpu spikes on initial launch. I copied all content to a new directory and enabled "ram" mode (and disabled HQ) for everything

EDIT 2: It seems to be a bit better if i DISABLE RAM-Mode for all my clips. Maybe the problem is that my whole project is around 16gb in size (and I have 16gb of memory) and the systems is going to swap ram to disk. I changed to RAM the other day when I had show and the last track would not play because of "disk overload" (All stems only played the first bar and then stopped)

Calagan
Posts: 268
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:44 am

Re: CPU Spikes when launching scenes for the first time(s)(Live 10/11)

Post by Calagan » Sat Sep 18, 2021 6:02 am

Interested too in some opinions about this issue.

From what I know and on my system (macbook pro 15 inches, older mid-2012 model, Live 11 - I'm using Live on stage and for mixing/producing/composing), I always had a small CPU spike when launching scenes (first time or not, from Live 9 to 11).

I very rarely hear the spike because I always insert some silence at the beginning of my scenes (I don't play techno or pure electro : in my use of Live, each scene is a complete song, and each scene starts with a 2 bars click routed only to in-ear monitors).

But even in a mixing/production process, when the set is heavy, I always have a lot of CPU issues when hitting play, sometimes during few seconds.
It's very distracting and it could be great if Ableton could improve the CPU use (or if I could save some thousands and buy the last ARM mac, but it's more a personnal issue ah ah ah).

I found too, by experimenting, that automation and/or chain manipulations use a lot of CPU (independantly from the plugins used).
In particular on stage, I have deeply automated Live sets, with very complex racks and chains of plugins (so musicians can select a different vsti on each part of the song for exemple). All this racking, chaining, automating is much more CPUvore than just having the same plugins on different tracks with no automation/chains/racks (but of course, it's the whole point of Live to be able to use chains, racks and automations on stage).
Sometimes it's even better to let a plugin turned on instead of automating its on/off button (to close it when there's no more need for it) because the automation takes some CPU and the plugins often clicks when turned off. Depending on the plugin of course and the way it manage sleep mode.

So recently I try to simplify to the maximum my chains/racks/automation lanes.
But like lebasti, I'm open to any suggestion/advice to this problem, and very interested in anyone sharing its way of managing it.

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