Puzzling issue - anyone know what's up?!

[TomViolenz]

If i were you i would start seing which track is to blame, i.e. I would start disabling deleting one by one to see if you can identify which one may be causing it. You will know in a matter of minutes.
Let us know how it went

Well, I should have more thoroughly followed this advice and I could have saved myself over a week of headaches

Turns out it was not hardware related, but a 3rd party plug-in that I had deeply hidden in many of my racks. (that's why I didn't find it when I deleted tracks, it was on pretty much all of them. And I was so used to having it and had used it for so long, that I never suspected it.)
After I had deleted it everything worked smoothly again. Meaning no CPU spikes, no crashes.

The Drive symbol still lights up from time to time, who knows maybe something is afoot there as well, but it was definitely not the cause of this issue.

Thanks you guys for all the suggestions and tries to help. Much appreciated

[parking sun]

When you take a look at Console while Ableton Live is slow, do you see the whole log filled with messages likes this one?

20.09.15 17:20:07,429 Live[661]: assertion failed: 14F27: libxpc.dylib + 33325 [5C829202-962E-3744-8B50-00D38CC88E84]: 0x13
20.09.15 17:20:07,435 Live[661]: assertion failed: 14F27: libxpc.dylib + 33325 [5C829202-962E-3744-8B50-00D38CC88E84]: 0x13
20.09.15 17:20:07,441 Live[661]: assertion failed: 14F27: libxpc.dylib + 33325 [5C829202-962E-3744-8B50-00D38CC88E84]: 0x13

Maybe a few hundred of them per second? This is what happens on my computer when it gets slow and Live becomes unusable. Would be intersting to see if it is the same problem that you are experiencing.

Dunno if this is OT for the thread, but I just had this start happening to me too - same error, and Live is useless. REAL minimal set, too - I was just getting started last night, but today it refuses to work...

Minimal won't help!

I have this problem as well. It's not related to a plugin, at least not one loaded up in the set. I can leave Ableton with the audio turned off and the empty default set loaded. After a little while it starts pumping out hundreds of messages exactly like that per second. Ableton shows low CPU usage, but the system slows down dramatically, as Console.app or servermetricsd or one of the system processes starts using ca 100% CPU, and the battery empties instantly. And ableton is doing nothing.

I am running a fresh install of OSX 10.10.5 (the problem occured when I reformatted my disk and reinstalled the system), Ableton live 9.2.3 , on a 1.7GHz 8Gb i7 Macbook with 50Gb free on the SSD, and I can only play for about 10 minutes before the system goes nasty. Usually audio stays constant, but the GUI becomes unusably slow to update, and timing goes very jumpy indeed.

[parking sun]

Minimal won't help!

I have this problem as well. It's not related to a plugin, at least not one loaded up in the set.

That said, two things occur to me...

Firstly, I should link to the other two threads I can find about this
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6822693
and
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=217747&p=1676149&hi ... b#p1676149

Secondly, since the effect takes a while to kick in, maybe up to half an hour, it's very slow to try to debug it by changing settings. However, I have started deleting various things including those plugins to see if I can make the problem go away. I will report back if I can get Live running for one hour without exploding, that being how long I am supposed to play for my next gig

[parking sun]

Hmm, disabling plugins didn't work. Problem occurs with 32bit and 64 bit versions of Live 9.5beta1, with AU and VST disabled. Runing out of things to turn off. *sigh*

[parking sun]

Hmm, disabling plugins didn't work. Problem occurs with 32bit and 64 bit versions of Live 9.5beta1, with AU and VST disabled. Runing out of things to turn off. *sigh*

After a lot of playing around I discovered a workaround: First turn of Console.app. Now kill servermetricsd if you are running it. Bam. CPU spike is gone
This almost makes the problem go away... as long as you don't wish to get debug information out of your logs to work out why you had a problem in the first place.

The only problem is now you don't notice that your system log is out of control and your disk fills up unobserved.
I have no idea if this is wise, but I just deleted the clogged up log dirs from the command line- /private/var/log/DiagnosticMessages /private/var/log/asl
For me these were about 16Gb, growing by about 4Gb per day of heavy Ableton usage, nearly pure Ableton libxpc.dylib complaints.

It's probably not smart to delete system folders, but it's also not smart to fill up your HDD on stage, so I did the delete thing. Feel free to copy me at your own risk.

[[rry]]

Hi all,

We have an issue, currently under investigation, with Drum Racks + quite a few Simplers resulting in more memory being used, and ultimately affecting CPU. This sounds consistent with the original post.
As [jur] suggested it is related to Complex/Pro warping, and can be affected even if Warp is off.

As I said, we're working on this, but for the moment, any users with large Drum Racks + CPU issues, please try reset the prefs, as here:
https://www.ableton.com/en/help/article/reset-live/

Defaults and settings will have to be reconfigured after this...

Best,
Rory

[tedlogan]

I wonder if my drumkit (Session - Multirod) disk overload issue is related to this...the only drumkit (that I know of so far) in the packs library that consistently lights up the red "D", even on lowered buffer settings, only device in the set etc. On an above-spec PC etc. No noticeable CPU nor GUI slowdown though.

[djesa]

Hi all,

We have an issue, currently under investigation, with Drum Racks + quite a few Simplers resulting in more memory being used, and ultimately affecting CPU. This sounds consistent with the original post.
As [jur] suggested it is related to Complex/Pro warping, and can be affected even if Warp is off.

As I said, we're working on this, but for the moment, any users with large Drum Racks + CPU issues, please try reset the prefs, as here:
https://www.ableton.com/en/help/article/reset-live/

Defaults and settings will have to be reconfigured after this...

Best,
Rory

well good luck telling tomviolenz that lol, since u banned him from this forum

[[rry]]

I wonder if my drumkit (Session - Multirod) disk overload issue is related to this...the only drumkit (that I know of so far) in the packs library that consistently lights up the red "D", even on lowered buffer settings, only device in the set etc. On an above-spec PC etc. No noticeable CPU nor GUI slowdown though.

Sorry I should have said, this is a 9.5 only issue, since the new Simpler. I notice the OP dates back to September, so maybe not so relevant.

well good luck telling tomviolenz that lol, since u banned him from this forum

Thats not part of my job here. Only spreading the love, and helping users with problems.
Best,
r

[XyBerBoT]

I have the same problem. Assertion failed libxpc.dylib flooding my console within seconds.

Macbook Pro, Live 9.5 and MAX 71_151214, Java for OS X 2015-001

Halp!

[parking sun]

let's solve this libxpc thing over at viewtopic.php?f=1&t=219515&start=0