"System File Cache" in Live 6

FrankH · Post by **FrankH** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:26 am

Hello,

I'm currently testing Live 6.0.2b10 on a Windows laptop, details are in my signature.

In Live 5 there was an on/off button called "System File Cache" on the Audio tab of the Preferences window. In Live 6 this button is no longer there.

My point in posting this here with this subject title is the folowing:
In Live 6.0.1 and also in 6.0.2b10 i can play and record my songs, everything is OK, but after a couple of minutes there is a problem, sometimes after I Save a Live Set but there is no real pattern in this. Just from nowhere the timing of mainly the Impulse intruments is wrong, CPU is on 99% and the Hard Disk Overload Indicator light in Live is solid red. My harddrive is not fragmented and drive isn't even accessed when Live is playing, obviously because all instruments are in RAM memory. The question is, can I reproduce this bug? Yes, every day in all my songs, this is no fun. The only way to solve this problem is to close Live and starting it again, do this about every 20 minutes, I should use a stopwatch to time it, but in my feeling the interval is quite constant.

My guess is not having the "System File Cache button anymore could be a problem, because Live now decides what is best for me, and just makes the wrong choice. It could be something else, but this is the first thing that comes to mind because i can't remember having this problem in Live 5.

Similar topics, but just a bit different:
permanent hdd oveloads with just one sample ??
Loading Drum Hits in Impulse???

edit: 6.0.2b20 is 6.0.2b10

FrankH · Post by **FrankH** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:50 am

An update on this subject.

FrankH wrote:...
Just from nowhere the timing of mainly the Impulse intruments is wrong, CPU is on 99% and the Hard Disk Overload Indicator light in Live is solid red. My harddrive is not fragmented and drive isn't even accessed when Live is playing, obviously because all instruments are in RAM memory. The question is, can I reproduce this bug? Yes, every day in all my songs, this is no fun.
...

After a couple of minutes the CPU load doubles for no reason, normal 34%, in the event 68%. And of course we are talking about the same part of a song.

After pressing "Collect All and Save" the CPU load is back to normal. Timing is OK and the Hard Disk Overload is not lit.

FrankH · Post by **FrankH** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 12:13 pm

And again Hard Disk Overload Indicator on and high CPU in 6.0.2b10. This software is very (un)predictable.

FrankH · Post by **FrankH** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 8:16 pm

An other update, now i get this behavior when saving a song and opening an other one. The just opened song has problems to get te timing right for the Impulse instrument, double CPU load, Disk Overload Indicator, but no actions to the hard disk because everything is in the computer RAM memory.

I hope you can fix this.

FrankH · Post by **FrankH** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:45 pm

A very short sample, less then 10KB, Live won't play it, still the Hard Disk Overload Indicator solid red without any reason.

Please tel me i'm not the only one with this problem!

db · Post by db » Fri Dec 22, 2006 2:43 pm

Hi FrankH, when this problem happens, are you still able to play any of the demo/tutorial songs?

The System File Cache option can be manually set via an options.txt file. The content of the text file should be:

-UseFileSystemCacheForReading=Off

You have to place the text file here:
Win Live 5: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Ableton\Live [version]\Preferences\Options.txt

If you can't fix the problem, email your log.txt and the Live set that has this problem (without audio files) as a .zip to support@ableton.com

db

FrankH · Post by **FrankH** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 3:26 pm

Thanks!

I created the file Options.txt in the provided path and the content of the file is:

Code: Select all

-UseFileSystemCacheForReading=Off

I'll try what will be, i can also use "On" in stead of "Off"? Because "On" was the setting i used in Live 5.2.1 at the time.

andreas · Post by **andreas** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 7:19 pm

How does this work on a Mac (I suppose somewhere in the Librarie)
Thanks and happy hollidays

octatone · Post by **octatone** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 9:45 pm

hm, I think i'm experiencing similar issues.

yesterday I was working on a large production in the last 6.0.2 beta, and I left the studio for several hours, but did not close down live (I had almost a full GPO orchestra loaded, and was not about to wait for that shit to load again when I got back) and when I got back osx was giving me a startup disk almost full warnings, and playback of almost all frozen tracks was stuttery, and basically impossible to work with.

when I closed down live, my disk space magically started to come back, aparently live was taking up to 2gigs on my startup disk. maybe that's what this cache thing is about, cause my projects and live library all reside on a separate disk than the startup.

weird.

"System File Cache" in Live 6

"System File Cache" in Live 6

update

again

update 2

still

Off / On

Cache text file