Well, the software can do it if your computer CPU and hard drive is up to it. It would certainly be adviseable for you to set the reverbs to medium or economy as first class mode is cpu hungry. Another way you could get your track count up would be to us an external scsi, or firewire drive for your audio although the gain may not be as much as you would like. If you do go for another drive make certain that its the fastest one you can get. Also you can (but I dont reccomend this unless you are happy with inferior quality) chang ethe global sampling rate lower than 44.1 whcih I think is the default. you can reduce the sample rate down to around 22.000khz (its lowest setting I think?) This will certainly give you a lot more track count. Also working with 16 bit files rather than 24. I always work with 24 44.1 files so reducing the bit rate or sampling rate (in particular) is not something I care to do. personally i beleive lower sampling rates are a step back and also IMO Dance music sounds bad enough as it is (I mean soncially not musically) and to encourage users to lower sampling rates is rather backward considering the fact that within a couple of years 96khz will be the standard. For using Live (Live) I suppose one could use a lowe sampling rate. But I say why would anyone want their Live music at a gig to sound wors ethan the DJ playing and in particular the CDJ. Dancey folks seem to get pawned off with "The type of music you do doesnt need to be as high quality as other genre's" I say Nonsense!. Try telling that to The Chemical Brothers, leftfield, Underworld, Moby, BT etc etc. All those people strive for excellent sound quality results. I juat cant see any of these people accepting second best. Well, I knwo that during the last Album, The chemicals used a serious amount of expensive outboard and the best DAW/Convertors they could lay their hands on. (They even used an original Fairchild Compressor whcih second hand would cost about $20,000). Quality makes a BIG difference to our music, all the little things Do Count.....Ok Im blabbing nowQuit annoying, considered live's possibility to record unlimited tracks.
.Still, your machine is giving you roughly the same as what I get from a Dual gig Mac. So I'm thinking your not doing to badly. (granted I get a few more tracks and an extra effect or 2)
Altivec enhanced would in theory help Live run more efficiently on a Mac. At the moment Live is not Altivec enhanced.
Does the timestretching/audio capabilities of Live use a lot of CPU?. Well this is really a question for Ableton to answer. But it seems to me that there must be something pretty funky going on behind the scenes, because what it does to audio is really quite remarkable when you think about it. Perhaps Alex from Ableton would be good enough to let us know a bit more about this?.
(for Alex if you can answer) If I import files at 44.1, dont change the tempo. Does this use the same or less Cpu than if I did change the tempo?
However, if i load up say 20 tracks in Logic for eg. My Cpu is barely moving and I still have a fair amount of Disk I/O left. But Logic is only playing back audio and isnt doing anything to it and remember Live is manipulating the audio massively so that has to be taken in to consideration when comparing with other audio apps.
thats me done man! that went on a bit...sorry....
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