Ableton Forum

Quit annoying, considered live's possibility to record unlimited tracks.

Well, the software can do it if your computer CPU and hard drive is up to it. It would certainly be adviseable for you to set the reverbs to medium or economy as first class mode is cpu hungry. Another way you could get your track count up would be to us an external scsi, or firewire drive for your audio although the gain may not be as much as you would like. If you do go for another drive make certain that its the fastest one you can get. Also you can (but I dont reccomend this unless you are happy with inferior quality) chang ethe global sampling rate lower than 44.1 whcih I think is the default. you can reduce the sample rate down to around 22.000khz (its lowest setting I think?) This will certainly give you a lot more track count. Also working with 16 bit files rather than 24. I always work with 24 44.1 files so reducing the bit rate or sampling rate (in particular) is not something I care to do. personally i beleive lower sampling rates are a step back and also IMO Dance music sounds bad enough as it is (I mean soncially not musically) and to encourage users to lower sampling rates is rather backward considering the fact that within a couple of years 96khz will be the standard. For using Live (Live) I suppose one could use a lowe sampling rate. But I say why would anyone want their Live music at a gig to sound wors ethan the DJ playing and in particular the CDJ. Dancey folks seem to get pawned off with "The type of music you do doesnt need to be as high quality as other genre's" I say Nonsense!. Try telling that to The Chemical Brothers, leftfield, Underworld, Moby, BT etc etc. All those people strive for excellent sound quality results. I juat cant see any of these people accepting second best. Well, I knwo that during the last Album, The chemicals used a serious amount of expensive outboard and the best DAW/Convertors they could lay their hands on. (They even used an original Fairchild Compressor whcih second hand would cost about $20,000). Quality makes a BIG difference to our music, all the little things Do Count.....Ok Im blabbing now .

Still, your machine is giving you roughly the same as what I get from a Dual gig Mac. So I'm thinking your not doing to badly. (granted I get a few more tracks and an extra effect or 2)

Altivec enhanced would in theory help Live run more efficiently on a Mac. At the moment Live is not Altivec enhanced.

Does the timestretching/audio capabilities of Live use a lot of CPU?. Well this is really a question for Ableton to answer. But it seems to me that there must be something pretty funky going on behind the scenes, because what it does to audio is really quite remarkable when you think about it. Perhaps Alex from Ableton would be good enough to let us know a bit more about this?.

(for Alex if you can answer) If I import files at 44.1, dont change the tempo. Does this use the same or less Cpu than if I did change the tempo?

However, if i load up say 20 tracks in Logic for eg. My Cpu is barely moving and I still have a fair amount of Disk I/O left. But Logic is only playing back audio and isnt doing anything to it and remember Live is manipulating the audio massively so that has to be taken in to consideration when comparing with other audio apps.


thats me done man! that went on a bit...sorry....

Anonymous wrote: (for Alex if you can answer) If I import files at 44.1, dont change the tempo. Does this use the same or less Cpu than if I did change the tempo?

In general, less. The effect will vary from zero to
substantial depending on:

--the size of the tempo change
--the warp mode
--the warp settings (grain size) and transposition
--warp markers

for example, the smaller the grain is, the more grains per
second must be played back, and the higher the cpu usage.
(n.b. the difference in cpu usage between having the tempo
exactly set at the loop's original tempo, and having it set within
a bpm or so of it, should be negligible.)

finally, of course how important this is, if at all, depends on your
setup. you can easily measure the difference in cpu consumption
between various scenarios similar to the one you use, by
constructing an appropriate live set.

cheers,
yon

yon / ableton

Thanks very much Yon for taking the time to reply. very Much appreciated and it now gives me a better understanding of whats going on.

Anonymous wrote:However, if i load up say 20 tracks in Logic for eg. My Cpu is barely moving and I still have a fair amount of Disk I/O left. But Logic is only playing back audio and isnt doing anything to it and remember Live is manipulating the audio massively so that has to be taken in to consideration when comparing with other audio apps.


thats me done man! that went on a bit...sorry....

Thanks for your comment.
So maybe I should use another app for multitrack recording and understand live as an instrument - hey, I could as well go back to 1.5 ?

I would have loved to use live for it, because it is so easy to use - but being limited to such a low number of possible tracks is not an option - reduction of audio quality isn't either (I did not invest like 4000 € to end up with a ridiculous poor sounding 4 track).
I do not need the warping mode for multitrack applications (applied to vocals they never sound right anyway)
Right now I feel a bit like beeing conned. I read a lot of Tests in magazines before buying my Powerbook 867. They all say it's better than PCs. So I clenched my teeth and spent the extra-mony believing I would get a superior system allowing me to work fluently and comfortable.

Please share your experience with me - which application (OS X) is suitable for recording multitrack audio (it should however be able to work with reason and possibly use live as an instrument) and how many tracks can I expect to lay down with my PB 867 (768 MB Ram)?

os wrote:

Alex Reynolds wrote:If Apple's next hardware line is Altivec-enhanced, then I want my tools there, too.

If the IBM 970 lives up to expectations and appears in new Macs, we could even be back to the heady days of Macs outperforming PCs, even without Altivec.

If it lives up to expectation, it will most likely get crushed by Prescott.

Novacosmic wrote:Today's Mac is a Lamborghini missing the horsepower. PCs are like muscle cars; ugly but fast. Good for drag racing, but if you want to cruise around in style (and pick up more chicks), then you need the designer model.

Well, that answers the question about loyalty: brainwashing combined with blindness.

In any case, I'd rather have the vastly superior feature set and performance of an x86 and pay less for it, and still get the style (Sony's a good example, as is Shuttle)... and be able to run the same software with better responsiveness, and the same stability.

Then I'd spend the money I'd save on the girlfriend rather on the slower, lower-value computer.

I just picked up a new Shuttle system and it is so unbelievably tiny and pleasant looking that it almost puts the macs to shame. Plus performance wise it can knock the socks off of a lot of systems

Anybody doing any ableton oriented case mods?

Please Ableton, can we have Altivec support? I think that is what this thread was about originally.
To all the PC vs. MAC people - do we need to argue? Of course I think my platform is better, that's why I invested in it. I get absolutely zero from bahing PC users, though. I hope it's all running beautifully, PC people!

Yeah it is a shame ableton is not optimized for Altivec. I'm not using Live until it is.

In that case I would like SSE2 optimization for P4, which is no slouch by the way, or I'm throwing my rattle out of the pram as well!! Oh, and Extended £d Now for the lappie!!

I tooo am not using or recommending LIVE until it has Altivec support.
nuf said
rR

It´s important to add this support for shure. We G4 Titanium dudes
are stuck!

Anonymous wrote:Look at Reason 2 on OS X!
And all you guys will see, how a software can perform on a Mac.
I don't change my plattform, because of 1! company can't write good code!

The guys from Ableton have to do their homework:
-AltiVec (It couldn't be so hard to implement this!)
-QuartzExtreme (The GUI is so badly slow!)

When Live will perform like Reason I'll bye it!

A cultist, clearly; you blame Ableton for Apple's poor choice in processors and crappy chipset... typical.

Do you even know what altivec is? Obviously not, as you claim that it can't be hard to implement it.

The slow GUI is as much Apple's problem as anyone else's. Again, it's only cultism to assume that it's Ableton's fault, just because it's not as quick as some other software... one must also consider what Live is doing behind the scenes...

... but then you're a mac user. Obviously thinking isn't your strong suit, or you wouldn't be using a mac and complaining about performance. You'd either upgrade to x86 or just live with it.