Ableton Forum

I've been sequencing audio in Arrange view now as if I was to write a full on song like I would in Pro tools or Cubase sequencing audio on the grid with little Midi. Does anyone know why it takes so long to save a set as self contained? I 've got lots of stuff up there, kicks snares etc.... all sequenced on the grid in Arrange view, however the set with samples is no bigger than 10 megs which is fractions smaller than some of my pro tools sessions saved the same way. And although I've got the Arrange loaded wtih kicks and snares etc...repeated hundreds of times, they're normally hundreds of kicks / snares referencing the same file. Will I get better performance if all the audio files are loaded into RAM or should i keep it streaming off disk? Anyone using same/ similar techniques?

whats the speed of your hard drive? whats the speed of your hard drive controller?

well I'm running a 7200 RPM drives on a Powermac G5 1.6 Ghz single processor

well its definitely not your disk access then.

how "long" does it take you to save the set as self contained ?

and how long is the final .als - 5 minutes or so?

well it definitely takes about 30 - 45 seconds which seems a little bizarre. saving something like a pro tools session is instantaneous

Well the first time you save a set as self contained... not only is it saving the .als file which is relatively small, it is also Copying (not just moving) the samples used in the .als and making a new folder for them. This is alot of disk accessing, reading and writing to the hard drive. and it takes time.

After that you can just "save" (not self contained) which will be instantaneous, but if you add any sounds and save self contained again - it will only move those new sounds into the folder.

Don't feel too bad, its the nature of the beast.