Ableton Forum

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=192802
Posting this here to get some attention. Definitely some very flakey/unstable performance for mac users. Hopefully this will be addressed soon. Thanks.

Hi,


Please send in sets to beta@ableton.com
Before doing so please tell us :
- Can you reproduce this in Live 8?
- Since you started experiencing the problem, did you transit from live 32 bit to live 64 bit? (either 8 or 9?)
- If you did go from 32 to 64 bit, did you bridge your plugins (AU & VST)

Best,
Mads

-Cannot reproduce in Live 8
-Have not transitioned from 32 to 64 bit
Please check out the thread linked above. lots of spikes and fan craziness. I will get others to chime in as well.
Thanks.

I'm definitely starting to see some issues. After recording and overdubbing a beat effected with Glitch a few times I got up to 40 percent usage after I deleted all instances of glitch and was down to just using the recorded audio and an instance of operator. Hopefully when I reopen the project it'll be down again but there seems to be no reason that 1 instance of operator and two two minute dry audio tracks should be using this much of Live's power. This is on a late 2012 Macbook Pro with 8 gigs of Ram, 2.9 ghrz quadcore.

This is in 9.0.1. I found convolution reverb was taking me up almost 10 percent. Other than that I was left with one drum rack instance and an instance of operator plus a recorder audio track and I was still at 32 percent which still seems pretty high.

Hi,

Lets follow the performance problems here and if you provide us with the following information it would speed the reproduction of the issues up:

- When did you start experiencing these issues (Live version)
- Do you see the same problems with Live 8
- The versions you are comparing, are they the same bit depth (i.e Live 8.4 / 64 bit to Live 9.0.4 / 64 bit or Live 8.4 / 32 bit to Live 9.0.4 / 32 bit)
- Is the set using VST / AU's. Try to disable the plugins one by one to see if there is one plugin taking down the performance.
- Is the set using MAX devices, if yes, which?. Repeat the process of disbaling the devices one by one to see if CPU/memory load drops.
- When you open Activity monitor (OSX) or Task manager (windows), tell us what is being overloaded - is it memory, cpu or GPU?.

Best,
Mads

[mal] wrote:Hi,

Lets follow the performance problems here and if you provide us with the following information it would speed the reproduction of the issues up:

- When did you start experiencing these issues (Live version)
- Do you see the same problems with Live 8
- The versions you are comparing, are they the same bit depth (i.e Live 8.4 / 64 bit to Live 9.0.4 / 64 bit or Live 8.4 / 32 bit to Live 9.0.4 / 32 bit)
- Is the set using VST / AU's. Try to disable the plugins one by one to see if there is one plugin taking down the performance.
- Is the set using MAX devices, if yes, which?. Repeat the process of disbaling the devices one by one to see if CPU/memory load drops.
- When you open Activity monitor (OSX) or Task manager (windows), tell us what is being overloaded - is it memory, cpu or GPU?.

Best,
Mads

-These issues have been since using the first version of Live 9
-Do not see anywhere near the CPU drain and fan activity in Live 8
-Always the same sample/bit depth (44.1/24)
-The sets usually use a few AU and VST. Noticed this using only internal plugs though.
-No max devices needed to reproduce this behavior

I would love to spend time running tests and de-bugging/de-activating plugs and checking monitors to see where the problem might lie however I am not a beta tester, just a paying customer who uses this in my daily work and would love to see this resolved. I have pointed you and others to the original thread in hopes that you'll see that there is indeed quite an issue going on with Live 9 and OSX. Hopefully others will chime in here as well. I will do my best to check things as time permits and answer any questions you might have. Hopefully this will be addressed and fixed soon. Thanks!

Running a session now, all tracks (12) frozen, three plugs (EQ8/Glue/Limiter) on master bus, 30% CPU meter and the fans are running full blast.
I7 Macbook Pro, 8 gigs RAM, external audio and sample drive (Firewire).

Ableton Index peaks to 100% at start up in Monitor Activity and then stabilizes to less than 1%, with a result of obvious CPU stress and sudden heat.
Live 9.02 32 bit and totally empty set loading. osx 10.6.8

I have not experienced this behavior in Live 9.0.x (64 bit)

Happened to me last Tuesday: I was playing a live set (takes around 8 gigs of ram) that I had played three times before without any kind of problem. I think those times I played them with 9.0 or 9.0.1, I'm not sure which.
I was now playing with 9.0.2, and in the middle of my set, I'm starting to get audio dropouts, which eventually got so bad that I had to stop playing. Stopping all clips momentarily and then continuing to play didn't take away the stutter hell.

I'm fairly sure this is because of 9.0.2 and not the earlier versions, because later, at home, I downloaded the demo just to get 9.0.1, which seems to play it just fine again, but often with 9.0.2 or the latest beta, I may get stuttering once I start the set.
EDIT: 9.0.1 does it too...I found this out later!
Also, I know this is not a case of not removing stop buttons from a large set: I have removed them.
Also, as I said, I played the same set three times before and had no problems, and after that I did nothing except get 9.0.2 thru auto update.

I've also heard some others say that as soon as their projects start exceeding 50% on the CPU meter, they're getting glitches in audio, i.e., dropouts.

I'm using a 64-bit version of Live 9 on OS X 10.6.8.
My laptop has an SSD drive and 16 gigs of ram.
Macbook Pro 17", late 2011.

I experience this routinely.

64-bit Live 9, OS X 10.8.3


The frustrating thing is that my projects all run normally, but the CPU spikes make me unable to run them for long.

To [mal] - Activity Monitor shows a maxout in CPU usage. I haven't noticed it on memory or GPU, next time it happens I will look.


Also, I should say that when these spikes occur, Ableton will occupy that level of CPU real estate even while idling - sometimes my CPU meter will show 70-80% without even playing the song.

Well, that didn't take long! Happening right now. My session is not playing, and Ableton's CPU meter is reading 70%. Ableton is shown as taking 250% CPU in Activity Monitor

Real memory is steady at 1.23 GB. %CPU is the only thing that spikes.

9.0.4b2 seems to be out (see your beta after autoupdate).
Just tested it a bit and couldn't get it to stutter.
Let's all report our findings here.

EDIT: Uh-oh. I let the set rest for a while, didn't do anything. Came back, played, got the same old stutters again :-/

Same problem here. Ableton's CPU meter is reading 70% if not 80%. Activity monitor shows 160% CPU usage. Unsustainable.

eekkoo wrote:Same problem here. Ableton's CPU meter is reading 70% if not 80%. Activity monitor shows 160% CPU usage. Unsustainable.

Are you referencing the latest release of 9.0.4 ?
..not the beta