Ableton Forum

Not me. I know, you have the issue on your radar, but please, dear Abletons, find a solution soon.

I have the same issues.

I just finished installing a new mac mini with OS X 10.8.4, i7 2.6 Ghz, 16 GB DDR3, SSD Samsung 840 Pro with a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24. I have loaded Live 9.04 onto the machine having high expectations on performance.

I however have not been able to play the demo sets without going into CPU overload.

I will try the beta, but others experiences don't sound very promising

as expected: beta9.05b3 offers no improvement

I just finished installing a new mac mini with OS X 10.8.4, i7 2.6 Ghz, 16 GB DDR3, SSD Samsung 840 Pro with a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24. I have loaded Live 9.04 onto the machine having high expectations on performance.

I however have not been able to play the demo sets without going into CPU overload.

My mac mini is a 2,5 dual core I5 (only half the power of your core I7) with 8go of ram and a 120 gb SSD with a NI komplete audio 6, running 10.8.4 and LIVE 9.04 and absolutely no CPU issues, the demo set run with some peaks @30% .
it's really really strange..
Did you try with the internal soundcard ??
maybe something to do with the focusrite driver ??

Add me to the CPU spikes list. I am using Live 9.04 64 bit on a Mac Pro 8 core. My spikes happen particularly when I hit stop. The CPU usage spikes from 30-40% to 200-700 sometimes and a blast of buffer buzz audio goes into my monitors I have tried different buffer settings. I have tried using the Mac internal audio i/o and my Avid Omni i/o with the same results. I also disabled all MIDI ins and outs in Live prefs and get the same issues. Activity Monitor says my CPU is running Ableton at around 129% and Live's CPU monitor says 27% when audio is stopped. I have 14GB of memory. OS 10.6.8

Anyone find a fix yet? I just spent a bundle upgrading memory, Live, and plug-ins to get 64 bit rolling. I look forward to working smoothly soon

commuter wrote: My mac mini is a 2,5 dual core I5 (only half the power of your core I7) with 8go of ram and a 120 gb SSD with a NI komplete audio 6, running 10.8.4 and LIVE 9.04 and absolutely no CPU issues, the demo set run with some peaks @30% .
it's really really strange..
Did you try with the internal soundcard ??
maybe something to do with the focusrite driver ??

this did it for me. I have checked with my internal soundcard and experienced no issues.
Focusrite had recently updated the driver software to version 3.2 and after updating my CPU issues are now resolved.

Cheers!

I just tried the new beta 9.05b3 for a good while and still have the same issues if this matters for anyone researching these issues...

I wonder if it's related to speed stepping.... Is it worth trying Coolbook or QuietMBP to try and bump the CPU speed up and stop it fluctuating?

I did a small article on QuietMBP on my blog at http://www.abletonbenchmarks.com

Hi Joe,

Indeed preventing speed stepping will in many cases resolve artefacts in the audio.

For windows users:

1) Navigate to: control panel -> power options -> "change plan settings" -> "Change advanced power settings"
2) Scroll down to Processor power management
3) Select minimum processor state
4) Set this to 100%

Best,
Mads

I seem to be having exactly the opposite symptoms for a similar problem:

Running 9.0.3 32 bit and M4L 6.1, no VST's or ReWire used.
Late 2012 Unibody MBP, OS 10.8.3, 2.6gHz i7 quad, 8GB, SSD
828mk3 Hybrid (using FireWire)
This computer is used only for audio, so Live shares it only with MaxMSP, SuperColider, Logic, and Emulator.

I experience constant digital breakdown or audio drop outs (that seem to be CPU related), and out-of-memory crashes (which I think is a separate issue). However, the system seems to have the opposite reaction to the common problem on this thread.
In the Activity Monitor, the CPU load does not spike, and rarely rises above 13%.

Live's CPU meter is always much higher. Usually a set of 20-ish tracks utilizing one or two recording tracks, some moderately complex M4L patches, effects, and MIDI mapping, the CPU shows 65-70% after opening the set from a cold boot and performing no actions.

Sometimes it only climbs between 1 and 5% when the set becomes active. This may or may not cause artifacts.

Alternately, Live's CPU meter will jump exponentially (I've seen it display a 5 digit percentage a few times), when the set becomes active. This seems to always result in artifacts, but they're never any worse than when the percentage stays in the 70% range.

Because the problems remain after disabling or removing individual, or groups of patches and effect plug-ins, it seems like no single patch or effect is responsible.

This didn't happen with similar sets in 8. If a set became complex enough to create drop out, reducing it would resolve the issue.

Anyone else having this problem?

Best,
Jeff

My CPU spikes seem to get bigger over time as I work on the set, even if not adding any plug-ins. Again, mine only happen when I hit stop. The audio plays just fine with no glitches as long as Live is in play. I hit stop and it can go from 50% up to 700% and shoot a quick burst of buzzing audio into my monitors loudly. I have been trying all kinds of things today like disabling anything that could be on concurrently like airport, dropbox, browsers, anything. I made sure that multi-core support is disabled in Kontakt and have tried other plug-in specific settimgs. I've tried disabling tracks, etc. as well. No luck yet. I've tried the internal audio and my Avid driver at different sample rates. I disabled all MIDI ins and outs. Same stuff. All my power managament stuff is off (disk sleep, yada yada). Still trying to figure it out...

Any headway on this issue?

Nope, abes don't really care.

Same issue here on a Macbook Pro i7 2.4 late 2011 16gb RAM running ML 10.8.3. Fans are spinning like crazy on projects reaching more than 40% CPU. This is since Live 9.0.

Do you guys also have crackles when selecting notes in the midi editor (with speaker icon ON)?

Switched back to Logic for now as the fan noise make it unworkable.

edit: Actually when selecting notes in a busy project (30/40% CPU) the CPU meter spikes and fans will go up causing the crackle, weird thing is, this even happens with the speaker icon off (no sound)! Could this be related to a graphic/videocard bug? Happens also when using the internal MBP videcoard (no external screen)...

The latest beta didn't fix it, as we can see: https://t.co/lekhztODUq

No matter whether I'm using laptop sound out, Firewire, or USB soundcard.
Always the same result. The longer the set is open, the worse the dropouts get.

Live is putting me off....I can't play live shows atm.