Live 8 / Live 7 CPU usage comparison

[theextravaganttraveller]

Ok, perhaps someone can help shed some light on this.

1 instance of Kontakt, with patch of about 50 simultaneous voices, 256 sample buffer:

- Live 8.2.7 - 35%
- Live 8.1.5 - 22%
- Live 7.0.18 - 7%

Setup: iMac, 4core i5, 8gb RAM, Saffire PRO 40

Anyone have any tips on improving Live 8 performance or is 8 a total dud in terms of cpu...? If I didn't rely so heavily on a few custom-built M4L devices, I'd be migrating back to Live 7.

Really hope the Ableton team can sort out performance issues in 8 because the above CPU load is unacceptable.

- UPDATE: Live 8.1.3 - 15%.
I guess all is not lost for me, but can anyone else confirm this with Kontakt? If this is a wide-spread issue, Ableton should know about it.

- UPDATE 2: Live 8.2.8b3 - 35%.
Please fix this crap performance gentlemen!

[pencilrocket]

Do Live8 begin to pop with fewer Kontakt or polyphony when increasing them?

[theextravaganttraveller]

Yes, with Live 8.2.7 (and the 8.2.8 beta 3) i'm getting occassional pops when running a single instance and CPU goes over 50-60% (100+ voice polyphonies in Kontakt). If you're using Kontakt, especially some of the boutique Tonehammer / Soniccouture libraries, I recommend trying out 8.1.3; your CPU load may get slashed by more than half.

[pencilrocket]

Thanks for informative test.

[3dot...]

yeah.. but 8.1.3 is kindof buggy...isn't it ?

I wonder what changed between 8.1.3 and later...

btw is it exactly the "same" project ?

[theextravaganttraveller]

Yes, I imagine bugs have been worked out between 8.1.3 and the latest versions, but I'm willing (though I shouldn't have to) to make that sacrifice if it bumps my CPU overhead down 2.5x. And to answer your question, yes it's exactly the same session - 1 instance of Kontakt, same instrument patch, same midi sequence driving it, 256 sample audio buffer. I too wonder what may have changed to cause this poor performance across later 8.x.x versions... Any other Kontakt users able to confirm this on 10.6.8?

[JuanSOLO]

theextravaganttraveller, Puerto Rica out to Africa?

[theextravaganttraveller]

theextravaganttraveller, Puerto Rica out to Africa?

Hahah, you know it!

[JuanSOLO]

fresh, had to bump that track after I realized your handle

[theextravaganttraveller]

I was fully expecting the typical shower of Ableton Live Protectors to come rushing in to defend the honor of their beloved software here, but I guess I was mistaken.

I only just realized that playing with loops for forty minutes, quitting Live, then pulling up your browser to jerk off interchangeably throughout the day probably doesn't result in much cpu taxation so I don't think they even recognize this problem exists

Haha! To each their own, i guess!

Jokes aside, I reached out to Tech Support about this and received an unsatisfactory response with useless CPU tips - "don't use complex mode, etc, etc" - you know the drill.. So I'm bumping this for visibility.

To update, ran a similar test with Omnisphere and this does not appear to be an issue there. So the problem is the Live / Kontakt combo. Same results as above for both Kontakt 4.2.2 and 5.0.1...

Ableton, please look into this, lots of people working with Kontakt out there!!

[theextravaganttraveller]

Bump! Stats now with 8.2.8 release:

Kontakt patch with 50-voice polyphony:

- Live 7.0.18 - 7%
- Live 8.1.3 - 15%
- Live 8.1.5 - 22%
- Live 8.2.7 - 35%
- Live 8.2.8 - 40%

Setup: iMac, 4core i5, 8gb RAM, Saffire PRO 40

The Ableton QA team really needs to investigate.. This makes it impossible for anyone working with deep-sampled Kontakt instruments to do any sort of serious work with recent versions of Live!

[pencilrocket]

To OP, I understand that 7 works faster, but also there are possibility that it depends on what OS you use. There are actually cases that Kontakt works 5 times better on Win7 than on OSX. Look into the page liked from below thread. http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=172825

[theextravaganttraveller]

To OP, I understand that 7 works faster, but also there are possibility that it depends on what OS you use. There are actually cases that Kontakt works 5 times better on Win7 than on OSX. Look into the page liked from below thread. http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=172825

Thanks for the link, that's interesting but it doesn't really make me feel any better about this!

My machine is less than 2 years old and a pretty decent spec as far as things go. I do not subscribe to "just get a different machine" to resolve issues that should be considered by software development teams. Yes, it's certainly possible that there may be some system-specific issue with my particular setup, although I don't understand how that explains a gradual CPU creep. After all, shouldn't software become better and more efficient over time, not the other way around? It seems developers are learning to take for granted increased processing power, rather than try to code efficiently.

In any case, all I know is that throwing 2-3 nicely-sampled Kontakt instruments in a session completely maxes me out nowadays.

... One of these days I'm gonna ditch all this useless shit and buy a bongo.

[Scaper7]

As the CPU usage ramps up I become more cautious about using the program. In the studio I trust 7 for all my sequencing looping requirements. It's performed well for years without issues.

I own Live 8 but am not ready to use it in it's current state. Stability and small CPU footprint are important to my peace of mind when working on studio projects that span months, or playing out 'live'.

[HeadrickProductions]

As far as just using live for backing tracks to practice at home, or simply to produce stuff at home it does not really matter that live can get intense on the CPU with kontakt. The only issues is playing live. I want to be able to perform stuff on the fly, not have prerecorded clips and twist some knobs. I wish I owned 7. Here's to 9 being what it needs to be for live performance, or just simply make live a DAW for studio use and get it over with.