Weak... Weak... Performance

north · Post by **north** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 3:35 pm

Is it me, or does LIVE require a super computer to compose more than 3 or 4 tracks?

I have an Athlon 1.5Ghz w/ 500MB of ram, and I am at 70% with only 3 midi tracks (each using sampletank).

I can stack 30 tracks of midi in REASON w/ no problems... is LIVE a pig or what?!

-NORTH

udenjoe · Post by **udenjoe** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:06 pm

Well since you're using sample tank it's probably that.

john gordon · Post by **john gordon** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 9:21 pm

this something ableton def. needs to work on

north · Post by **north** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 9:26 pm

I knew someone would try to blame it on Sampletank... sorry I get the same poor performance out of LIVE with just about any combination of VSTs... if I have 2 KORG Legacy Cells going, and a few NI GuitarRigs... I am already at 70%.

Any advice on how to achieve better performance? OR, what kind of systems does it take to get 30 tracks of VSTs going?

-NORTH

iskandar · Post by **iskandar** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 10:12 pm

the best cpu you could get is a Athlon FX 55 with a high end motherboard and Ram , i dont think anyone is using this on the forums due to the price but it has come down recently , no point going dual cpu as the second cpu wont be used by live

or i would upgrade straight away, but soon the dual core cpus will be out and that will give a performance increase, but in the first release it will be only for server side, although you wil be able to use these chips on a socket 939 motherboard but it must support the current FX's cpus , then its just a bios update rather than buying a new motherbaord. the pentiums are good but it shows in the live performance test that AMD is the best when it comes to live.

i will be upgrading soon as im just so sick of hitting the cpu after a few tracks,i've thought of switching hosts but its just lives workflow is so easy for me , cubase was such slow workflow and i dont really want to switch hosts again..

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:28 am

Korg Legacy is a HUGE resource hog.
as far as getting more performance, resample!

who would run 30 VST's in realtime? folks on Logic with Dual 2.5ghz G5's don't even do that because its wasteful.

certainly Live could use a more instantaneous "freeze" or "bounce" function rather than the current 'resample' implementation. But it is there for a reason - to be used when you need more power. So use it!

north · Post by **north** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:32 am

DAMN, LIVE is a f'ing pig bastard!

I'd still love to know if ANYONe is able to get 20-30 tracks with VSTs out of this sucker?? I mean, I just had 2 sampletanks going... and 1 audio track with Guitar Rig, and the bastard got stuck playing the track I wrote... choking up... LIVE just got owned, and I had to reboot. This has NEVER happened to me with REASON. If anything, performance in REASON will become an issue at 30 tracks or so, using tons of samples (ie: like sampletank) etc... yet REASON never crashes on me like this.

Thanks for the hardware advice though...

I'm puzzled, and would appreciate any advice, as I do love LIVE's approach, and VSTs. If hardware is the only answer here, am I to assume that if I double my hardware performance to 3Ghz and 1GB of ram, I will only get twice the performance I am getting now... ie: 6 midi tracks with a VST each, and 2 audio tracks!? If so, an 8 track won't suit my needs.

SOS! SOS! HELP!

-NORTH

supster · Post by **supster** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:28 am

north wrote: I'd still love to know if ANYONe is able to get 20-30 tracks with VSTs out of this sucker??

SOS! SOS! HELP!

adam is right, wtf does anyone need 20-30 tracks of real-time VST's for anyway.

if you have that many VST's running at once, you have too many elements going simultaeously in your music anyway - its bound to be a trainwreck

learn to arrange with economy before you try and throw more parts into your music

or are you just geeking out on technology and not actually *in* this to make quality music?

this is the first version with VST support, its bound to improve by version 5, i'm sure they're working hard on optimization constantly

if you cant wait learn to bounce - live is amazingly more efficient with audio in this version.- or go use another host and stop loudly bitching about it in the dev forum for dramatic effect

IMO

north · Post by **north** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 5:56 pm

Hmmm.... well I think we all have good points here.

What I'm trying to understand is how hardcore orchestral composers are getting up to 100 instruments through-out a 20 minute composition, tapping into various VSTs, Gigasampler, etc... A friend of mine uses Sonar and has a dedicated PC for Gigasampler, so I know more hardware gets more tracks... but on the other hand I can't believe how little I am getting out of LIVE w/ my hardware.

Sure bouncing tracks is an option, but then I am committing the midi to audio and I lose the opportunity to go back and remix this piece of the composition... which is the last thing a composer wishes to do until hitting the true mixing or mastering phase.

Don't get me wrong, despite it being a pig bastard, I dig LIVE... but I am going to give Sonar, FL, and others a test drive as well, in search of better performance.

-NORTH

mike holiday · Post by **mike holiday** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:43 pm

it's awful hard to use sampletank inside reason isn't it??

I can run 2 impulse tracks and 4 operator tracks with 6 f/x on my 800 mhz G4 before it chokes at about 78% with automation on everything

I put 2 sampletank LE inside protools with cpu set to 85% and
get the message "you are running out of cpu power"

you got to learn to resample and sub mix if you are going for 30 tracks

mike holiday · Post by **mike holiday** » Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:48 pm

north wrote: Sure bouncing tracks is an option, but then I am committing the midi to audio and I lose the opportunity to go back and remix this piece of the composition... which is the last thing a composer wishes to do until hitting the true mixing or mastering phase.

-NORTH

save and rename you set when you are at a crucial point... than you can go back and get what you want if you need 2
midi doesn't take up any space anyway.....
or
turn the vst off and move the midi clips out of site
live only uses resources for what is playing at the moment

onnomon · Post by **onnomon** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 11:11 pm

Still, north has a point. Live may not be the most performance optimized SW at this point. The good news is that since most of people at Ableton are also computer music makers, they want more tracks too. It's only a matter of time before they release a multi-threaded version of Live that exploits multiprocessor systems.

Until then, you'll have to use other methods to get around running out of processing power particularly with the softsynths. In particular, render your draft arrangements, drop them into a new project, create new parts in this almost empty project, render new parts, drop new parts back into original arrangement. I save the scratch projects so if I want to adjust something on the parts, it's still there. In the end, my Live-based master arrangement has very little in the way of softsynths, mostly just audio tracks (In Live, perhaps 16 to 18 stereo, Logic will have around 24 stereo plus a dozen softsynths, I do less rendering). For extra good measure set the RAM flag on those small loops. Also, are your audio files on the same partition as the OS and the apps? You should generally keep you audio files in a separate partition where they'll tend to get clustered together on the drive for faster seek times. On the boot drive, there's typically lots of small files (logs, registry, etc) being created and deleted causing fragmentation, this won't happen on a data partition. Is sampletank RAM-based?

Even if Ableton didn't add any new bells-and-whistles, i'd consider upgrading if Live became multiprocessor saavy.

-dean

Apple 15" PB 1GHz, 1GB ram, OS 10.3.8, Live 4.1.1

smart1123 · Post by **smart1123** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 7:21 pm

Almost no joy running VSTi's here, Live crashes, except Reason which runs great.
Dual Proc support would be most welcome

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 7:53 pm

Part of the problem too here are that VSTi's don't all take up the same amount of resources.

Given LIVE is maybe a little worse at using it's resources to have as many VSTi tracks as some other sequencers, but you have to realize it isn't all LIVE's fault. Especially if you are going to compare to Reason. Reason is very light on CPU, but then how does it sound? And it is completely self contained...

However, something like Minimonsta will eat up half of my CPU power on one pad patch, but oooohhhhh the sound.

There are many complaints about 2 things....how VSTi's sound compared to hardware, and CPU usage. Therein lies the rub....at the moment, we can't have one without compromising the other.

But I will tell you, dropping $154 for Minimonsta beats paying $2000 for a miniMoog, especially when it sounds very very close.

So, bounce those tracks, have fun, create.....maleate, don't obfuscate, and don't forget to deviate.

Cheers.

jwsmite · Post by **jwsmite** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:24 pm

all i want to do is have groove agent and guitar rig running at the same time but no, ableton live is just too pants. cpu doesn't seem to be the problem its the ram. i've got 2.19ghz amd cpu and 512meg ddr 333mhz ram with terratec dmx6fire. with groove agent on its own it says its using usually between 100 and 200 meg of ram but if i open it in Live it goes up to around 450 meg! now i'd really like to know what the hell thats all about.

Basically this program can't be used live as it suggests for more than one instrument at a time. which is crap. and means that instead of being a nice handy replacement for an expensive piece of hardware i have to go and spend just as much money turning my pc into a super computer as i would on the hardware i'm trying to replace. get your arses in gear and sort it out programming chappies.

I can't believe that my pc is incapable of dealing with these programs when reason can run rewired through acid 4 and do equivalent processes and more without giving any cpu or ram grief. its gonna be all about using that ram efficiently isn't it now go get on it. honestly spending all your time making ultimately just another softsynth to the ridiculously large selection already on the market or available for free. Live should be all about being a one man band and integrating the kit we already know how to use so we can do it all at once.

i find its easier to use a cpu light synth whilst writing the melody and then i mess with the synths timbre later dealing with each track individually later before or whilst mastering.

Live promised so much but ultimately gave a weak performance. deal with it now.