CPU usage in Live 10

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
TheWholeDamnZoo
Posts: 37
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2017 3:49 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by TheWholeDamnZoo » Fri Mar 02, 2018 7:52 pm

DukeOfPrunes wrote:I was able to reduce my high CPU usage issue by disabling my Norton Antivirus, in case this is relevant to others.
Really? I do use Norton, and I really hope that's not the cause. I wouldn't want to have to choose between being able to use Live and leaving my computer vulnerable to viruses/attacks.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by Stromkraft » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:55 pm

TheWholeDamnZoo wrote:
DukeOfPrunes wrote:I was able to reduce my high CPU usage issue by disabling my Norton Antivirus, in case this is relevant to others.
Really? I do use Norton, and I really hope that's not the cause. I wouldn't want to have to choose between being able to use Live and leaving my computer vulnerable to viruses/attacks.
I don't use this but I think I read recently — in this very thread? — that with just removing some Live-related processes/files from Norton's prying eyes, CPU usage went down considerably.

It's worth remembering that Norton AV products have plagued DAW computers for many years and that there are other perfectly valid alternatives for protection.
Last edited by Stromkraft on Sat Mar 03, 2018 6:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
Make some music!

DukeOfPrunes
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Jun 05, 2015 11:15 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by DukeOfPrunes » Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:20 pm

TheWholeDamnZoo wrote:
DukeOfPrunes wrote:I was able to reduce my high CPU usage issue by disabling my Norton Antivirus, in case this is relevant to others.
Really? I do use Norton, and I really hope that's not the cause. I wouldn't want to have to choose between being able to use Live and leaving my computer vulnerable to viruses/attacks.
I don't mind disabling Norton while in a Live session. Norton is relatively useless, most of the time...

You may choose to exclude The Ableton executable and Ableton Index and see if that helps. I prefer to take it off line altogether.

DukeOfPrunes
Posts: 44
Joined: Fri Jun 05, 2015 11:15 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by DukeOfPrunes » Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:21 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
TheWholeDamnZoo wrote:
DukeOfPrunes wrote:I was able to reduce my high CPU usage issue by disabling my Norton Antivirus, in case this is relevant to others.
Really? I do use Norton, and I really hope that's not the cause. I wouldn't want to have to choose between being able to use Live and leaving my computer vulnerable to viruses/attacks.
I don't use this but I think I read recently — in this very thread? — that with just removing some Live-related processes/files from Norton's prying eyes, CPU usage wen down considerably.

It's worth remembering that Norton AV products have plagued DAW computers for many years and that there are other perfectly valid alternatives for protection.
H20nly helped me with this issue over in the Ableton is obsolete (a tad harsh...) thread.

WilliamWilliam
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 2:10 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by WilliamWilliam » Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:30 pm

Stromkraft wrote:
WilliamWilliam wrote:I don't mean to be rude to those who are doing tests etc to check CPU usage. It's gone further than that--we who are having problems are not dreaming…
No-one have suggested that. However, if anyone suggests systemic error this person also could present audio interface used, buffer sizes, CPU model, CPU settings (especially throttling), set routing or anything unusual. Without this how are Ableton, or anyone else wanting to assist, be able to find the actual causes?

I had plenty of performance issues during the 9.0 period, so I know how frustrating it can be. But from the old-timers here I learned a lot about how to look for what I can do as a user to get the best performance possible with a specific release. I'm grateful for that as that made it possible to make music while Ableton devised 9.1 and later the game changer 9.2.
WilliamWilliam wrote:It is perfectly reasonable that some people will have no issues but that does not discount the issues that many of us are having currently that are all documented above.


Again, no-one is discounting anything. All I ask is that the documentation of issues are made as complete as possible under the circumstances and shared in full, so we together can identify patterns and what not. To me it's tremendously encouraging that my problem sets works fine on another machine. I don't understand at all why such info would be threatening to anyone. Again, not one person AFAICT suggests "I don't have a problem, so you can't be having a problem". I certainly don't. I just make my own tests and share the results best as I can.
Right. I can appreciate what you are saying, but as end users and paying customers, I think we have the right to complain if a newer version of a DAW that we have paid for and then have upgraded has these kinds of issues. It is perfectly reasonable that we should just 'expect it to work' (OK, how about work pretty well?) at least as well as the previous version without having to 'test' it on our computers. I'm sure this is a big headache for the Ableton developers and I'm sure they are busy as all heck and I appreciate their hard work and dedication but they get a salary for it. From our purchases. We have to pay our hard-earned cash for it.

Also, some of us are just music producers and not knowledgeable with doing software/hardware analysis and reports or would at least have to take time out of our busy schedules to learn how to do this stuff. I'd love to help solve the problem but I'm more into making music and not into creating CPU usage statistics.

This is just my viewpoint and it's fine if others disagree. It's a free universe.

KoffeeStar
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 3:08 pm

Live 10 is a CPU hog compared to 9.

Post by KoffeeStar » Sat Mar 03, 2018 4:20 pm

Compared to 9 which I was running until today, 10 is huge CPU hog. Going by the Activity meter on my Mac - about 40% of the CPU while idle. If I use any intensive Plugins - Diva, Reaktor etc its pretty much peaks to 80%. This is going to be a huge problem.

Running Ableton 10 on Macbook Pro 15" OSX 10.13.3 16GB RAM 1TB SSD

[mod
I've merged your topic with this one. Don't forget the search function next time ;-) ]

JAMM
Posts: 728
Joined: Sat Jul 10, 2004 8:03 pm

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by JAMM » Sat Mar 03, 2018 7:15 pm

william william wrote:Also, some of us are just music producers and not knowledgeable with doing software/hardware analysis and reports or would at least have to take time out of our busy schedules to learn how to do this stuff. I'd love to help solve the problem but I'm more into making music and not into creating CPU usage statistics.
your right...i,m doing live gigs so can.t use a program with a CPU problem.

I'm willing to participate in sharing data but ableton should release a major update when it works correctly.
the betaperiod was for collecting this kind of data.

i,m bought 10 but didn't,t install it....waiting for a update.

Terminal55
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2012 1:57 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by Terminal55 » Sun Mar 04, 2018 5:07 pm

Sarrova-Q wrote:With 5% CPU increase, I could live. But not with erratic behavior boosting the CPU 5O% up. I'm on Mac OSX 10.12 btw.

As I said before:
• Live 9 cpu stays stable, 20 % doesn't become 40 % after a random period of time.
• Live 10 is stable for one moment, than the next the CPU increases from 20 % to any percentage between 50 and 90, with crackling and unstable audio as a result. Ironic, but this is totally unusable in live settings at the moment.
What's described above is exactly how I would describe my issues. My current project steadily bounces around between 43% - 47% for approx 30sec to 1 min (and the sound is fine), then suddenly ableton cpu level starts getting increasingly erratic, spiking every few seconds to a level that gets higher and higher over time. This of course comes with severe degradation in sound quality and renders the application unusable.

This specific behaviour is strange in that there is nothing else running on the machine and the project is only session view based / in loop stage (i.e. it's not gradually performing more intensive tasks over this time period). The project consists of about 12 tracks, split into three groups. I'm using mostly ableton plug-ins on each channel (mostly operators and sampler and abe effects, plus one instance of wavetable), an instance of Satson channel on each track and Satson Buss on every group and the master, one use of TAL 101 bassline vst, a couple of D16 effect vsts and finally, a MUJC compressor on the master.

It's worth stating that in past use of Live 9 I have worked on much more heavily loaded projects, using exactly the same machines with the same specifications, without experiencing ANY performance issues. The last time I experienced performance issues was using a Sony Vaio laptop back in 2010 (after which I moved over to Macs for music). This is useful context, as my first performance issue in 8 years occurred when using Live 10.

What's really interesting is that for this current project I'm working across 2 different machines: a 2010 Mac Pro at home and 2015 MacBook Pro (MBP) for on-the-move. These issues ONLY occur on the MBP. I have repeatedly performed tests by alternating the same project on both machines and, without fail, the issue only occurs on the MBP.

So, some detail, specs etc:

MACHINE EXPERIENCING ISSUES
MacBook Pro 13", early 2015 model
3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16GB
OS X El Capitan 10.11.6
Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536MB
Buffer size 512
Mac Activity Monitor CPU (while project playing) - jumping between 150% - 190% / Threads - 25

Issue occurs when sound is being delivered via Mac CoreAudio driver (my typical approach, as I just use headphones directly plugged into the Mac headphone socket)
Issue ALSO occurs when i try connecting to a Scarlett Focusrite 2i2 (which I use with my 2010 MacPro, spec below)
Issue ALSO occurs when I change buffer size to 1024 and 2048 - spikes seemed noticably less frequent during several tests on 2048, though during one test there were more spikes than the worst I've noticed on 512! Weird eh?


MACHINE NOT EXPERIENCING ISSUES

Mac Pro Mid 2010
2 x 2.4 ghz quad-core intel Xeon / 22GB
MacOS High Sierra 10.13.3
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
Soundcard - Scarlett Focusrite 2i2
Buffer size 512
Mac Activity Monitor CPU (while project playing) - occasional gradual changes between 188% - 191% / Threads - 33

Both machines had Ableton Index running when the projects were playing. Alternating between 0.01 and 0.05% CPU usage and 5 or 6 threads in use.

Hope this is useful to those techies trying to work this out. Please let me know if you have any questions or want me to try anything.

(also, when I first experienced the issues, I raised with Ableton Support. They told me it is likely due to Ableton Index running, but I have since performed the above tests that seem to indicate otherwise. I will also be sharing the above info in my Ableton Support case)

:-)

*Edited to get the OS's right on the machine specs (were initially wrong way around)
Last edited by Terminal55 on Sun Mar 04, 2018 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
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Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by Stromkraft » Sun Mar 04, 2018 7:58 pm

Terminal55 wrote: MACHINE EXPERIENCING ISSUES
MacBook Pro 13", early 2015 model
3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 / 16GB
MacOS High Sierra 10.13.3
Thanks for sharing!

Two observations: That's a duocore MBP. While I think this machine should be able to do quite a bit of work even so, quadcore really is minimum for both 9 or 10 IMHO, unless all you use are external instruments.

You're running on macOS 10.13 "High Sierra". Are you certain all your plug-ins (not Live's as those are "devices") are compatible with that OS? It's not sufficient to think that "if it works in 9…", because 10 is a new environment which isn't operating in a vacuum.

Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to expect HS to work fine, but personally I don't trust this major version since Apple's major security palaver and I have stayed on macOS 10.12, that I feel works wonderfully.

One thing that certainly can come into play is the potential lack of updated audio interface drivers for the (major) OS version. I'm not happy at all that Live at times have seemed more sensitive to audio drivers than other music software, but it is generally of the out-most importance to make sure you run drivers compatible with your OS version.

Generally all drivers inter-operates with CoreAudio in macOS, though some interfaces can be run in a standards mode bypassing dedicated drivers.
Make some music!

Terminal55
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2012 1:57 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by Terminal55 » Sun Mar 04, 2018 8:44 pm

Stromkraft wrote: Thanks for sharing!

Two observations: That's a duocore MBP. While I think this machine should be able to do quite a bit of work even so, quadcore really is minimum for both 9 or 10 IMHO, unless all you use are external instruments.

You're running on macOS 10.13 "High Sierra". Are you certain all your plug-ins (not Live's as those are "devices") are compatible with that OS? It's not sufficient to think that "if it works in 9…", because 10 is a new environment which isn't operating in a vacuum.

Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to expect HS to work fine, but personally I don't trust this major version since Apple's major security palaver and I have stayed on macOS 10.12, that I feel works wonderfully.

One thing that certainly can come into play is the potential lack of updated audio interface drivers for the (major) OS version. I'm not happy at all that Live at times have seemed more sensitive to audio drivers than other music software, but it is generally of the out-most importance to make sure you run drivers compatible with your OS version.

Generally all drivers inter-operates with CoreAudio in macOS, though some interfaces can be run in a standards mode bypassing dedicated drivers.
Hiya..thanks for your input :-)

Firstly, my apologies - I got the OS's mixed up :oops: . The version on the MBP (the machine that IS experiencing the issues) is El Capitan. The working Mac Pro is on High Sierra. Regardless, your observations around OS compatibility are still valid and I will therefore ensure both machines are on High Sierra (which will either confirm or eliminate OS compatibility as the cause). Thanks!

Re the possibility that my Duocore MPB may not be powerful enough - I think that's terribly depressing; if you're right then I feel really screwed over. When i purchased the MBP I did plenty of research around how it performed with Live 9 for other users. I never came across one disappointed person, even those with lesser specifications. The general view was that it can handle most of what you throw at it. I bought it in February 2016 and have always used it with Live 9 until last month. As stated before, I've never had any problems with Live 9 on this machine and my projects were much heavier loaded than the current one I have in-progress in Live 10.

If moving to Live 10 suddenly means I need to upgrade my laptop, then that's completely shit.

I genuinely appreciate your assistance and input, but I must say that the prospect of you being right has left me feeling rather miserable. If I can't use my MBP it really screws up my workflow, and it will have been a complete waste of money. I was really looking forward to using the Live 10 features too as they were things that I would have greatly benefitted from.

:cry:

McAnix
Posts: 415
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 7:42 pm

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by McAnix » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:07 am

It looks like I'm unfortunately going to have to go back to 9. 10 is unusable for me at the moment and I don't know how to fix it, no matter how high I put my buffer the audio always degrades, changing the buffer only changes the amount of time it takes to degrade.

Just did my own little stress test in 9 trying to emulate my issues in 10 and 9 handled it like a beast even at 128 samples.

Seriously bleak about this.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by Stromkraft » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:58 am

Terminal55 wrote: If moving to Live 10 suddenly means I need to upgrade my laptop, then that's completely shit.

I genuinely appreciate your assistance and input, but I must say that the prospect of you being right has left me feeling rather miserable. If I can't use my MBP it really screws up my workflow, and it will have been a complete waste of money. I was really looking forward to using the Live 10 features too as they were things that I would have greatly benefitted from.

:cry:
Well, that's not how I'd intended you to feel from my post. Sorry about that.

Unique requirements
Nor do I think upgrading to Live 10 would necessarily put more stress on the CPU in itself.

However, if you use something not in Live 9, like the Wavetable synth, then that's unique requirements. In contrast, I successfully used Wavetable on a duocore MBP from 2009 recently.

On the same duocore machine I ran most tracks built on my quadcore in Live 10 beta with a 512 or 1024 (mixdown) samples audio buffer. I had to freeze the Wavetable at mixdown, but I was running a software drum machine and three more synths in HQ mode and 1-25 plug-ins, so I kind of expected this.

Track count vs core count
With a 2015 duocore model generally one should expect more, but maybe massively more. Track count and core count are important metrics that do need to grow together. At some point one need to commit to audio, or freeze with what that entails.

Strategies
While it can never be wrong for Ableton to improve performance and solve bugs affecting this, I'm contemplating the right strategy for those of us wanting to cram out maximum performance from Live 10 while they work their way trough this. I guess so far the classic approach points such as those already mentioned — audio interface drivers, buffer settings and so on — are good starting points.

Share details
I'd encourage you who have identical projects that behave differently in Live 9 and 10, to please share these, or versions of these that demonstrate the problem, or the setup at least so that others can test them on their machines.

Patterns behind issues
Likely there are some patterns that we all could learn from. As I haven't seen any problems I have nothing of my own to add unfortunately, but I'll keep Live 9 (Standard) installed as all my collaborators are on 9, so I can test at least those with plug-ins I have (Komplete and a few others).
Make some music!

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by Stromkraft » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:59 am

McAnix wrote:
Just did my own little stress test in 9 trying to emulate my issues in 10 and 9 handled it like a beast even at 128 samples.

Seriously bleak about this.
That's terrible and baffling at the same time.
Make some music!

McAnix
Posts: 415
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 7:42 pm

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by McAnix » Mon Mar 05, 2018 11:17 am

Yeah, I've sent support an email, hopefully we can figure this out. It is weird, live 9 has always performed like a beast.

pinosvalle
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:52 pm

Re: CPU usage in Live 10

Post by pinosvalle » Mon Mar 05, 2018 11:01 pm

I am completely disappointed with Live 10. With Live 9 I was able to work with a huge amount of tracks, plugins and a lot of stuff. This is absolutely impossible with Live 10. It's a joke peeking 80-90% of CPU usage with only two wavetables loaded. Yes, I know wavetable is CPU intensive, but, come on... It's impossible working in this way.

MSi GT683, 12 GB, 1 TB SSD and 250GB SSD, Windows 10.

I do not believe what's going on. What do we need for working half-properly??? a NASA device? Deep Blue?

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