new intel imac + live 5.03 tested

Post by **Alex** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:59 pm

Hi bizacj,

I can not and want not to discuss technical details here.
Just this: The audio engine is sample based, therefore the Ableton effects are too. Also it is not this hard to write SSE, Altivec or whatever code for a certain effect or instrument. But the audio engine is more than that, just think of automation and envelopes in relation to the requirements for sample accuracy and low latencies.

regards,
/Alex

bizack · Post by **bizack** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:07 pm

I realize you're not going to disclose how Live works on a public forum. It is surprising to hear that it's almost all completely sample-based though. I guess I look at programs like SuperCollider, that have 'automation' and sample accuracy that can't be beat, and make use of altivec code. Granted, something like SuperCollider is more difficult to learn, but the audio engine kicks the sh!t out of everything on the market. I'm surprised that the automation is so closely 'glued' to the audio engine in Live. The engine should simply 'render audio' and the automation should 'act upon the engine.' I guess this explains a lot of the questions as to why Live isn't as efficient as it could be. So Operator is really a sample playback device? Weird. I will admit, I'm kinda bummed about this. I've been contemplating writing an open source Live-like application using SC as the audio engine, and then copying, errr, ummm, mimicking Live's UI and seeing if there's any gain in efficiency. Anyway, I'll stop my babbling. Keep up the good work Alex.

Alex wrote:Hi bizacj,

I can not and want not to discuss technical details here.
Just this: The audio engine is sample based, therefore the Ableton effects are too. Also it is not this hard to write SSE, Altivec or whatever code for a certain effect or instrument. But the audio engine is more than that, just think of automation and envelopes in relation to the requirements for sample accuracy and low latencies.

regards,
/Alex

rasputin · Post by **rasputin** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 6:48 pm

The Intel-Mac thing does feel strongly of deja vu; I remember the grief that happened some years ago when Apple abandoned the Motorola 68K series for the PowerPCs. Anyone remember "Fat Binaries"? Probably very few since, let's face it, few people over 30 or 35 are of any importance anyway! But once you have MIDI and project files that go back 10 years or more, this endless cycle of tiny "upgrades" that Apple, Intel and Microsoft are trying to force on consumers looks more and more distasteful.

There's at least one government agency that is running nearly 2000 desktops on Windows 2000. It does what they need, reliably, quickly and indestructibly so they have not gone to WinXP. They actually had the clout to make Microsoft fix most of the bugs in Win2K and release a 4th service pack even when MS said they were no longer going to support W2K.

So far, I still don't regret abandoning Macintosh for Windows back in '02 or '03.

Live 5 runs very well on my old Win2K machine. Almost certainly, any future upgrades to Live will not support Win2K. I was very happy with Live 4, but two or three features of 5 caused me to upgrade. The performance is mostly comparable to v4 on a 2GHz Pentium.

YMMV of course.

r.

bizack · Post by **bizack** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 9:43 pm

I guess I'm confused as to why so many people are basing their purchase on one piece of software. You guys must use your computer for something other than Live. What if Ableton does have an Intel-Mac version ready within the next week? You'll still have a computer that is incompatible with 99% of the current Macintosh software. And really, if Ableton are kind folks, the PPC and Intel version should be bundled as one as a Universal Binary. I mean, are the Abletons going to abandon any and all support for the PPC from this point on? That would be absurd. Or at the very least, offer a reduced priced version (like 50 bucks or less) for owners of Live 5. But it seems like all of this could be rolled into the next version (not 6, but 5.0.x) of Live (with the very necessary fix for firing clips on the _first_ beat).

rasputin wrote:The Intel-Mac thing does feel strongly of deja vu; I remember the grief that happened some years ago when Apple abandoned the Motorola 68K series for the PowerPCs. Anyone remember "Fat Binaries"? Probably very few since, let's face it, few people over 30 or 35 are of any importance anyway! But once you have MIDI and project files that go back 10 years or more, this endless cycle of tiny "upgrades" that Apple, Intel and Microsoft are trying to force on consumers looks more and more distasteful.

There's at least one government agency that is running nearly 2000 desktops on Windows 2000. It does what they need, reliably, quickly and indestructibly so they have not gone to WinXP. They actually had the clout to make Microsoft fix most of the bugs in Win2K and release a 4th service pack even when MS said they were no longer going to support W2K.

So far, I still don't regret abandoning Macintosh for Windows back in '02 or '03.

Live 5 runs very well on my old Win2K machine. Almost certainly, any future upgrades to Live will not support Win2K. I was very happy with Live 4, but two or three features of 5 caused me to upgrade. The performance is mostly comparable to v4 on a 2GHz Pentium.

YMMV of course.

r.

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 6:12 am

I for one have a desktop fro everything else. I only need more power and portability for one application. Unless I buy Maya in the immediate future. The student copy would restrict me there to only one computer, so yeah I am sort of taking this into consideration.

marky · Post by **marky** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 5:29 pm

Alex wrote:Hi bizacj,

I can not and want not to discuss technical details here.
Just this: The audio engine is sample based, therefore the Ableton effects are too. Also it is not this hard to write SSE, Altivec or whatever code for a certain effect or instrument. But the audio engine is more than that, just think of automation and envelopes in relation to the requirements for sample accuracy and low latencies.

regards,
/Alex

The mix buss for example (which is known to be a drag on resources since when re-wiring all outputs to Logic the idle CPU usage drops significantly) must make heavy use of floating point math - which is exactly where Altivec brings speedups. If the plugins are sample-based, then I'll bet you need some funky math at the VST/AU interfaces too ... which is where Altivec/SSE would come in handy again.

Given your original point, it's clear Altivec/SSE wouldn't be the silver bullet of performance, but it might have bought an extra 20 -30% CPU perfomance booster in the past. Every little helps!

hoffman2k · Post by **hoffman2k** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 5:42 pm

Ah screw it....

I'll save up for the 64-bit dual core.... (september)
Figuring we can base our mac purchases on Intel's roadmap now

Dual CPU support will be the thing to bitch about.
DID YOU HEAR ME ALEX?
Lazy bastard

LOFA · Post by **LOFA** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 8:03 pm

hoffman2k wrote:Ah screw it....

I'll save up for the 64-bit dual core.... (september)
Figuring we can base our mac purchases on Intel's roadmap now

Here! Here!

rasputin · Post by **rasputin** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 8:09 pm

<UsageCop>

Where!? Where!?

Don't mean to pick on you but it always does crack me up when people do that.

What you mean is "hear, hear".

</UsageCop>

radeon · Post by **radeon** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 10:37 pm

This only mean to Mac users Ableton will maybe take one year and a half before we see optimise codings in Live maybe?. ver6 will be made and add a news bunch of bugs without the fixing of the bugs in ver5. So we all play bug finder for a year in ver6 and we will use ver6 will be more cpu heavyness than 5. I say it could be two year before we fiinal see Live optimise code and as good as other daw softwares.
I dont care for new mac. I WISH LIVE COULD WORK GOOD NOW!
Be prepare for maybe frustrate time in future.?

radeon · Post by **radeon** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 10:46 pm

sadmac · Post by **sadmac** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:01 pm

I just got a power book g4 1.67 ghz and i read that the new power mac dual core is 4 timesa faster!!!
I am dissapointed... Is that true?
Do they have this big difference in using music software and especially ableton???

stew · Post by **stew** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:22 pm

sadmac wrote:I just got a power book g4 1.67 ghz and i read that the new power mac dual core is 4 timesa faster!!!

Well, it's four times faster at running multithreaded SPECInt benchmarks...if that rocks your world sure. If you want to run Live and Cubase and Max/MSP on it, forget about it for now, ask again in a year.

sadmac · Post by **sadmac** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 4:27 pm

stew wrote:
sadmac wrote:I just got a power book g4 1.67 ghz and i read that the new power mac dual core is 4 timesa faster!!!
Well, it's four times faster at running multithreaded SPECInt benchmarks...if that rocks your world sure. If you want to run Live and Cubase and Max/MSP on it, forget about it for now, ask again in a year.

Why , could you explain it to me more? Honestly i am about to sell it to buy the new one, although till the moment it workd perfect.

netchaiev · Post by **netchaiev** » Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:45 pm

Keep your G4 man, the intel ones are prototypes as of now. Plus no software coming in Universal binary so hold your fire. Somewhere in September might come a true super machine, making it worth the effort. I'm not trading mine as of now.
As Radeon said, I too wish that live would work about as well on Mac than on PC.
A UB version would be nice for all of us.
Btw, there's been some small test on the new machines(iMacs) w/ iLife 06. Well you get around 10 to 20% increase. Not much.
If anything, get a gig of ram and a fast HD (like 7200) and you'd be more than good until Rev. C!

new intel imac + live 5.03 tested

Apple Deja vu

Re: Apple Deja vu