CPU hog simpler / EIC grand piano

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TheAnimal
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CPU hog simpler / EIC grand piano

Post by TheAnimal » Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:49 pm

Live got overall faster with version 6, but I have one problem where CPU usage gets really high:

After dragging the grand piano instrument rack into a midi track, the system shows that Live is constantly using around 100% CPU without doing anything else. Live itself displays a CPU usage of 3% only.

Does anybody know what Live is doing in the background that uses so much CPU?
Last edited by TheAnimal on Tue Oct 17, 2006 8:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
MacBook Pro, iMac i5, Fireface 800, Fireface 400

TheAnimal
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Post by TheAnimal » Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:03 pm

Same is true for many other (very cool) instruments from the instrument rack. Live becomes very unresponsive and I see the spinning beachball quite often. I'm still trying it out. CPU load depends a lot on the selected instrument and can go up to 140% while Live still displays <10%.
MacBook Pro, iMac i5, Fireface 800, Fireface 400

kineticUk
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Post by kineticUk » Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:49 pm

I noticed problems too.
MacBook MacOS Live 9.7.1 Max for Live Push Logic

cherry-k
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Post by cherry-k » Mon Oct 16, 2006 8:48 pm

yes,

unfortunately definitively confirmed, but i got an old machine. :(
nevetheless, I think EIC sounds great.

best k.
cheers, michael

*MacOS 10.8*iMac-i7*32GB*motu ultralite mk1*
*Live 3-9 suite*AD*AK*AmpegSVX*
*tubeamps*guild-guitars+basses*and myself*

need real guitar- or bass-trax??? send PM!

longjohns
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Post by longjohns » Tue Oct 17, 2006 1:32 am

i also just installed the EIC this weekend (finally)

and same here, the grand piano is currently not really usable for real-time playing. I'm doing OK with the lite versions

my hope would be to get a buttload of RAM (I've actually had more problems with the disk overload light when using the grand piano)

I'm hoping that 2G would be enough to load the piano in, because then I could keep the sticks I've got in there now...

the piano does sound really nice to me though!! certainly the best I've got on my computer (that might not be saying much but still, i like it!)

longjohns
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Post by longjohns » Tue Oct 17, 2006 2:06 am

just converted to sampler, and tried to hit the RAM button

it would take probably 6G of RAM to load the grand piano! (it says 5G+ in the error dialog, but you've got to have some for other things too)

i just tried lowering the number of voices and that helps a bit, although it's a trade off, of course.

oh, and the conversion to sampler made it even worse - stick with simpler

kineticUk
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Post by kineticUk » Tue Oct 17, 2006 2:14 am

Personally I don't see EIC getting used unless they sort it out.
Performance is poor, even some of the none EIC instrument racks seem poor, you play notes and then wait for Live to catch up and load them.
Its not good enough..thats the bottom line and its not just the grand piano.
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50244
MacBook MacOS Live 9.7.1 Max for Live Push Logic

TheAnimal
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Post by TheAnimal » Tue Oct 17, 2006 8:12 am

longjohns wrote: my hope would be to get a buttload of RAM (I've actually had more problems with the disk overload light when using the grand piano)
I have 4GB RAM installed. (Forgot to mention.) But Live doesn't use a lot of it. Currently my system status shows 2,65 GB of free RAM and Live use 855MB only with the grand piano and DFH running.
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longjohns
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Post by longjohns » Tue Oct 17, 2006 3:11 pm

yes, because it's streaming the piano off your hard disk

i suppose another option i could look at is setting up a couple of new drives, SATA in a raid array???? (i've got SATA on this motherboard, but it's disabled right now)


p.s. - i couldn't see a RAM switch in simpler, hope i'm just not blind?

posssu
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Post by posssu » Mon Dec 04, 2006 9:06 pm

What's the point in bundling instruments that can't actually be played live? I'm sure they sound very real, but we I would really need some piano I can play and layer with other sounds. I currently own Garritan Personal Orchestra and the Steinway in it would do a very good job (it also loads in ram and is very much smaller than EIC-grand), but the GPO player seems to crash Live and have some other problems too.

Please add some Grand Piano Nano -patch. It doesn't matter if it doesn't have all the velocity layers in the world, it just has to be playable.

I don't use external HD at gigs, so I'm completely dependand on instruments that work with 7200rpm Powerbook internal HD.

Also, the less space the instruments take, the better.

longjohns
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Post by longjohns » Tue Dec 05, 2006 2:47 am

I ended up doing a little hardware upgrade. With a new SATA drive and another 1G of Ram I can now play the Grand Piano patch without too much trouble.

(This computer is a few years old now, a 2.6 P4)

The Lite version was always usable for me, and the Draft version should be even better.

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