Audio routing CPU load...

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Post Reply
Mister36
Posts: 395
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 10:49 pm

Audio routing CPU load...

Post by Mister36 » Tue May 22, 2012 12:32 pm

Has anyone else noticed a significant increase in CPU load when employing multiple alternative audio routings?

Specifically, I have noticed it while running Maschine (1.7.2) as a VST in Live (8.3) and routing Groups' outputs to different audio tracks in Live. Upon the second or third routing, Live's CPU meter jumps by ~25% and then doesn't seem to increase again even if I use eight more, but on the first one, two and perhaps three, it makes this jump and returns to what it was before the routing was made. Seems odd to me. And very annoying.

It's very likely it's all Maschine's fault, but I just wondered if this was a common thing when routing audio in Live, particularly from plugins.

andydes
Posts: 2917
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:53 pm
Location: Bremen

Re: Audio routing CPU load...

Post by andydes » Tue May 22, 2012 1:50 pm

Live distributes each track to cores according to load.

If you route signals between tracks, including side chaining, grouping and using sends effects, it ties those tracks to the same core. I think this goes for virtual cores in hyper threading machines, but some say that doesn't work.

The CPU meter effectively shows the most loaded core, as you only need one core heavily loaded to give you problems.

Have another look at it and see if what I said makes sense in your case.

3dot...
Posts: 9996
Joined: Tue Feb 20, 2007 11:10 pm

Re: Audio routing CPU load...

Post by 3dot... » Tue May 22, 2012 1:51 pm

more routings = more cpu
the reasons are obvious..
Image

Mister36
Posts: 395
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 10:49 pm

Re: Audio routing CPU load...

Post by Mister36 » Wed May 23, 2012 9:02 am

Thanks for responding.

3dot... wrote:more routings = more cpu
the reasons are obvious..
Thanks... I realise that it is logical for more routings (or any additional activity/processing)to require more CPU power and I would be happy if that were the case. But it's not. As I said, adding one, two, and even three routings from Maschine requires next to no additional CPU (~1%), whereas the next one made requires an extra ~25% and then subsequent ones no more. This doesn't tally with the "more routings = more CPU equation", which is why I've posted about it in a forum.

andydes wrote:Live distributes each track to cores according to load.

If you route signals between tracks, including side chaining, grouping and using sends effects, it ties those tracks to the same core. I think this goes for virtual cores in hyper threading machines, but some say that doesn't work.

The CPU meter effectively shows the most loaded core, as you only need one core heavily loaded to give you problems.

Have another look at it and see if what I said makes sense in your case.
Interesting... So the tracks with audio routings from the Maschine plugin/track are being assigned to the same core as Maschine, which is already a problem with its inability to use more than one core.
Still seems very strange not only how much the CPU jumps after just one more routing but just how much it increases in general for audio routings between tracks.

I was just wondering if this was a normal thing though and whether anyone had any tips that might help. Such as what affects the CPU load with regard to audio routing.

Post Reply