Ableton with Windows 7 64-bit. Does it work with it?

[dprice81]

Hi,

I'm curious as to whether or not Ableton works well with Windows 7 64-bit. It says that it is optimized for Windows 32 bit. I am wondering if anyone has used it with 64 bit and if they had any problems with the software. I appreciate any information/feedback you provide. Thank you.

[Khazul]

Works in 32 bit of course, but generally its been bettter to use live with 64 bit windows due to having more memory availabel to it.

[SanchezMusic]

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit and it works wonderfully for me! Definitely a memory hog, so I put in more RAM and switched to a 64-bit system for better performance.

[coldbuggin]

working great over here.

[ScarKord]

Works fine for me also

[zee verkawound]

It would be MUCH better if Live were 64bit period. The fact that Live will run on Windows 7 64bit is not the question to really ask. Is it stable when being pushed in excess of 2gigs of ram? That's the question to which I have never received a good answer. I don't doubt I will, but haven't yet.

I have noticed that many live users on this forum don't really even begin to push their machines with respect to pre loaded samples.

[CFX]

Ableton Live runs just fine on Windows 7 64-bit.
But since Ableton Live is a 32-bit (and not a 64-bit) application it cannot use more than about 3GB of RAM before it runs out and goes belly-up... regardless of how much RAM you actually have installed in your machine and recognized by the operating system.

Like the previous poster said, Live needs to be a 64-bit application for the RAM issue to go away. As a practical example, it looks like I will have to port my current project to a 64-bit DAW since I don't want to deal with track freezing/bounces/track-juggling, which will save RAM but get in the way of composing with large orchestral soundbanks. It's a shame, too. I really want to keep using Ableton, but this technical limitation is getting in my way.

Keep your projects under 3GB of RAM consumed and it will do you fine.

[jamief]

i have been using win 7 ultimate 64 since last dec and i have to say it is great !
i have 6gb of ram on an i7 chip.
I often run 4-5 or instances of omnsiphere and maybe a dozen iother vsts ie d16 alchemy komplete7 aruria at the same time and also lots of waves plugins on top of that.

i havent once had any issues with the memory running out.


So of course live needs to go 64 but i can assure you that unless you are using anymore plugins than i have listed above at the same time you wont have any issues.


best
j

[jamief]

i have been using win 7 ultimate 64 since last dec and i have to say it is great !
i have 6gb of ram on an i7 chip.
I often run 4-5 or instances of omnsiphere and maybe a dozen iother vsts ie d16 alchemy komplete7 aruria at the same time and also lots of waves plugins on top of that.

i havent once had any issues with the memory running out.


So of course live needs to go 64 but i can assure you that unless you are using anymore plugins than i have listed at the same time you wont have any issues.


best
j

And remember audio files ( includingn those for kontact and sampler and simpler) stream from the hard drive not from ram (unless you specify it in live) so you will be extremly pushed to get 3gb maxing out using ram ! You are much more likely to have the hard drive becoming unable to stream all the info from multiple tracks and samples so remember and make sure if you are using lots of audio streaming to use a 7200 rpm drive. I use 7200 rpm sata in both my laptop and desktop and havent had many problems apart from when i use complex pro on warp as that seems to strain the drives

[Anubis]

Rock solid since switching from Vista 32 to Win 7 64. I don't run very high track counts but I do run(several instances of) some pretty pesky plugs like IK, Crysonic, KTGranulator, etc. Live hasn't crashed on me yet. Only 4 GB RAM too.

[prevenge]

I haven't had an Ableton Live-caused crash yet on my Win7 64-bit machine, so yeah ... you should be safe.

[Sibanger]

Works great on my Windows7 64Bit i7 machine.

I was having memory issues with my old XP pc, but no memory problems since I upgraded.

I am, however, getting the odd crash when closing out of Live, or sometimes when opening up a project.

Best thing is that these crashes don't lose anything from the working session.

[Khazul]

It would be MUCH better if Live were 64bit period. The fact that Live will run on Windows 7 64bit is not the question to really ask. Is it stable when being pushed in excess of 2gigs of ram? That's the question to which I have never received a good answer. I don't doubt I will, but haven't yet.

I have noticed that many live users on this forum don't really even begin to push their machines with respect to pre loaded samples.

No, you just never accepted the answers you are given - even when given from ableton, or the offical microsoft information is given to you, so for the last time:

32 bit Live dies when it runs out of available memory - full stop - regardless of 32 bit OS with 1GB (or 2GB in your case?) or 64bit with potentially upto 4Gb (allways less) available to it.

Of course native 64 bit will enable it to use whatever you have. Im using Cubase 6 native 64 bit when I can, but mostly I use it at 32 bit for reliability reasons and to avoid quirks. But just becuase Im using 64bit cubase it doesnt magically mean I can push it infinately - Im still limited by phsyical memory because thats they way DAWs generally work (unlike non real time applications like Office, web browsers etc)

A native 64 bit version of Live would still die when it runs out of lockable physical memory - it doesnt matter if you set the page file to a 16M terrabytes - it will still die before 6GB if thats all you have for example. DAWs and sample based plugins depend upon phsyical memory - not just virtual memory because they lock the memory for performance reasons.Im suire some bits of live do no depend on phsyical memory, bu kontakt, trillian and other big sample players do, as do lengthy reverb buffers, delay buffers, in fact all the audio buffers in use.

There is nothing unreliable about this dying at all - it will 100% reliably die when it runs out of memory. There is an argument for Abelton imprving the handling of the situation, howver it cannot determine the cause of a plugin failing - all it know is that when kontakt for example cant load and yields a fatal error - all live knows is that something horrible happened and so it dies as well.

So - I say to you again - if this is such a big issue for you - get more phsycial memory and go for a 64 bit OS - it will give you more breathing space for now until ableton go 64 bit (assuming they will one day). Apple Macs with snow leopard (10.6 onwards) are slighly different and in practice are equivalent to 64 bit windows 7 in terms of memory limits for 32 bit apps.

[purpurkatten]

Spectrasonics Omnisphere and Trilian relies on plenty of RAM, so if you push it with several instances of the plugins, you are bound to go down.

I mainly use Omnisphere/Trilian as my synth and Ableton Live 32 bit crashes on me several times every day if I don´t keep all synth tracks bounced to audio.

Very much looking forward to a stable Live 64 bit version soon. I would hate to look around for an other sequencer, but my patience has limits.

[Khazul]

Its debatable whether we have a stable 32 bit version - never mind 64 bit