CPU usage super high on set

[chuskey]

I've got a song that I've been working on with my band and all of a sudden that set has started spiking the CPU and playback is a garbled mess. I even tried freezing every track and still it won't playback properly. Up until the other day the set worked just fine. I tried a couple of other sets which were much smaller in scale, and they played back but there was still above average CPU usage and I was getting clicks and pops.

My system is a 17" MBP w/4 gb ram, 320 gb HD, and 2.2 intel dual. I was running leopard when this first started and I upgraded to Snow Leopard last night, something I was planning on doing anyway. I didn't notice any change one way or the other after the upgrade.

On the set in question I'm running stock plugs and Line 6 Pod Farm. But like I said I am seeing issues in other sets as well so I think it's an overall problem and not an issue with just one set. I haven't made any system changes that I can recall since this problem started.

I haven't had the chance to do a ton of trouble shooting yet and perform stress tests with a brand new set to see where I start to lose functionality, but if anyone has any ideas I could try to shortcut to a solution it would be MUCH appreciated.

The only change I can think of in my system, and I don't know how this would effect the issue I'm having now, is that my battery went bad. It started swelling up and I've ordered a new one. So I'm running strictly on AC power right now. I don't see how in the world this would have an effect, but I thought I'd throw that out.

Also on an unrelated topic, what's the best/easiest/most efficient way to delete old sets to clear up memory. I've got a lot of song writing ideas and scraps that I can get rid of and I want to figure out the best way to do this cleanly in Live without leaving lost samples.

Thanks!

[NPC]

...obviously the problem could be everything, so i'm just supposing here..but i recall some time ago it did the same on my..*ibook* (ehm..) however the problem solved after repairing permissions on the hard disk. i dont think that is the problem here having you freshly installed snow leopard, but hey who knows...!

[chuskey]

Well I really can't believe it, but it was the battery. As soon as I put the new battery in everything went back to normal. Weird. I don't know why not having a battery in there would affect CPU usage, I can't even begin to speculate, but it did.

At Least it's working now.