cpu overload when using over 6 midi tracks. help!

[cway]

Everything is smooth when 5 midi track are playing at one however as soon as I bring the 6th in everythin crackles and lags and the cpu bar shoots up. Its happened to me on a number of projects and is really slowing me down.

My computer specs are :

Windows XP
Intel Pentium4 2.8ghz
1 gb of RAM

Should this be happening?

[nuxnamon]

1. you need more RAM. 1 GB is not adequate for music production.. it may only be midi tracks, but if your triggering samples like in KONTAKT or something, it's gonna choke up.. RAM is cheap nowadays.. 2 GB should be the minimum in my opinion..

[3phase]

shouldnt it be able to play more than 5 midi tracks with 1 gigabyre ram? my atari plays 64 miditracks with 1 mega byte ram...

[nuxnamon]

The minimum system requirements for Live 8 are as follows:

Macintosh:
Any G4 or faster (Intel Mac recommended)
1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended)
Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher
QuickTime 6.5 or higher
DVD-ROM drive

because of Live's real time non-linear workflow, the application I believe needs more RAM.. again, you have 6 midi tracks but what are they exactly triggering.. and I think your the first person to kinda compare Atari vs Ableton.. that's like Atari 2600 vs PS3..

[3phase]

And regarding midi live is the 2600?

[ark]

Are you playing those MIDI tracks through a softsynth? Some softsynths (including those that are part of Live, notably Tension and Collision) take a lot of cpu.

[nathannn]

more ram is not going to help much. it might help with disk errors after rendering and freezing a track, but its going to do little for running soft synths and effects.
1 gig is a low amount of ram but im betting if you added another gig you still would have problems.
your processor is a little out of date .. you really need a new computer.

if you are on an extreme budget you could check out new egg and get a dual core cpu, ram and a mother board for around $150.00

[nathannn]

im going to add that its not impossible to make music on a machine with these specs, its just very difficult and time consuming.
i used to make music on a 500mhz pc back in 2002 or 2003.
most of my time was spent waiting for a synth or sample to load, bouncing all tracks to a single track, and then adding more tracks again.
it is so much easier now days running a modern laptop with even average specs.
i just finished a track in two hours today.
a few years ago it would have taken me the whole weekend and i would have given up.