Ableton stonewall on CPU issue

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 1:18 pm

Ableton continue to ignore all support requests from users in relation to the CPU-hungry problems of Live 4 while hoovering up awards from magazines they fund through advertising.

Those guys have changed since the good old days of Live 2/3

dirtystudios · Post by **dirtystudios** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 1:37 pm

You're retarded, it's audio software that does real-time time-stretching, you're going to hit the wall at some point. Ableton already gave us a huge improvement in CPU efficiency with version 4, so I don't blame them for not "addressing your issue". What do you expect from them? They can't work miracles. If you need more performance from your machine, guess what? You need to get a better machine.

k

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 2:03 pm

Actually, fuck you, you retard, I am the one with a string of unanswered support requests and if you take your head out of your ass for ten minutes and read these forums you will see that many others share my concerns. While you are breathing fresh air rather than your own vile stench please re-read my post and you will see that my reference is to Live 4, Live 3 will actually run the same stuff at lower CPU rates!

And another thing you retard, retards the world over don't like being called retards, you retard, so leave it alone.

basetwo · Post by **basetwo** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 2:40 pm

Macrostructure wrote:Actually, fuck you, you retard, I am the one with a string of unanswered support requests and if you take your head out of your ass for ten minutes and read these forums you will see that many others share my concerns. While you are breathing fresh air rather than your own vile stench please re-read my post and you will see that my reference is to Live 4, Live 3 will actually run the same stuff at lower CPU rates!

And another thing you retard, retards the world over don't like being called retards, you retard, so leave it alone.

If this is how you communicate to Ableton, then I can see why you don't get much response.

Not everyone has these issues, so it might be something more specific to your setup.

Many people don't seem to understand how many different variables are in play when dealing with software issues. Especially ones regarding performance.

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 2:45 pm

No, this is how I communicate with people who do not read posts properly then respond in a stupid manner with references that are offensive to disabled people.

by-pass · Post by **by-pass** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 3:29 pm

Hi ,

after many days and night to found a solution about cpu issues... I can have a solution that work for me.....read the handbook about latency configuration, pass fews hours( days for me) to tests with your sound card with the differents uses : Live act (play loops) , composition (Virtual instruments), etc...
When you have your config, you dont have anymore cpu probs with live.....

But ( message for Abletons Crew) , develop one tool for automatically calcul the latency or simplifie the way for have one good config

Cheers

fil

supster · Post by **supster** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 4:36 pm

[sarcasm]Sometime beating someone with a stick, *as well* as yelling at them, works for me.[/sarcasm]

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 4:51 pm

I thought I was quite restrained, maybe I should drink less coffee...

madlab · Post by **madlab** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 5:19 pm

Peace on Earth guys, we're just talking about a piece of code, and that's not DNA !!!!
One can't deny that Live is pretty greedy as far as virtual instruments are concerned. I use DP, Live, Cubase SE and Tracktion and there's a big difference between DP / Live and the two others DAW. But there were big improvements in the CPU usage with audio tracks (on mac, don't know about PCs). So I hope it will be the same for virtual instruments in the next future.

Robert Henke · Post by **Robert Henke** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 10:51 am

Hi Macrostructure,

no, we are not ignoring your wishes. But you have to realise that we have to work on a lot of issues. People want features, and they want these features to work better then in our competitors products because this is why the use ours. They also want the best possible sound quality, which usually also leads to higher CPU usage. We are constantly trying to improve the product, and CPU optimisation is _allways_ on our list, but if this would be the only thing we work on, we would not have the chance to do it for long, since we would not survive on this market.

You may want to create a song in Live 2, do some copy paste stuff in the arranger, add effects and then you open the same set in Live 4 and work with it. You will see that there is a significant improvement here. And tons of new features.

Best, Robert

Ableton

forge · Post by **forge** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 11:17 am

have to say dirty studios is right though - just upgrade your machine, I'm managing very well with an athlon 2200+ Laptop with 1gb ram and NI Komlpete and Waves 5 - they are pretty hungry plug-ins at the best of times and I use loads of them plus audio clips

Just get used to resampling and rendering tracks - it gives you more options anyway - you can do some very cool stuff indeed turning your midi into audio then tweaking the clip parameters and messing with warp markers - you just have to decide which ones you want to keep as midi for midi tweakability (but even then, just record the whole midi track as audio and if you set all your clips to ram, 1GB ram will get you a long way, save the hard drive and CPU.

A good DJ will spend alot of time in his studio mixing records and chossing the best mixes etc - that's preparation time - you have to do the same with live but it's rendering and resampling.

Remember it's a trade off for having it real time!

studiologic · Post by **studiologic** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 3:32 pm

Rob, you guys are doing a great job there ableton but i think one important feature live should have is a freeze funtions. there are vsti coming out every hour free ones, cheap ones and top of the line ones. personally i am a vsti junky and like to use most of vsti in my music, so a freeze function in my opinion is very important. point is that i am not the only vsti junky that uses live. all we would like to have is a freeze function and i/we will be set.

p.s. i know you guys are working on it. thank you.

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Sun Jan 09, 2005 5:36 pm

Robert Henke wrote:Hi Macrostructure,

no, we are not ignoring your wishes. But you have to realise that we have to work on a lot of issues. People want features, and they want these features to work better then in our competitors products because this is why the use ours. They also want the best possible sound quality, which usually also leads to higher CPU usage. We are constantly trying to improve the product, and CPU optimisation is _allways_ on our list, but if this would be the only thing we work on, we would not have the chance to do it for long, since we would not survive on this market.

You may want to create a song in Live 2, do some copy paste stuff in the arranger, add effects and then you open the same set in Live 4 and work with it. You will see that there is a significant improvement here. And tons of new features.

Best, Robert

Ableton

Hi Robert

Thanks for taking the time to reply to this thread. It's a shame I had to start such an high profile thread to get a response.

The core issue CPU issue as I see it is that the actual CPU usage of Live as shown in Task Manager is typically 75-90% higher than shown by Live's on board "audio-processing only" meter. I know why Live uses more cycles than are shown by the on board meter, but I think the amount is crazy. We are talking +30% over 40% for instance, while Live 3 would use say +2% over 40%. This behaviour is confirmed by many other users and it causes CPU overload at a relatively low audio processing rate, rates that Live 3 would have dealt with.
I am completely au-fait with the concept of bouncing tracks down and rendering to audio as methods of reducing CPU load and I have to emply them extensively. I do not accept that I should to buy a machine of higher spec than 2.2ghz/512mb to run 6 tracks of audio and 2 of midi, no VSTis and a couple of well respected VST effects.

I have explained this behaviour to your support staff on many occasions using the login of my band 'nub' but have never received a useful response and eventually no response at all. This is extremely frustrating and is not at all in-line with Ableton's image as a customer-conscious brand with a loyal and appreciative user base and knowledgeable support staff. In fairness I have to say that in all other matters your staff have always been excellent.

The issue of CPU usage remains.

ms

forge · Post by **forge** » Sun Jan 09, 2005 6:38 pm

Macrostructure wrote: I do not accept that I should to buy a machine of higher spec than 2.2ghz/512mb to run 6 tracks of audio and 2 of midi, no VSTis and a couple of well respected VST effects.

that is odd - given your specs are similar to mine and I get much more than you described - I have 1GB ram though and wonder if this would help at all?

Even still, it sounds like somehting is wrong because I get ALOT more than you mentioned from an athlon 2200+

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Sun Jan 09, 2005 8:16 pm

Are you using Windows? Perhaps you could open task manager and have a look at what % cpu Live is consuming in total and compare it to the "on board" cpu usage which measures audio processing only. It doesn't matter what scale of song you open, but something using 20%+ on the "on board" meter. What do you see? I would see an overall value 75-90% higher than the audio-only value, many others agree.

ms

Ableton stonewall on CPU issue

Ableton have sold out the users - expect a buy out soon!

Ableton stonewall on CPU issue