Run a lot of tracks on Ableton Live

[lapieuvre]

How do you tweak Live and a MAC to run as many tracks as possible?

I just got an SSD, so I would like to know the best tricks out there! I just don't want to see that D (top right) flashing anymore.

-Live's prefs settings
-General Mac tweaks

Thanks.

MacPro 6 cores
Intel SSD
Live 8.2.2
Mac OSX

[Dragonbreath]

the orange D is because of issues with the hard drive ...not sure on details... check the manual ...maximize cpu is another deal

[h0ch.grat]

run as many tracks as possible? what for?

given the fact that you use a 6 core monster, I assume you know about the basics in music production ?

Do you face problems because you load full tracks/songs and thus shovel to much data into Live (which is mainly a HD issue that should be solved by using a fast HD, what you actually do)
or is it that you manipulate a too many tracks/clips with CPU eating effects in realtime, which is a CPU issue?

Some hints on what you actually try to do might help, as I'd be curious what kind of sound can make a 6 core stutter...

[lapieuvre]

I had 23 stereo tracks @ 96/24, Ableton was not able to play them.

Interestingly, I seem to have better disk performance by lowering the latency... I don't understand why. SSD's amazes me sometimes.

[perplex]

isn't this a RAM issue more than SSD?

[Dragonbreath]

D is for disk overload.

Usually happens because ableton is accessing samples on different part of the disk at the same time and the hard drive cant keep up because has it to spin back and forth between different sectors of the drive... really I cant understand How your getting overload with Solid state drive... since its flash memory it should be able to access all parts of the drive simultaneously...

[luddy]

You might want to run the application "/Applications/Utility/Activity Monitor" and poke around in the disk activity and cpu/core activity windows there to see how the different parts of your system are holding up, and how the overall load on the disk looks. You need a picture of everything that's going on in the system when it's trying to do this playback.

Also check into the "File Manager" in Live to be sure that all the files your project is accessing are indeed on the SSD.

I'm not altogether sure that the latency has much to do with the capacity of Live to playback tracks from disk. I think that the program pre-buffers a certain amount of data from audio clips it is reading from disk, and my guess is that's largely independent of the latency setting. It's probably just an accident, the result of some complicated interaction that lets you play the tracks back with a lower latency setting than with a higher one. For example, it might be that when the latency was lower, there were (by coincidence) more blocks from those files cached in RAM. If you're operating right at the limit then small things seem to make a big difference.

-Luddy

[lapieuvre]

I want to run at 96/24. Even an SSD is not fast enough. I just made a raid with 2 SSD's. I will post later how it works.

Please don't ask why I need to run at this rate (96/24), I just have to do it. We all have different needs and requests in this business, and this is one of 'em. I take it as a challenge.

[Ascension]

Have you maxed out your computer's RAM?

[lapieuvre]

No, Ableton is 32 bits, so with 6 gigs, no need to put more RAM

[H20nly]

create a new folder for your set. Collect All and Save to that location. open your project from that folder.

[lapieuvre]

For sure I always do that (collect all and save). The Raid configuration is rock solid for now (2xIntelX-25M). 60 tracks run simultaneously at 96/24, no glitches.