Optimizing Ableton? Performance Issues on New PC

[hwangman]

Would it help if I posted my list of processes running while Ableton is eating up that CPU usage?

[fishmonkey]

it may not be the indexer causing the problem though. there are lots of things that could cause the issues that you are experiencing.

is this a vanilla install of Windows? did the new machine come with Windows pre-installed or did you install it yourself? there are lots of guides on the net about how to optimise a Windows machine for music production, would be a good idea to check some out.

an important thing to know is that the Live 'CPU meter' is not really a CPU meter in the way that the Activity Monitor or the Task Manager are. Live's meter is telling you how much of the audio processing time window is being used. to avoid audio glitches, the audio needs to be processed and shuffled through the audio buffers quickly and consistently. if your Task Manager shows that overall CPU usage is low, then the culprit is more likely to be something else that is causing the glitches. it might be a badly coded hardware driver, another piece of software, or some system settings that need tweaking...

It's a fresh install of Windows 7, done by me about two weeks ago. I've only installed a few pieces of software so far (anti-virus, browser, Steam, Ableton). I have looked at a few of the optimization guides but the fact that the index process was running for so long seemed to indicate that the issue was with Ableton, not any other options I have enabled.

i suggest you run one of the free Windows DPC Latency monitors. this will point to towards what is causing the glitches...

[hwangman]

I ran the DPC latency monitor twice over the weekend and it never got out of green status. However, the usage is still high. I've been manually stopping the index process since it never stops running. Still doesn't do much to drop CPU usage though. Here's a screenshot of a project from today. 3 tracks (2 instances of Kontakt and 1 of Battery, all running from a USB 3.0 external drive). Usage was consistently at 25-30%. This occurs whether I'm using instruments from my external or Ableton's built-in instruments (running from the internal SSD). At this point, I"m stumped.

[bra10]

Are you up-to-date with your audio nterface drivers? I got a lot of cpu-peaks with my NI-Interface (Komplete Audio 6) which where caused by an old driver. After updating it runs really smoooooth.

[hwangman]

Are you up-to-date with your audio nterface drivers? I got a lot of cpu-peaks with my NI-Interface (Komplete Audio 6) which where caused by an old driver. After updating it runs really smoooooth.

Yes. I'm using a UR22 interface and immediately after initial setup, I grabbed the latest drivers.

[Mister Natural]

...installed a few pieces of software so far (anti-virus, browser, Steam, Ableton)...

Uninstall Steam - I see it running in the background of my kid's machine 24/7. Not sure what it's doing there . . .