Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

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nikolozi
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Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by nikolozi » Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:24 am

When I'm freezing a track in Live 8.1, it only uses a single core of my Core 2 Duo MBP (OSX 10.6.2). The same thing happens when I'm rendering a track.

However when I'm using Live normally it utilizes both cores.

Image

Don't know if I'm first to notice this bug or what. I searched the forums and couldn't find anything.

kfoo
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Re: Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by kfoo » Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:33 am

Wouldn't say this is a bug. One track cannot be run in multiple threads because the calculation depends on it's last outputs and input. Only multiple tracks can be spreaded among cores (as long as you don't use any side chaining).

nikolozi
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Re: Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by nikolozi » Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:51 am

I just tried to freeze two independent tracks at the same time and the same thing happened, Live only used a single core.

Also, based on what you said, freezing a track will never get faster with newer CPUs, as CPUs only going to get more cores, they've hit the clock speed limit long time ago (around 3GHz).

nikolozi
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Re: Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by nikolozi » Sat Nov 28, 2009 12:13 pm

more thoughts about parallel processing. If you imagine a stereo compressor processing a stereo track (each channel independently), then you can have each core calculating compression for each channel independently. That's one example, I'm sure there's many more.

Sorry, I have to call it a bug :)

kleine
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Re: Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by kleine » Sat Nov 28, 2009 4:32 pm

nikolozi wrote:more thoughts about parallel processing. If you imagine a stereo compressor processing a stereo track (each channel independently), then you can have each core calculating compression for each channel independently. That's one example, I'm sure there's many more.

Sorry, I have to call it a bug :)

Live can distribute whole tracks to multiple cores and not split the distribution of left/right outputs of a single track.

best,
Christian

nikolozi
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Re: Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by nikolozi » Sat Nov 28, 2009 10:06 pm

kleine wrote: Live can distribute whole tracks to multiple cores and not split the distribution of left/right outputs of a single track.
If that's the case then how come Live uses only single core when I'm freezing three independent tracks simultaneously? Surely it should be able to utilize 2 core in this case?

Secondly, when I'm rendering the entire track it still uses a single core. What's going on? Logic Pro uses both cores when I'm bouncing my tracks. So in January when I try to render/freeze my tracks using Core i9 CPU, Live will only be using a single core while <b>11</b> cores will be sitting there doing nothing? That's a waste. In 2012 will have 48 cores, then what? 47 cores doing nothing?

timothyallan
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Re: Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by timothyallan » Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:43 am

I'm going to be grabbing the hexcore Mac Pro when it's announced in Jan/Feb/March 2010 and I really, really would like to increase the speed at which I render.

Does anyone with something like an 8 core Mac Pro experience the same issue? i.e. rendering/freezing only using one core?

nikolozi
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Re: Freezing only uses a single core in Live 8.1

Post by nikolozi » Wed Dec 30, 2009 4:00 am

timothyallan wrote:I'm going to be grabbing the hexcore Mac Pro when it's announced in Jan/Feb/March 2010 and I really, really would like to increase the speed at which I render.

Does anyone with something like an 8 core Mac Pro experience the same issue? i.e. rendering/freezing only using one core?
Regardless of what type of a Mac you are going to get you will experience the same issue. I believe Live 8 is not a true multi-core app, by that I mean it doesn't always utilise all cores (including freezing and rendering). GCD could be useful after all :)

I use Core i7 iMac and it's more than annoying to see only a single core being used out of 8 possible logical cores.

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