low plugin count live 8 on mac osx. WHY?

[happy123]

Im trying to switch over from logic to ableton live 8. The workflows great in live (apart from the non-foating spectrum analyzer that deems it worthless!).. My problem is that 9 tracks into a project, with plugins applied my memory meter is hitting 43% and audio is starting to drop-out etc.. Is their a work around to this?

In logic, I could literally run 40 audio and soft synth tracks, all going into to various busses, with all channels and busses stacked with plugins and no problems whatsoever. Without exaggeration, logic ran (with ease I might add) at least 60 times what ableton is doing.. Help!! Ive got the latest live 8 and the latest osx....

[xzusa8ky]

Buy a better computer!

[beats me]

Plain and simple, Live is a CPU hog compared to other DAWs.

Freezing or flattening tracks will be your friend.

Also I'm not sure about other DAWs, but when you disable a track in Live all you are really doing is muting it and it's still running everything but with no sound.

[happy123]

Buy a better computer!

I wish it was that simple. I have an 8 core with 8gig of ram. I don't think I can get bigger! My point is, why is Ableton such a cpu hog. As said, Im not blowing logics 'trumpet' here as I prefer live's workflow. In logic I never cave in my system, in live, 10 tracks with some plugins brings it to its knees. Can anybody advise me on this.

A friend has also just bought a new 8 core mac with 6 gigs of ram. He too finds that Live 8 is practically unusable. We've both HAD to go back to using logic. Any help will be greatly appreciated...

[arafel]

IMHO..
First- Def post you system specs in your Sig. Just to let us know what you got, so that peeps with similar setups can really help.

Second- Run Tarekiths Live 8 perforemance test (try with dif latency settings in prefs too).
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... mance+test
See how you are stacking up against similar systems. I would hope your system could take a lot more than 10 pl;ugs.. mine can (even the good-ol G5 could.

I got a track with 6 Stylus RMX, a Blue, A Simpler (garyboozy granular), 6 Omnisphere, several dif filters, Couple Eos verbs sends, a couple PSP delay sends, a Distortinn send (guitar rig), and 3 Audio Tracks (each a group of about 6 audio tracks) and 2 bussed groups for sidechain compression.

Its playing while I write this... Live CPU @ 23%, on the Quad intel Macpro(3gigs ram). Latency prefs @ 1024 samples.

Live might be a hog.. but its totally useable here. YMMV

[Migra]

There are some plugs that have lots of issues with Live, what I can confirm is IK Multimedia's plugs like Sonik Synth and T-Racks, those will eat most of your CPU causing audio drops, system freeze and Master Outpus delays (you hit play and the sound will start 2-3 seconds after)... so, try checking your plugs and disabling to find which one is causing this, if you have some IK's then try disabling all of them.....

[William]

I posted about this same thing last week. I have a 2009 iMac (specs in sig) and it gets bogged down all the time. I really don't have the money to buy a Mac Pro so I'm currently looking at getting a used Logic 9 license on ebay.

[Khazul]

Buy a better computer!

I wish it was that simple. I have an 8 core with 8gig of ram. I don't think I can get bigger! My point is, why is Ableton such a cpu hog. As said, Im not blowing logics 'trumpet' here as I prefer live's workflow. In logic I never cave in my system, in live, 10 tracks with some plugins brings it to its knees. Can anybody advise me on this.

A friend has also just bought a new 8 core mac with 6 gigs of ram. He too finds that Live 8 is practically unusable. We've both HAD to go back to using logic. Any help will be greatly appreciated...

Its becausue logic seems very good at using all available cores - whereas live is quite simply very bad at this. I dont think Live in particular is a CPU hog unless you use complex/complex pro warp modes alot, or the instrument plugins in suite (which seem rather CPU intensive for what they are excepting simpler, sampler and operator). It just fails badly on being able to make use of more than a couple of cores - seems to depend alot upon your track routing as well, but as soon as you start adding sends etc - ie what most people do, then its not very good.

[happy123]

Yep.. I think Ableton is just crap at utilizing cores. (Im a signed producer by the way and know what Im doing). I personally at the moment can't understand how people use this program on a professional level. i will try the various things mentioned in this thread. I just pray that logic 10 (or logic studio 2) nicks some of abletons workflow ideas.. then I'll be well happy - they will be nailing total elastic audio in the next update. Back to logic for me.

For all those who are trying to decide for the mac if logic or ableton will be best. I most certainly recommend logic by a long shot. You can produce tunes on it without it collapsing after around 10 tracks with a few plugins applied to them. (I don't even have to freeze in logic with 40 + tracks heavily loaded with plugins!) I feel my moneys been wasted on this potentially good program. cheers all.

mac 8 core + 8gig ram.

[steko]

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?p=873245#p873245

---------
edit: Logic Pro/Express: Tips for balancing multi-core performance

[Khazul]

Im a signed producer by the way and know what Im doing.

Most of the production myths and general bullshit comes from signed producers

[steko]

Live's audio engine was designed for live performances with glitch-free drag & drop of samples & plugins. So it's not really fair to compare with other daws, which are designed differently…

also:

... too small plugin buffers will usually only cause a higher CPU load, but may also lead to dropouts if the buffer is too small. I'd keep the plugin buffer at 64 samples minimum. Another important fact when setting the plugin buffer is that it must be divisible by the audio buffer (or vice versa), e.g. the plugin buffer should be EXACTLY a halve, a third, a quarter, etc. of the audio buffer, so that the buffers can render "in sync". Otherwise you can get dropouts (plugin buffer is smaller than the audio buffer) or you would waste CPU cycles (plugin buffer is higher than the audio buffer). The audio buffer itself should ideally be a power-of-two value, i.e. 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. samples.

Best,
Nico

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 6#p1106786

[happy123]

Im a signed producer by the way and know what Im doing.

Most of the production myths and general bullshit comes from signed producers

lol! so true.. and so many people still buy those popular music mags!.. Thankyou to the chap who posted the link to the forum page discussing core use. I appreciate the knowledge. Back to logic for now.. when live uses all my cores, so I can actually get a track done, I may be back.

Thankyou all.

[mholloway]

For all those who are trying to decide for the mac if logic or ableton will be best. I most certainly recommend logic by a long shot. You can produce tunes on it without it collapsing after around 10 tracks with a few plugins applied to them. (I don't even have to freeze in logic with 40 + tracks heavily loaded with plugins!) I feel my moneys been wasted on this potentially good program. cheers all.

mac 8 core + 8gig ram.

Also for all those: I have an iMac with 2 cores and 4 gig ram, and I am able to run upwards of 30 tracks per session, all with numerous plug-ins on them, plus plug-ins on 10 return channels, and I am able to function just fine up until I add track 28 - 30 or so. That's when the CPU becomes an issue.

One person's problem isn't always the definition of the situation for everyone else, even if they think they've "explained" it.

-M

[glenn303]

Yep.. I think Ableton is just crap at utilizing cores. (Im a signed producer by the way and know what Im doing). I personally at the moment can't understand how people use this program on a professional level. i will try the various things mentioned in this thread. I just pray that logic 10 (or logic studio 2) nicks some of abletons workflow ideas.. then I'll be well happy - they will be nailing total elastic audio in the next update. Back to logic for me.

For all those who are trying to decide for the mac if logic or ableton will be best. I most certainly recommend logic by a long shot. You can produce tunes on it without it collapsing after around 10 tracks with a few plugins applied to them. (I don't even have to freeze in logic with 40 + tracks heavily loaded with plugins!) I feel my moneys been wasted on this potentially good program. cheers all.

mac 8 core + 8gig ram.

Might be a good idea to Demo software before you buy it. Every signed producer knows that.