Insane CPU (since upgrade 9.6)

[salmonito]

I had no problems on my win10 surface pro before upgrade to 9.5. My buffer in asio4all was around 512. I have several projects with one Pianoteq track. Now I have to make my buffer to about 2000 to avoid clicks in audio. I know what ableton is thinking, they will get new computers anyway so write the code and don't worry optimizing it.

[Tarekith]

Why are you using asio4all, does your soundcard not have stable drivers?

[salmonito]

I do not use external USB sound card on surface pro 3... The point is that I notice how resource hungry Live became after upgrade on my i7 laptop with 16gb and surface pro 3. Even rearranging tracks in clip mode takes noticeable amount of time on surface pro.

[Morpion]

I also had this problem after upgrading and had to resort to going back to 9.5, but last night I finally figured out what it was! Now 9.6 is working fine for me - maybe this will help others having the same issue. Over the last few weeks I've been bouncing down album tracks at 96k, although I usually have the project sample rate set to 44.1 - what I hadn't noticed was that rather than just affecting the export settings, this had changed the default sample rate of all my projects to 96k too.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is a bug because I don't remember noticing this ever happening before, especially not in 9.5 (i.e. the export settings shouldn't change the project settings default values). Anyway, in my case this was causing the unexplained massive CPU jumps and buffering problems with projects that had always been fine for me. Now those projects are playing nicely again - it could be worth checking that your default project sample rate hasn't changed if you're having the same issue.

[twitterytom]

I'm having strange issues with large drum racks which contain a lot of instances of Simpler. Even if no note in the drum rack is being triggered.

I believe there must be some bug with Simpler's new warping capabilities. This is really noticable when I turn link on.

I have a huge live set with complex routing, sidechaining, a bunch of max for live etc etc. But when I delete my drum rack with about 40 instances of simpler (mind you each one has a large warped sample inside) everything goes back to normal.

I was trying to use a drum rack and the new simpler to trigger percussive loops using a grid controller

[Stromkraft]

I delete my drum rack with about 40 instances of simpler (mind you each one has a large warped sample inside)

Why exactly do the drum sounds need to be warped? What warp type? Are you actually working the warp settings real time? If not, you could simple freeze the warped drum if only that have the sound you need (without filter and LFO perhaps) and use that new audio file as a normal sample source instead. It should sound the same more or less.

[Stromkraft]

I've been bouncing down album tracks at 96k, although I usually have the project sample rate set to 44.1 - what I hadn't noticed was that rather than just affecting the export settings, this had changed the default sample rate of all my projects to 96k too.

At least in 9.7b6 exporting to 192600 doesn't change the audio settings from 44100. Have you actually repeated this? If so, you should really send a bug report to Ableton.

[twitterytom]

I delete my drum rack with about 40 instances of simpler (mind you each one has a large warped sample inside)

Why exactly do the drum sounds need to be warped? What warp type? Are you actually working the warp settings real time? If not, you could simple freeze the warped drum if only that have the sound you need (without filter and LFO perhaps) and use that new audio file as a normal sample source instead. It should sound the same more or less.

i'm using the drum rack to play percussive loops that need to be timestretched properly to be in time with everything. so warp needs to be activated. changing the warp mode doesn't seem to impact the problem

[Stromkraft]

i'm using the drum rack to play percussive loops that need to be timestretched properly to be in time with everything. so warp needs to be activated. changing the warp mode doesn't seem to impact the problem

OK, but unless you plan to change the tempo what I just suggested will still be in time and tune without warping at all. You're just fixating the current time and pitch of the loops. The reality is that a lot of warping takes CPU power. I can't tell you if this ought to still work with your drum rack because I haven't tried warping inside multiple Simplers so have no base line on how much power would be needed for 40+ loops.

[twitterytom]

i'm using the drum rack to play percussive loops that need to be timestretched properly to be in time with everything. so warp needs to be activated. changing the warp mode doesn't seem to impact the problem

OK, but unless you plan to change the tempo what I just suggested will still be in time and tune without warping at all. You're just fixating the current time and pitch of the loops. The reality is that a lot of warping takes CPU power. I can't tell you if this ought to still work with your drum rack because I haven't tried warping inside multiple Simplers so have no base line on how much power would be needed for 40+ loops.

the problem is it's my live setup where i'm constantly changing the tempo of the set. the thing that strikes me as odd is that the cpu is at max without any of them being triggered. it seems to me that simpler with warped longer samples uses lots of cpu even when it's not playing anything. this happens especially when i play in link with someone else. i believe it must have something to do with the small global tempo changes that link does to keep in sync

[Stromkraft]

the problem is it's my live setup where i'm constantly changing the tempo of the set. the thing that strikes me as odd is that the cpu is at max without any of them being triggered.

I see. What you could then try is to inactivate non-used Simplers, with Macros or automation. While this would be somewhat inconvenient it sure beats crackles.

I suppose I'd pick apart such a drum rack to analyse what could be causing the issue. One thing to investigate could be if you have a complicated signal flow in there, to see if simplifications could improve the performance.

[spatula]

FWIW, I was having exactly the same issues with Live 9.6, and as many others have seen, turning on Multiprocessor Support actually made things worse, not better. I went through my entire song, disabling tracks and devices until I had nothing active except a single vocal track, and that was *still* causing massive CPU spikes and drop-outs. I went so far as to disable warping and all of the effects on that track as well, to put the track in RAM, and it was still giving me grief until I turned off multiprocessor/multicore support.

This seemed very strange to me.

Backing up a moment, I should point out that I'm running Windows 10 64bit, and I upgraded Windows around the same time that I upgraded Live from 8 to 9. My ASIO device is a Roland QuadCapture. I did not experience problems on non-ASIO devices (like the machine's on-board, built-in sound card). Your mileage may vary considerably. I point this out because my Live upgrade and Windows upgrade happened in such close proximity, it was hard for me to pin it on one or the other.

Knowing that Windows 10 likes to "park" a CPU core if it's idle, I thought that perhaps it was getting a little too aggressive with the parking/throttling; perhaps what's actually happening is Ableton is using too -little- CPU for Windows to justify keeping the CPU speed up, then Windows slows or parks the CPU, then Ableton puts a slightly greater demand on the CPU and suddenly Windows has to react. Terrible behavior for real-time performance, really, but great if real-time isn't important and you want to save electricity.

So I went into the Windows 10 power options, and selected the "High Performance" CPU power plan, and all my problems went away immediately. Again, your mileage may vary, and this obviously applies only to Windows 10.

If you go into the Control Panel, search for "Power Options," select it, then click to "Show Additional Plans" (why they bother always hiding the third plan is beyond me), you can then choose "High Performance." This seems to end the CPU parking and weird latency/CPU spikes that happen as a result.

Again, your mileage may vary. What worked for me might not work for you. And as to why this only started happening to some people in 9.6, I can't even begin to guess.

[Stromkraft]

If you go into the Control Panel, search for "Power Options," select it, then click to "Show Additional Plans"… you can then choose "High Performance." This seems to end the CPU parking and weird latency/CPU spikes that happen as a result.

Great suggestion. I must say I'm a bit surprised this is not the first thing Windows users do with a new installation though.

On Macs you can turn off "app nap" in addition to checking this power setting in power preferences, that should be on max performance with active power supply .

[tintala]

well 32 bit is going to be obsolete if not already. I didnt think anyone was on 32 bit these days... But prolly not causing the insane cpu spike. Anyways, I have been holding off on the update . Since I;ve have insane cpu spikes on w-7, core i7, 32 gb, brand new mb and 4970k processor. so my system should eat live no prob. yet I get the red "DISC" light all the time with 20 tracks. im on 9.4

[Stromkraft]

Since I;ve have insane cpu spikes on w-7, core i7, 32 gb, brand new mb and 4970k processor. so my system should eat live no prob. yet I get the red "DISC" light all the time with 20 tracks. im on 9.4

Disc? That's not CPU overload, that's a hard drive overload indication, isn't it?

What do you mean 9.4?