Live 9 Performance Test

[SuburbanThug]

Not to mention the stability factor. "Still experiencing a lot of crashes" isn't exactly a win IMO.

[Sibanger]

Hi,

I didn't say I was still experiencing a lot of crashes.

I did say I was still getting crashes, however, I have not have a crash now for over a week. 9.0.4 seems to have helped.

I have also been laying off running heaps of M4L plugs.

I see other users using Macs still having some stability issues. I don't think Live 9's stability issues are Mac or PC centric

Sorry to upset some of you, but it is what it is. I was surprised by the test results as well. The system is heavily tweaked for audio.

[SuburbanThug]

Sorry to misquote you. I'm thinking of switching from Mac to PC so trust me, I'm not upset.

[Sibanger]

Sorry to misquote you. I'm thinking of switching from Mac to PC so trust me, I'm not upset.

I forgive you

[BobTheDog]

Hi,

I didn't say I was still experiencing a lot of crashes.

I did say I was still getting crashes, however, I have not have a crash now for over a week. 9.0.4 seems to have helped.

I have also been laying off running heaps of M4L plugs.

I see other users using Macs still having some stability issues. I don't think Live 9's stability issues are Mac or PC centric

Sorry to upset some of you, but it is what it is. I was surprised by the test results as well. The system is heavily tweaked for audio.

It does seem strange that a i7 2.8Ghz reads 10% and my 8 core Xeon 3.0Ghz reads 27% though, if we were to believe the Live cpu meter then your i7 is nearly 3 times more powerful!

[Sional]

1) Ableton Live CPU Meter % 14
2) Laptop/Desktop? Make/Model? Self build desktop PC
3) Operating System? Windows 7 64 bit
4) Ableton Live version? 9.0.4
5) CPU Make, Model, and Speed? 3.4ghz I5-3570K
6) Amount of Ram? 8gig
7) Soundcard (and driver version if you know it)? NI Komplete Audio 6
8) Hard Disk Drive Speed (if you know)? 120 gig Intel SSD
9) Number of playback tracks? 8
10) 64 or 32bit live? 64 (running 32 bit Live gives me 13.5% CPU)

I can play 96 tracks with no audible degradation and the CPU meter reads 91%

Everything is pretty stable now (like it was when running Live 8) and, as I don't use Live presets, the new browser don't bug me too much so I am happy(but not about Push delivery times).

[Sibanger]

Hi,

I didn't say I was still experiencing a lot of crashes.

I did say I was still getting crashes, however, I have not have a crash now for over a week. 9.0.4 seems to have helped.

I have also been laying off running heaps of M4L plugs.

I see other users using Macs still having some stability issues. I don't think Live 9's stability issues are Mac or PC centric

Sorry to upset some of you, but it is what it is. I was surprised by the test results as well. The system is heavily tweaked for audio.

It does seem strange that a i7 2.8Ghz reads 10% and my 8 core Xeon 3.0Ghz reads 27% though, if we were to believe the Live cpu meter then your i7 is nearly 3 times more powerful!

@ BobTheDog. Yep, does sound strange. I would be pretty dissapointed at getting 27% from an 8 core Xeon 3.0 Ghz processor. That does not seem right to me. Not just against my test results, but everybody else's.

[SuburbanThug]

Yeah, that sounds way off. I'm getting around the same percentage on a quad core Macbook.

[BobTheDog]

Hi,

I didn't say I was still experiencing a lot of crashes.

I did say I was still getting crashes, however, I have not have a crash now for over a week. 9.0.4 seems to have helped.

I have also been laying off running heaps of M4L plugs.

I see other users using Macs still having some stability issues. I don't think Live 9's stability issues are Mac or PC centric

Sorry to upset some of you, but it is what it is. I was surprised by the test results as well. The system is heavily tweaked for audio.

It does seem strange that a i7 2.8Ghz reads 10% and my 8 core Xeon 3.0Ghz reads 27% though, if we were to believe the Live cpu meter then your i7 is nearly 3 times more powerful!

@ BobTheDog. Yep, does sound strange. I would be pretty dissapointed at getting 27% from an 8 core Xeon 3.0 Ghz processor. That does not seem right to me. Not just against my test results, but everybody else's.

I just don't understand the live cpu gauge, the machine can run 121 tracks of the test with no breakup (95% on Live CPU gauge) so the performance is ok.

So I get:
8 Tracks = 27%, actual cpu load on machine = 7%
121 tracks = 95%, actual cpu load on machine = 52%

The 7% and 52% are %s of the 16 Virtual cores. Live doesn't seem to use hyperthreading which is why the max cpu it can use is only 50% (the 8 real cores)

[BobTheDog]

I have been thinking, maybe the issue is with the audio interface (Fireface 800).

The FireFace driver overhead will be the same irrespective of how many tracks I am running.

So maybe I am getting a big hit there and thats skewing the figures.

[BobTheDog]

Nope just tried it with soundtower, still 27 %

Doubling the track count to 16 tracks gives 31%.

So the next 8 tracks only add 4% cpu while the first 8 are 27%

[BobTheDog]

Ok I have tracked it down, its the sends that seem to mess with my live cpu gauge.

If I disable the 4 sends the live cpu gauge drops to 11% (real cpu 5%).

If I then add another 4 normal tracks (which have the same two reverbs on them as the deleted AUX channels to simulate the load of the 4 deleted AUX channels) the live cpu goes to 13% (real cpu 5.5%)

So when I have Aux channels the live CPU meter reads very high even though the actual cpu load on the machine hardly changes.

[Machinesworking]

Nope just tried it with soundtower, still 27 %

Doubling the track count to 16 tracks gives 31%.

So the next 8 tracks only add 4% cpu while the first 8 are 27%

The real problem is the test itself. No test of CPU performance can effectively give real numbers unless it's to failure.
This is why twice as many tracks only add 4%, because the CPU usage isn't a linear percentage, especially with multi core cpus that we all have these days.

The CPU tests on these forums have always fallen short for this reason. This same test done to failure, adding tracks until the CPU craps out actually gives accurate results. Glad people decided to add it in. The percentage initially IMO can be safely ignored. The real numbers are tracks before noticeable artifacts in the audio.

[BobTheDog]

Very true, there does seem to be an issue with the Live cpu gauge as well though as on my machine an increase to 1% real cpu gives and increase of 16% in the live gauge. I wonder how they calculate it.

[Thomez]

1) Ableton Live CPU Meter % 27%
2) Laptop/Desktop? Make/Model? HP Elitebook 8570p, 2012
3) Operating System? Windows 8 Pro 64
4) Ableton Live version? Live 9.0.2 Suite
5) CPU Make, Model, and Speed? Intel Core i5, 2,5GHz
6) Amount of Ram? 8GB
7) Soundcard (and driver version if you know it)? RME Fireface 400, Driver 3.073
Hard Disk Drive Speed (if you know)? 256GB HDD / SSD
9) Number of playback tracks? 8