Live not running much faster than my old laptop on a Mac Pro

[aubford]

I am having a major issue with Ableton. I just bought a used Mac Pro Computer (2008, 2.8 GHz 8-Core 6 GB RAM) in hopes that I would get better performance than my 2008 Macbook (not Pro) (2.4 Ghz 4GB RAM, Core2Duo). I assumed that this new computer (which was very expensive) would show a marked improvement over the old one. When I opened the same project file, which had many tracks and effects in it, and pressed play from the same point in the song at the same time on both computers, much to my amazement, the new Mac Pro showed at best a 10% CPU improvement and most of the time showed only a 5% over my puny laptop. In fact, at a few points, the Macbook even showed less CPU usage than the Mac Pro! I was hoping that my new Mac Pro would allow me to run Live at 128 buffer size since that is what my audio interface recommends. Ever since Live 8.2, if I record anything at a higher buffer setting, the recorded audio is delayed (at least 500ms it seems) for some reason. So I was hoping that my new computer would make this problem obsolete since I would be able to run my sessions at 128 samples, but, unfortunately I am still getting dropouts on some of my projects, even at 256 samples (the highest that I can go without having major issues with hardware). This project has only 28 tracks (albeit with a number of effects, some of which are waves), which I would assume would be manageable by an 8-core computer. Is there an issue with how Ableton addresses multiple CPUs? Whats going on here? Why, when using Ableton, is a Mac Pro just as fast as a laptop!!!!!????

[Ableton_David]

Go to Preferences->CPU, and make sure you have "Multicore/Multiprocessor Support" enabled.

[aubford]

It is enabled, all obvious things like that have been done. I am an experienced user. Thanks anyways though...

[Ableton_David]

And you have the latest drivers for your audio interface?

Also, what plugins are you running in these sets, and how large are they?

[aubford]

I have alot of plugins, granted. Some of them are waves, spectrasonics, and other kinds of CPU hoggers. They are all updated. This doesn't explain why there is no difference between a laptop and mac pro tho...

[Ableton_David]

Yes, please get in touch with Ableton technical support about this: http://www.ableton.com/support. Thank you.