Need Help With a Hardcore Live Problem!

Piett · Post by **Piett** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 3:48 am

Hi all,
I have recently incountered a quite serious problem in Live and I am searching for some help/advice/recomendations if anyone would be so gratious.

First some information on my setup. I currently have 3 computers running Ableton 6.10, A PC quad core workstation, a 17" iMac core duo 1.82ghz 1.5gb ram and a new Macbook core 2 duo 2.2ghz 1.5gb ram.
I am only encountering the issue on the two Mac so i will focus on these.

They are both running Leopard 10.5.1 and they both use a Firewire 410 by M-Audio to output 4 individual stereo chanels into a hardware mixer. The iMac is used for work at home and the Macbook for performing.
The 410 is having issues with Leopard, i have te reset it in the M-Audio control panel everytime I restart the computer or I get no audio, after that it seems to work fine, I dont think this is the problem.

The nature of the problem is this, my Live set has gotten so big, something like 1400 songs and samples that I keep loaded, it almost fills the hard drive entirely. This has never caused a problem before, in Tiger but since the switch I have done quite abit more work to the set so I dont think its that. Befor I could have all 4 chanels going with effects happening (controled by a UC-33e) with no lag, running at around 15% cpu and it never really moved from there. Now when I press play on a new chanel, huge lag, clicks, pops, the whole 9.

This leads me to think, it could be a issue with Leopard, it could be an issue with not having enough space of the drive or the live set beeing too big, it could be that my hardware is not powerfull enough to run such a big set and it could be an issue with the Firewire 410 and Leopard.

I dont think its a hardware issue as im getting the same results with both computers and the Macbook is faster.

This is the advice I am seeking, should I add more ram and bring it up to 2 gigs, should I upgrade to Live 7, should I reload Tiger, should I get an external 7200rpm drive, should I just wait for the new M-Audio firewire drivers, or a combination of all of these? : p

Any help on this problem would be much appreciated as it has been driving me nuts for weeks now, my last gig had to be done in master out with no effects, wich I hate.
If you need any more info, please ask and I will be happy to post it.
Cheers!

-Julius-

UKRuss · Post by **UKRuss** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:27 am

I think the obvious answer is to have your songs on an external drive and just drag them into the set when you need them.

You can't surely play 1400 songs in one night...

ava · Post by **ava** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:34 am

Lack of hd space does not effect performance.
Your memory might be a problem with 1400 tracks, geting some more should help.

Not a mac user so cant help no more...

3dot... · Post by **3dot...** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:46 pm

whatever you do... don't spend money on L7,,, until you've demoed the heck out of it...
until it's running smooth...

3dot... · Post by **3dot...** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 12:54 pm

why not just save the set and drag from its channels to a new one......
instead of pre loading 1400 audio files...
that's got to be one heavy heavy set..

doc holiday · Post by **doc holiday** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:14 pm

ava wrote:Lack of hd space does not effect performance.
Your memory might be a problem with 1400 tracks, geting some more should help.

Not a mac user so cant help no more...

+1 open activity monitor and see how much free ram you have

lack of HD can effect performance if the thing is totally ful

Piett · Post by **Piett** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:30 am

I tried the Activity Monitor and I really didint have much left, like 20-30 MBs free, but like 200 MBs inactive, so I dont know what that means.
Im starting to think about re organising this thing, which will be a job and a half.
The way I have my live set setup is in order that the tracks/samples have been imported into Live, dating back from 3 years now. I import about 30-40 tunes at a time, and they are color coded that way.

I would be greatfull if anyone could give me some ideas on how to revamp this thing.

3dot. - Could you please elaborate, im not sure what you mean by this.

blank · Post by **blank** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:55 am

On xp, performance are affected when the drive goes under 15_17% disk space.

Dunno if it's os related but I don't think so.

-B

Piett · Post by **Piett** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 3:13 am

I tried limiting the cash size and now the set cashes while loading, gonna try deleating the cash and reload the set and see what happens.
As for the organisation issue, does enyone have any thoughts?