Ableton Forum

zambu wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 12, 2019 12:52 pm

Hello... I confirm that I said... I have really better performances since I switch from High performance mode to normal mode in the power settings!!!
It's incredible but thrue!! And I reduce my Live CPU between 20-50 %...
Have you ever tried this ??

That's weird but worth noticing!

[jur] wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 12, 2019 1:32 pm

You also have to understand that virtually every user is a unique case with his/her unique computer setup/specs/uses. Even with mac computers which are somehow "standardized" it's impossible to make sure everyone will have the same experience. So it's getting even more complicated with windows machines which are so differents from user to user.

Agreed.

Windows machines are getting to be worse than Apple with the whole new OS every other time you update mentality. At least with Apple you have to deal with their PITA once a year schedule... Microsoft have adopted Apple's throw the baby out with the bath water approach and now replaces the whole OS on some kind of random schedule generator timeline multiple times a year with Windows 10.

It's like a Kinder egg with broken shit being the surprise in the middle.

I'm not sure which is worse... naming them after random places to go on vacation a la Apple or the non-sequential numbers Microsoft pulls out of their ass

[jur] wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 12, 2019 1:32 pm

17 pages for about a few hundred thousands users...

How many customers using Live 10 are active users on this forum? The forum isn't mentioned anywhere on the ableton.com main site, even in the "Community" links section. Under the Community headline, there's only "Find Ableton User Groups", "Find Certified Training" and "Become a Certified Trainer" -- this forum isn't linked anywhere and not mentioned even in the Live manual. Even if there was a sizable number of Live 10 users active here, note that in normal customer forum conditions [of any product that has customer forums available] the users who air their problems on the forums are in the minority (vs. the size of the whole group experiencing any given problem). However, in this case I would hazard a guess the percentage is even lower as the forum is treated as a "relic" of sorts, and new customers aren't encouraged to join as they aren't even informed about its existence.

Go to the Board Index; scroll down and you'll see the total registered users count: 113339
And actually you can access the forum from... Live's Help menu. So you don't even need to search for it in the manual or the web or ableton.com website.
Not the best hideout!

[jur] wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:57 am

Go to the Board Index; scroll down and you'll see the total registered users count: 113339

I actually wrote my post after I checked that figure , as I've seen the number grow during the years, and I assume that contains all registered users since the dawn of time. Instead of being representative of how many active Ableton forum users are Live 10 customers. Even the 113,339 users is less than "a few hundred thousand users", of course, but I would estimate the relevant number of registered and active forum users significantly lower.

[jur] wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:57 am

And actually you can access the forum from... Live's Help menu. So you don't even need to search for it in the manual or the web or ableton.com website.

This I didn't know, and kudos for bringing the forum a bit more out in the open! It's very nice that it's mentioned somewhere, and now it's at least "hidden in plain sight", so to speak . Would be much better to have it actually show on the website as well, as that's the logical place (the aforementioned "Community" section and so on) to have it in.

More on topic: the explanation of there being so many different computer setups, compared to one another, is good to acknowledge, and as it's the reality of modern software development it also comes up pretty often. Still, sometimes it's also thrown around as a safety of sorts, a way to explain away general lack of performance even if subsequent performance improvement patches actually ended up targeting something entirely different than issues arising from system compatibility. So, while acknowledging that this describes real and everyday challenges in software development, note that performance issues do arise from simply doing stuff inefficiently as well . I know it's a cheap shot mentioning other DAWs and comparing to them, as not all measures are equal there, but personally I find it amazing how something like Reaper can be so much more performant than Live 10, compared head to head in similar tasks where applicable. Different computer setups nonwithstanding. Yada yada. But, horses for courses, there are always things that some particular DAW does that another one doesn't, and vice versa, and blabla, and it's sensible to choose based on the workflow, not just raw performance, etc. etc..

Yeah, that's only users registered to the forum, not the total license owners (Gerhard Behles mentioned something like 2 millions! during his speech at the 1st Loop event if I remember well).
The number of different setups is actually a pretty huge and highly serious deal (not even talking about users' mistakes or misunderstanding or just lack of information about how to use a computer), not an excuse at all, and devs are serious persons, and everyone at ableton really want Live to be THE shit. I'm not joking, and that's not a salesman speech either.
As the comparison with other DAWs, you've already sum it up, so...

[jur] wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 15, 2019 3:32 am

As the comparison with other DAWs, you've already sum it up, so...

Personally, I use both of the ones I mentioned, and wouldn't give up either of them for anything . Using Live for the non-linear creative side and sound design madness, and Reaper for the linear composing and recording muscle, with large banks of Kontakt etc. loaded. Live absolutely chokes under the load and item count, it's literally a no-go for large projects like that. And when it's time for all that out of the box electronic improvising and inspiration, it's Live's turn to shine every time. Best of both worlds.

Yep, I tried to underline how real the system diversity issue is. Good to acknowledge, as I said. It's also honest to point out that there are numerous other ways that can lead to generally poor performance than just those challenges, and often performance increases in software like this do indeed come from developments and design decisions and optimizations that target something in the program that is different than coping with system diversity.

Nokatus wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:37 am

I know it's a cheap shot mentioning other DAWs and comparing to them, as not all measures are equal there, but personally I find it amazing how something like Reaper can be so much more performant than Live 10, compared head to head in similar tasks where applicable.

Reaper is the most CPU efficient DAW out there, and Live is in the bottom category.
I don't think this is bad coding or anything to write home about anymore. On my system Live, Bitwig, Maschine, MPC2 all score about the same plug in count wise, Logic, DP10, and Reaper all score much higher and very close to each others numbers. I think if it was possible for Ableton to rewrite Live to be as CPU efficient as DP10 etc. we would have seen that when Bitwig came out with their version of a DAW like Live, and it was actually worse track count wise than Live at first.

Nokatus wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:37 am

I think if it was possible for Ableton to rewrite Live to be as CPU efficient as DP10 etc. we would have seen that when Bitwig came out with their version of a DAW like Live, and it was actually worse track count wise than Live at first.

Agreed. These really are real-time oriented software.
Just check how non "real-time" it is to start playback or solo/mute a track in Logic! It's totally mind bogging!

Yep, we are definitely on the same page here. Machiensworking, I gather that you are similarly a "best of both worlds" user like me, choosing the environment you wish to work in based on the task at hand

It's just like you and jur said, the design goals and the priorities of an efficient "traditional" linear recording/mixing/production environment enable something like Reaper to use many performance enhancing strategies that don't quite work in a live oriented DAW that needs to stay responsive in all of its constituent parts. Anticipative processing of effects/plugins is one biggie.

For the record, though, as Live has matured into a DAW that is very often used in studio/production contexts (and there it doesn't need to stay responsive in every way for actual live use in mind), I think it would be a good idea to consider a separate "production mode" that the user can enable in the options, with a clearly visible sign on the GUI that you have this mode enabled etc. In that mode, the top priority would be the production side of things, where you could implement things like anticipative processing under the hood, include options for dynamically switching off processing in select unused elements without having to fear that it potentially compromises a live situation, and so on; more lenient buffering in elements that aren't specifically armed for realtime playing at any particular moment, etc etc... In this sense, Ableton Live with a separate "production mode" alongside the main "live mode" would be great. Having worked in software projects myself, I do understand the type of workload we are talking about here, as it deals with such core functionality of everything that has made Live live ... Still, it's nice to dream, hehe.

Nokatus wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 16, 2019 6:54 pm

I think it would be a good idea to consider a separate "production mode" that the user can enable in the options, with a clearly visible sign on the GUI that you have this mode enabled etc.

That's one of my biggest wishes for the future.

pottering wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:52 am

In fact if Live's Meter is peaking, but the CPU measured in Activity Monitor outside Live is not, that is a sign the problem is not CPU usage.

Yeah exactly.

jlgrimes wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 12, 2019 12:51 am

PHY6 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 11, 2019 6:30 pm

17 pages of bad experiences....I’m not upgrading, that’s for sure !

It's not that bad. Ableton historically never been the most efficient DAW but it definitely isn't the least efficient one and with Freezing, you usually can fix most issues.

With an older PC though I might have a different opinion.

Lol, I bought a Macbook Pro so I wouldn't have to freeze anymore. Looks like Apple/Ableton not a good combo right now for some users.

Nokatus wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 16, 2019 6:54 pm

Yep, we are definitely on the same page here. Machiensworking, I gather that you are similarly a "best of both worlds" user like me, choosing the environment you wish to work in based on the task at hand

It's just like you and jur said, the design goals and the priorities of an efficient "traditional" linear recording/mixing/production environment enable something like Reaper to use many performance enhancing strategies that don't quite work in a live oriented DAW that needs to stay responsive in all of its constituent parts. Anticipative processing of effects/plugins is one biggie.

For the record, though, as Live has matured into a DAW that is very often used in studio/production contexts (and there it doesn't need to stay responsive in every way for actual live use in mind), I think it would be a good idea to consider a separate "production mode" that the user can enable in the options, with a clearly visible sign on the GUI that you have this mode enabled etc. In that mode, the top priority would be the production side of things, where you could implement things like anticipative processing under the hood, include options for dynamically switching off processing in select unused elements without having to fear that it potentially compromises a live situation, and so on; more lenient buffering in elements that aren't specifically armed for realtime playing at any particular moment, etc etc... In this sense, Ableton Live with a separate "production mode" alongside the main "live mode" would be great. Having worked in software projects myself, I do understand the type of workload we are talking about here, as it deals with such core functionality of everything that has made Live live ... Still, it's nice to dream, hehe.

There are some painful realities there though. Reaper is ridiculously well coded compared to Logic, DP or Live, Bitwig. It doesn't really glitch if instantiating a plug in while the sequence is running, even a quantized launching of parts of a song can be done. Logic or DP will glitch if adding a VST sometimes, which of course Live doesn't do. Some of the CPU inefficiency of Live, Bitwig, MPC, Maschine etc. to me seems to me to be about the way they address multi core machines more than how they respond to live performance tweaking etc. Jur mentioned Logic being wonky with solo and mute, I've never had DP show any difference from Live that way, it will glitch with instantiating a plug in, and it's CPU hit is significantly larger if tracks are record armed. I haven't tested it yet, but probably in the region CPU wise of Live if you force all operations in real time instead of DP's pre rendering. Then the question becomes why is it even necessary then? I get the impression that roughly 20 years ago when Live first came out it was the best solution at the time, and at this point the rewrite isn't anywhere near worth it.

I got a copy of Vienna Ensemble Pro a while back, it's not cheap, but it's a solution for sure. VEP is a mixer/server VST host that runs outside of Live, Logic etc. and you instantiate low CPU hit VST Vienna plug ins in your host that access the server. You can do this with two computers via ethernet or simply have VEP on the same computer. This is a solution, especially for things like Kontakt instances etc.

nm