Live 9 Disk overload, 7200rpm drive, lots of space!?

[Robodelfy]

Hi everyone

Ive recently moved to Live 9 Suite from Cubase.

Today I bounced out some stems from some old tracks in cubase, about 30 tracks. I dragged them all into ableton so they were on separate tracks.

now when I play the track back, the disk overloads every 10-20 seconds! Very frustrating

I didnt have this problem playing the exact same track back in cubase with many VSTs and FX on top. So its not my hard drive.

I have an SSD system drive, and then I have a second 750gb 7200rpm Sata HDD for my songs and samples etc. So theres loads of space, and all the files are in the project folder in this second drive.

Not that its probably relevant, but I am using an RME Babyface sound card, I am getting all green and low on DPC latency checker.

Its a real shame, as I was just getting really into Ableton, but obviously I cant start maxing out the disk at only 30 plain audio tracks. I used to get to 80 tracks in cubase and then the CPU would max out before the hard drive did anything.

Any info greatly appreciated, as I feel like Im always sorting computer problems and never making music!

Cheers

[Jrel]

Wow, 80 tracks. Think I've only got up to 40 or so in Live before it starts choking above 60% CPU for me.

[Robodelfy]

Yeah I dont understand?

Can anyone help out here....?

[Robodelfy]

Ok, Ive been told that trying to run 30 song length audio files on seperate tracks might well cause a disk overload.

But people keep mentioning ram. The disk overload light in ableton only relates to the Hard disk yeah? nothing to do with ram?

Cheers

[Valiumdupeuple]

Nothing to do with ram, no.
I have the same problem on some relatively large sets.
The strange thing is that, with the same live set, sometimes it works flawlessly, sometimes it's all fucked up.
I've always struggled with this problem ( I mean it was the same long before L9, Live has never been good at handling "too much" audio files at the same time, even factory Samplers don't work correctly !! ), but it seems like it gets worse with L9.
We asked for this to be take into account seriously during beta phase, but...

(BTW, I see that you have a SSD that you use for... your system. Is there a point doing this ? I can't understand why it's not dedicated to your audio things.)

[Robodelfy]

Hi Thanks for the info

It just seems like I should be able to play 30 seperate tracks of audio, but maybe Im asking too much!

I jut dont know what to do really, as I want to put stems in from cubase and mix it, but now thats not possible.

I did a fair amount of research and posting on forums about my SSD and HDD setup, and the general concensus was that operating system and programs etc on the SSD, therefore everything loads quickly, and I can have multiple things going on.

Also, I had planned to move working projects onto my ssd if needed for extra speed. Also it meant I could get a smallish SSD as OS isnt that big.

Thanks

[fishmonkey]

if Live automatically uses larger streaming buffers when extra RAM is available, then extra RAM might help, but i would ask Ableton support about it.

the basic premise of Live will always mean that it will make larger demands of your computer system than any linear DAW.

in the case of streaming audio from disk, a linear DAW is free to buffer as much audio from each track as it wants, as it doesn't need to handle seamlessly jumping around non-deterministically inside the audio files. if you are playing at bar 20 and decide to skip to bar 60, a linear DAW has the luxury of pausing playback while it loads the audio from the new playback point. Live, on the other hand, is supposed to try and skip to the new playback point without dropping any samples...

in your case, putting your audio files on a fast SSD would make sense.

[Robodelfy]

Hi thanks for the reply.

I think I was asking a bit much, and I realise now that maybe getting my HDD to stream 30 auido files straight from disk simultaneously is too much.

Think I will move working projects to my SSD

Cheers

[Jack McOck]

Don't forget you can always click the little RAM button in the audio file sample inspector to load it to RAM, and lighten your disk's load. 30 tracks shouldn't be an issue...

[Nokatus]

I did a fair amount of research and posting on forums about my SSD and HDD setup, and the general concensus was that operating system and programs etc on the SSD, therefore everything loads quickly

That's the general consensus of the so-called everyday users who appreciate programs loading quickly etc, but usually don't tax their systems with sustained HD loads like people working with audio/video. Think of it this way: when you're spending a day making music, how much time is spent waiting for the OS and DAW or plugin binaries to load, and how much time does your machine spend streaming/loading actual audio material, instrument libraries etc? Yep, thought so

If you have just one SSD in an audio workstation, it makes sense to use it for the heavy stuff: SSDs shine with random access, so parallel streaming of audio tracks and loading library patches with thousands of files is just the thing to use it for. People working with large multisamples use SSDs to cut library loading times, for example. Even stuff like Omnisphere or Trilian benefit a lot if you store the actual libraries on an SSD and the plugin binaries where ever, instead of doing it the other way around. Browsing and loading patches from the library gets a lot snappier - loading the DAW or plugin DLLs themselves is nothing when compared to the real time saving stuff.

(It's not an either/or choice between plugin binaries and audio content, obviously. Just an example comparison )

[Robodelfy]

Thanks guys

Yeah I think most other programs must load a lot into ram? Maybe Im wrong, but i know ableton streams all straight from disk unless you hit the ram button. So that should help a lot.

yeah maybe you are righ about the SSD! I did post and research on DAW forums and still it seemed people said keep the OS on your SSD. I can move any project Im working on to the SSD, and then just store it away on my second HDD afterwards. But yeah maybe i need to re think it a little )