Mediocre Ableton performance on new iMac 2020?

[yur2die4]

On the topic of ram I would look at some specific things in the Live manual, but I can’t say this is entirely my area of expertise.

I know from experience that committing some frequently used clips to RAM can help a lot. I’ve done things where I’d ‘trigger’ an audio clip by touching the waveform with launch quantization set to None. If the clip is not set to RAM mode, it will pop and click a lot more, as it’s constantly referencing the hard drive. So there was a significant performance difference with something like that.

There is also the option in Sampler to use RAM if I recall correctly. I’d consult the manual for that, and potential consequences.

I’d be especially careful when it comes to committing things to ram. You really don’t want it to not have the resources it requires. But, if you’ve got more than enough, you might as well cautiously take advantage of that.

I don’t think this will have much of an effect on loading things. Just gives Live more options to grab from, freeing traffic in other areas. And I’m not sure if it truly affects performance, or just sample access.. of samples already loaded.

But yeah, it does sound like your new hardware is a significant step up. It should process a lot more at once, handle processing better. And run smoothly for non-intensive sets. Quantifying it all is a challenge. It’s like speed records in the olympics. A second or two could be a huge deal to everyone, even though it’s essentially the same, and the big changes happen when new techniques or attire come into play. Going from an Intel Mac to an Intel Mac is going to be that small but comfortable boost. And though at times it might not seem like a major improvement, it’s still mostly cutting edge, for now. Music and technological creativity can be pretty demanding... even though we’ve seen plenty of great output even 15 years ago on old tech hahaha

[Citizen]

Thanks for your feedback on this thread – I'll look into RAM allocation a bit more.

[TLW]

For example, I have a reasonably 'heavy' project that hits the CPU meter at 60-70% on my Mac Book Pro – but it still touched 40% CPU reading on the new iMac.

if you’re referring to the performance meter in Live that is not simply a cpu meter. It’s intended to give an idea about how well the system as a whole is coping with what Live is asking it to do. I’ve seen it go above 100% for several seconds at a time with no noticeable effect on anything.

The audio driver and audio buffer settings can have quite an impact on Live’s meter, but if you do everything at a 512 sample latency I’d expect it to mostly be OK, unless really heavy duty plugins are in use. The graphics system also has an impact - for whatever reason Live 10 seems to hit the Mac WindowServer very hard. There’s a thread about possible fixes for this by lowering Live’s screen refresh rate in the “tips and tricks” part of the forum - search it for WindowServer and you should find the thread. It made a huge difference to my i7 MBP with Intel gpu, but not much difference to my August 2020 i9 iMac with dedicated gpu.

[Eightfoot1981]

Bottom line is you shouldn't be having trouble... Your iMac is a beast just as mine is... Maybe think of taking it into an apple store and showing them what happens and why it's frustrating. I can't see any reason why you're having issues as I don't have any with pretty much the same spec.

Hope you get it sorted... Last thing you want is being frustrated when you spend so much money... Don't settle.

[Citizen]

The audio driver and audio buffer settings can have quite an impact on Live’s meter, but if you do everything at a 512 sample latency I’d expect it to mostly be OK, unless really heavy duty plugins are in use.

For memory, the only 3rd party VSTs this project has is one instance of Pro-L on the master, and another instance on an instrument.

Turning Pro-L on the master on and off equates to a 20% difference in the CPU meter in Live – that does seem excessive, right?

The graphics system also has an impact - for whatever reason Live 10 seems to hit the Mac WindowServer very hard. There’s a thread about possible fixes for this by lowering Live’s screen refresh rate in the “tips and tricks” part of the forum - search it for WindowServer and you should find the thread. It made a huge difference to my i7 MBP with Intel gpu, but not much difference to my August 2020 i9 iMac with dedicated gpu.

Yeah, I'll have to look into this further. I really didn't think there was any reason to pimp out my graphics card for a computer that will be primarily used for music.

[Citizen]

Bottom line is you shouldn't be having trouble... Your iMac is a beast just as mine is... Maybe think of taking it into an apple store and showing them what happens and why it's frustrating. I can't see any reason why you're having issues as I don't have any with pretty much the same spec.

Hope you get it sorted... Last thing you want is being frustrated when you spend so much money... Don't settle.

Damn good advice.

When you say you are not having any issues – just to make sure I'm comparing apples with apples – what is your spec? (I wouldn't say I'm having 'issues' per se – its just that I was expecting a much faster computer given such a significant upgrade)

How fast are projects loading, and specifically, how fast can you load the 'Selector Kit Warm.adg'? (I use this as a bench mark, as it has over 1000 samples in its various racks.)

It takes 8.5 seconds to load into an otherwise blank (1 empty audio track) project. Am I being too harsh to expect a faster load time?

[Eightfoot1981]

Hi, sorry for the delay!

Okay so 'selector kit warm' loads up in under a second for me. But it's taking it from the internal SSD, not external. Sorry, earlier I said all my samples were on external but I meant all 3rd party samples and libraries.

My spec.

2020 iMac
27inch
3.8 8 core i7
40gig ram 2133 ddr4
Radeon pro 5700 XT 16 gig graphics

[Citizen]

Thanks for the reply. I'm also using internal SSD – not external. (Everything on my HD is from internal SSD)

That is puzzling that my performance of loading that particular kit takes SO much longer – especially since our specs are basically identical, and I have even more ram!

What is going on here?

>>>>

EDIT: Just to be 100% clear, I'm timing from:

When I let go of the mouse button when I drag the kit into my set from the browser...to when the progress bar in the bottom left reaches 100%. (ie. the kit, and all samples are fully loaded)

The kit shows up in the set in about 1 sec, but all the samples take 8.5 secs to load, after I get the little Mac OSX watch icon, and the rainbow wheel.

Do you get the progress bar at all?

[Eightfoot1981]

I have no idea... You need to go and see someone or get a replacement and see if you have the same issue. I ordered a brand new iMac back in 2015 and when it turned up I was disappointed with a few things but I never said anything and just assumed that's how it should be... So pis*ed I never sent it back as I was sure it was faulty... My recent experience with the brand new MacBookpro and reassured me that my gut is usually right and the performance you are expecting should actually exist. Happily send you a pic of my spec and a vid of the load of it helps.

Good luck.

[Eightfoot1981]

Just seen your edit. Will recheck for you.

[Ast3rix]

I bought a brand new iMac to improve the performance with Ableton Live, and to be honest, the observable difference is disappointingly minimal. I've done comparisons opening and running the exact same project on both my new and old system and the difference is marginal in both time for opening projects, and CPU reading.

These are the specs:

(Old) Mac Book Pro 2012, 2.6GHz Intel i7, with 16 GB RAM – running Mac OSX 10.14.6 Mojave
(New) iMac 2020 – 3.8Ghz 8-Core Intel i7, 64GB of RAM – running MacOSX 10.15.7 Catalina

For example, I have a reasonably 'heavy' project that hits the CPU meter at 60-70% on my Mac Book Pro – but it still touched 40% CPU reading on the new iMac.

Likewise, when I load the 'Selector Kit Clean.adg' drum rack (which has a large amount of samples in 128 drum racks) on both computers at the same time, the new one is maybe a split second faster – it still takes 2–4 seconds to load this kit, and I get the spinning wheel and the progress bar in the bottom left of the Live interface as the samples load.

I am also still experiencing a noticeable lag with Push 2 when loading devices and instruments, which when compared to Maschine's instantaneous responsiveness, is disappointing. I had figured that the lag on Push 2 was due to my older computer's lack of performance, but this does not appear to be the case.

Is this lack of performance improvement normal, given the huge difference in spec between my two computers, and if so, how can I improve the performance of Ableton Live on my new computer? Ideally, I would like the large drum racks and projects to open near instantly.


Thanks in advance.

This is an extreme answer, however have you tried resetting Ableton back to factory? It will require that you delete your default template that loads and deleting the preferences.cfg files. I just did this on my Mac Pro 2013 running Mojave. I was having alot of issues with performance and plugins. I noticed right away the plugin load issue has been resolved and I also noticed a reduction of latency. Here are the instructions on how to do this... also make sure if you have a custom audio setup to screen cap your input and output settings under the audio preferences area before doing this... as you will have to reset it up. This really helped me alot... thought I would share...

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... reset-Live

[Eightfoot1981]

Thanks for the reply. I'm also using internal SSD – not external. (Everything on my HD is from internal SSD)

That is puzzling that my performance of loading that particular kit takes SO much longer – especially since our specs are basically identical, and I have even more ram!

What is going on here?

>>>>

EDIT: Just to be 100% clear, I'm timing from:

When I let go of the mouse button when I drag the kit into my set from the browser...to when the progress bar in the bottom left reaches 100%. (ie. the kit, and all samples are fully loaded)

The kit shows up in the set in about 1 sec, but all the samples take 8.5 secs to load, after I get the little Mac OSX watch icon, and the rainbow wheel.

Do you get the progress bar at all?

Progress bar is there for less than a second.

[MotiMo]

Many thanks to Citizen, Eightfoot and all other contributors for this thread!

How did things work out Citizen? Did you end up replacing the machine or did things improve somehow?

---

I'm finally seeing the end of the road for my 2011 iMac and accepting that I need to upgrade my machine, without this thread I probably wouldn't have put much consideration into the graphics card, so I am very grateful for being made aware of it's importance in running Live smoothly. Any specific recommendations or just go as "high" performance as I can afford? ($$yipes!)

Any other advice from iMac users would be most appreciated as I really haven't kept in the loop on the new machines/chips, I work as a web dev but the computing needs for that are probably not as heavy as my needs for live (you can see my priorities here! haha). I don't usually run more than 40 tracks but I do use Waves plugins and sometimes ReasonLite......Thanks for any tips on what to consider while looking for a new machine that will hopefully last me another decade~

[sadfay]

I've a 27" iMac, mid-2010 model. I put in my own 1TB SSD and upgraded the RAM to 12GB.

The performance difference when I stuck the SSD in was massive! The old SATA HDD had started to get a bit laggy and slow (the old drive is still in the machine and it's always a scary prospect whenever I need to retrieve something from it... Crawls like a snail...)

However, I've been considering upgrading my iMac and maybe getting a refurbished system off eBay.
My motivation is that I want a bit more raw power for when I'm working on those bigger projects: Sometimes my system grinds to a halt, just when I'm getting excited and creative with all the plugins and layers. It's a pain having to then bounce / flatten things down, especially when you're in that creative flow.

A lot of projects I work on push the computer to its limits in this way and it's frustrating because this is usually the point where I am just needing that little bit more room to play with: I want to add some final touches and spice up the overall song.

I don't want to fork out £1500 or thereabouts if it's unlikely to give me much more power within Ableton. For that sort of money I might as well go PC. On the other hand, I would lose quite a few of my plugins and probably a few other apps if I abandoned Apple.

Apple piss me off though: Looked at getting a new iMac £2000... I could almost swallow that, except they're charging an extra £400 for 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It just annoys me, the audacity of that pricing.

[MotiMo]

I hear ya, looking at 2-3K for my next machine from them.

Still unsure if I can/will wait for the new iMacs, so that I have a machine that will hopefully be supported for the next 10 years (hopefully hah).......