Mac GPU Usage of Live 11

[g6r3TdWx]

Hi there,

I have the problem that Live 11 is Maxing out my admittedly pretty weak NVIDIA Quadro GPU. The thing is that no other program, web surfing and even 4k videos do that... my system is running great with 64 smpl buffer but zooming or having a lot takes visible causes dropouts. hiding live makes the gpu usage and dropouts disappear. Could you Mac guys maybe check the GPU usage with activity monitor and check how your GPU is doing? (you find it when you are in activity monitor and press cmd+4).

all the best
jörg

[Nod]

Major problems with L11

I work in an educational institution and, after we upgraded 30+ machines (various specs up to Mac Pros) from L9 to L11, it's now become a standing joke to go into a room, load up L11 and just listen to all the fans come on before anyone has hit play. Even the older 'hoover' Mac Pro's, with still decent specs and Dual AMD FirePro D500's, show L11 as using 30% of the GPU. And that's on a default set not doing anything - not even playing audio.

In addition we've observed that, using a range of soundcards from Apogee, RME and others, that tracking / recording live instruments at 32 samples - even on new high end machines - is now a very risky endeavour with the potential for lots of clicks / buffer problems. This simply didn't occur with L9, which still works fine on our machines, and have had to recommend to students they use that instead.

I'm not criticising Ableton per se - but the decision to upgrade the graphics requirements for a piece of *audio* software, where all its competitors have nowhere near that kind of overhead, hasn't made any improvements whatsoever and merely created more problems. Even when it's sat doing nothing it's comparable to Premiere CC rendering - that ain't right in anyones book.

[[jur]]

Major problems with L11

I work in an educational institution and, after we upgraded 30+ machines (various specs up to Mac Pros) from L9 to L11, it's now become a standing joke to go into a room, load up L11 and just listen to all the fans come on before anyone has hit play. Even the older 'hoover' Mac Pro's, with still decent specs and Dual AMD FirePro D500's, show L11 as using 30% of the GPU. And that's on a default set not doing anything - not even playing audio.

In addition we've observed that, using a range of soundcards from Apogee, RME and others, that tracking / recording live instruments at 32 samples - even on new high end machines - is now a very risky endeavour with the potential for lots of clicks / buffer problems. This simply didn't occur with L9, which still works fine on our machines, and have had to recommend to students they use that instead.

I'm not criticising Ableton per se - but the decision to upgrade the graphics requirements for a piece of *audio* software, where all its competitors have nowhere near that kind of overhead, hasn't made any improvements whatsoever and merely created more problems. Even when it's sat doing nothing it's comparable to Premiere CC rendering - that ain't right in anyones book.

Did you ever contact support@ableton.com? Crazy that you're seeing this all these different machines! I'm still running an old MacPro 5.1 with a very shitty graphics card and I can't see noticeable difference with older Live versions. But I'm also using a very outdated screen.
Could this be that you're both using high res screens?

[slow.robot]

obviously it shouldn’t be happening, but out of curiosity, what’s the reasoning behind setting the buffer at 32 samples for recording? that’s lower than I imagine most people have even tried. if I need super snappy response, 64 samples is more than sufficient, in my experience. any lower than that and you’re just showing off. (I kid, I kid )

[Nod]

Cheers [jur] - I'll have a word with our IT bod and see I can organise some harvesting of specs and results across our machines. Most of them are high res screens (5K) and I did notice that if you ran L11 in 'Low Resolution Mode' and dropped the actual res of the display right down it makes a huge difference. I've actually just jumped on an old machine we have as it really exemplifies the problem if folks are using hardware older than a couple of years - and even with its dedicated graphics card L11 uses exponentially more GPU (see link): https://ibb.co/vwt8424

@Slow Robot - we have a lot of guitar players etc now tracking through sims - it does make a difference when you're trying to get stuff *really* tight

[[jur]]

Yeah, high res screens can be a serious issue, and not only with Live.
And of course such a low buffer doesn't help. It sure isn't ideal, but I've learned to live with 256smpl. I'd momentarily switch to 128 when I feel like I can't get tight enough when recording guitars, but my old computers can't really handle lower than this, and I'm not a shredder so that probably helps!
I'm not knowledgeable at all regarding screens, but you can ask support@ableton.com if you need real answers and advises in this area.

[slow.robot]

ah, gotcha. I’m a guitarist too, but also have no illusions of ever achieving any level of indie shred. 128 is usually sufficient for me, too.

the GPU/high res thing is a great end point for the industry to strive to accommodate, but in the meantime, it really can be super frustrating, and as Jur says, it’s not just Live. I tried going back to Digital Performer last year, but between the 4k monitor (okay, it’s a TV), and the GPU (plenty powerful, but using it actually made things worse), it was all but unusable.

at least it seems like Ableton acknowledges there’s an issue. MOTU never even responded to my ticket, even after multiple polite nudges.

[[jur]]

MOTU never even responded to my ticket, even after multiple polite nudges.

MOTU support is the worst thing ever created (almost)!

[slow.robot]

MOTU never even responded to my ticket, even after multiple polite nudges.

MOTU support is the worst thing ever created (almost)!

you’re not kidding. I had to contact them a couple of years ago about the most recent drivers for my old firewire 8Pre. they didn’t have them available on the download page, and when I contacted support they referred me to the page that didn’t have them. when I responded to point out that the download instructions didn’t work for the firewire version (which I’d specified), it took them 3 weeks to respond with the attached drivers, and no apologies for the delay.