hello all,
using live 2.0.1 under mac os 10.2.3 on a g4/800 imac with 768mb of ram.
I have 6 loops playing, 9 effects over the 6 tracks and only 1 reverb amongst the 9 effects. My cpu load meter is nearly at 70% and audio starts to crackle.
If i delete the 1 reverb it drops to around 55%
I understand the reverb is the most cpu intensive but it seems i'd be able to run at least 6 tracks with 9 effects and 1 reverb no problem, g4/800 768 ram seems like enough power for that.
also if i launch reason when all this is going on reason and live are practically useless, it will take like 2 minutes for reason to start and 30 seconds to browse and select a patch for the nn19.
any ideas? or is it just best to run a Live/Reason setup under os9 ? I'd rather not go back to 9 if possible.
mac os 10.2.3 cpu usage issues
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GlennArbor
- Posts: 9
- Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2003 3:54 am
- Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Live in OS X just doesn't seem to cut it right now - I've (reluctantly) gone back to 9 for now, for anything that demands any decent amount of CPU. (Though that has its own problems too: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2259 )
One thing I've noticed is that if you run 'top' or Process Viewer, Live actually seems to be using about twice the CPU time that its own CPU meter shows.
Other issues with the OS X version:
- no ReWire slave mode
- no ability to disable unused audio channels on multi-channel hardware
It's a shame that the OS X version seems to be the poor relation to the win32 and OS9 versions - not very forward-thinking, if you ask me.
One thing I've noticed is that if you run 'top' or Process Viewer, Live actually seems to be using about twice the CPU time that its own CPU meter shows.
Other issues with the OS X version:
- no ReWire slave mode
- no ability to disable unused audio channels on multi-channel hardware
It's a shame that the OS X version seems to be the poor relation to the win32 and OS9 versions - not very forward-thinking, if you ask me.
Hi all,
Like I mentioned before the CPU usage of Live is just the usage needed for the pure DSP audio related part. All other issues like graphics, levels... are not include in this value.
So if you have a CPU usage of 70% in Live it would mean that 70% of the CPU is just calculating audio. With the remaining 30% the CPU has to handle all other stuff like graphics, all operating system tasks and of course all other running applications. On the G4/550 Powerbook I'm currently testing I can just go to 65% of CPU usage in Live and also at this point the level meters are really slow. Starting Reason then needs also more than a minute.
From the DSP side the usage under OS X is the same like under OS 9 but under OS 9 you can often go up to 80% CPU usage without any dropouts. Additional under OS 9 you have the chance to reduce the CPU usage by switching off unused hardware channels of a multi I/O card (like os already mentioned).
This is currently not possible under OS X. Here it's just possible to select no audio input device to reduce CPU usage in that way.
We know that performance on the Mac is a big topic, especially under OS X but please also have in mind that OS X is still young and will be better. Same hopefully with Live. We were one of the first audio applications able to run under OS X cause we saw the potential and the future of that operating system.
regards,
Alex
Like I mentioned before the CPU usage of Live is just the usage needed for the pure DSP audio related part. All other issues like graphics, levels... are not include in this value.
So if you have a CPU usage of 70% in Live it would mean that 70% of the CPU is just calculating audio. With the remaining 30% the CPU has to handle all other stuff like graphics, all operating system tasks and of course all other running applications. On the G4/550 Powerbook I'm currently testing I can just go to 65% of CPU usage in Live and also at this point the level meters are really slow. Starting Reason then needs also more than a minute.
From the DSP side the usage under OS X is the same like under OS 9 but under OS 9 you can often go up to 80% CPU usage without any dropouts. Additional under OS 9 you have the chance to reduce the CPU usage by switching off unused hardware channels of a multi I/O card (like os already mentioned).
This is currently not possible under OS X. Here it's just possible to select no audio input device to reduce CPU usage in that way.
We know that performance on the Mac is a big topic, especially under OS X but please also have in mind that OS X is still young and will be better. Same hopefully with Live. We were one of the first audio applications able to run under OS X cause we saw the potential and the future of that operating system.
regards,
Alex
Can I just check you mean "this is currently not possible in Live in OS X" - it can clearly be done in OS X per se because you can do it in Cubase SX.Alex wrote:Additional under OS 9 you have the chance to reduce the CPU usage by switching off unused hardware channels of a multi I/O card (like os already mentioned). This is currently not possible under OS X.
Absolutely, and I really appreciate that - that's why Live is so important to me, because it's all I've had on OS X for so long!Alex wrote:We were one of the first audio applications able to run under OS X cause we saw the potential and the future of that operating system.