Ableton Forum

Hello everyone !
I looked this up but didn't find any answer.

I have a live project with a friend, with 2 synced macbooks.
I am playing loops and samples, and my collegue plays loops and a lot of live parts on several synths.

The fact is, my Macbook Pro makes his job perfectly, but he has got a White Macbook and it crashes all the time.
So we tought about adding some RAM of course, but before doing so, we want to try to light our sessions up a little bit.

My question is, how do VST and AU plugs work in ableton live if you open them more than once ?
For example, on line n°1 he plays live with a sound coming from NI Massive.
On line n°2 he plays with Massive too, but with another sound.
On line n°3 too, with still another sound.
In order to do that, wa have created an instrument rack in one of his tracks with massive opened about 10 times, with a different setting each time. So he can make an automation in a blank clip that will change the position of the chain selector and the sound he wants to play is automatically set up.

Does that make the CPU and RAM work a lot ? Is there another way to do that, that would take less processing ?

I am sooooo sorry for my english, I try my best. Hope you will understand my problem.

nathaimu wrote:In order to do that, wa have created an instrument rack in one of his tracks with massive opened about 10 times, with a different setting each time

Massive can take, ahem, massive amounts of resources. Even sitting idle each patch is going to use something, and then of course CPU use will rise as notes are played and added. I have tracks that sit at 25-30% of available resources used (how Live's CPU meter reads, it doesn't read back how much total CPU is being used, as I recall) before I even press play

Is there any way he can use the stand alone version of Massive? Or just manage patches more effectively (which I can't really help on, I don't use Massive or play live with any synth.

**edit** Can you also make automation that turns off the unused instances, and turns them back on when needed? That'll free up resources that are being used by idle instances.

aaah thank you KrisM for you concern !!

so if he just turns his plugins off when he doesn't use them it would free up the ressources it uses when it's idle...
Well that's some idea already !

I actually thought if he opened Massive 10 times in one Live set, with in each Massive a different sound he chose, Live would open Massive just once, and change the settings of Massive himself.
I hadn't considered Live would open Massive 10 times !! Is that what happens ?
Why doesn't Live open Massive just once ? and just play with invisible MIDI and audio routing in order to play all the different sound settings ?

I would say he has got about 30 or 40 Synths "running idle" at all times. I mean, he has about 4 tracks for playing "live" (on his keyboards) with Instrument Racks, and in each Instrument Rack about 10 synths waiting to be played (counting several Massive, several Absynth, and so on...)
Plus 4 tracks with MIDI loops also playing in some VST or AU.

When we fire Live up, before pressing play, his CPU shows about 35% give or take. And while playing it shows like 80% CPU usage. But just for 5 seconds before the crash

I'm soooo sorry for all these questions, I hope it's OK to ask so much.
If someone has ideas, please share them. It's an electro project created to be played live, so our system must be very stable...

OK I just made the test.
On my own session, live is at 30% CPU before hitting play. While playing, it shows around 55% and is stable around that.
But when I turn my idle VST off, my CPU decreases for about 1% per plugin !!! Which is great considering the amount of plugs me and my collegue are using.

This could be a solution. But now I need to know if it is possible to automate the ON and OFF function of a VST or AU inside the automation of a clip. I didn't find it yet, and neither did I find the answer on the forum.
Can someone help ?



For Info, here is my system config :
Macbook Pro 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2G RAM 1067Mhz DDR3
Mac OS 10.5.8

Device on/off can be automated with midi or key or clip automation.

Have you considered Kore 2 as an alternative? Easy to switch between patches on a single plugin instance.

I don't really know much about Kore 2. What could I do with it ?

I didn't find a way to automate ON and OFF switching of my plugs in my clip automation. I can assign Macros to the switch and all, but the ON OFF function doesn't appear in my automation menu... or am I missing something ?
I'm not that bad at Live though... at least I didn't think so...

You automate the 'Device Activator' switch which is the top left switch in the device title bar. Open your midi clip in arrange view, click on the DA switch, and the red automation line pops up in your clip.

If you use NI plugins you should look at Kore 2 http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/ ... er/kore-2/ even if only the software only version.

Ah yes, that I could do. But the fact is, we play live, so we have nothing in the arrangement window. Nothing is time based, everything is improvised (more or less).

Is there a way to trigger the swich ON/OFF button of a VST (or AU) inside the clip automation in the Session window ?

This is getting complicated, because thinking of it, even if I can do that, it means he will have to swich it ON everytime he wants to use it, and swich it OFF everytime he stops playing with that synth, in order to free some CPU for the next one. I'm starting to think I will never be able to make it work on just 2 computers with Live. He will have to have antother one with a program like KORE (wich I checked ou by the way) just to play on his keyboards.

You could automate the switch with computer keys (use the key box top right) and set up say shift -q, w, e, r, t etc. which would be quick and easy to use. TBH Kore and Mainstage are better at this sort of thing than Live

I see.
What would it look like if I had a Live set, with on a track Kore 2 as VST or AU and inside Kore all the synths he needs to play live.
Would it be easier to manage for the CPU ?

Yes Kore loads as a VST, then inside that you would just load your patches, and kore would play them with its own built in version of the Massive sound engine. Changing patches in kore is quick, especially if they all share the same sound engine. You can create 'performances' in kore and switch between them using automation. I would guess that doing it this way would be roughly the same as having two instances of Massive plugins in Live.

You could of course just run kore stand-alone, it doesn't have to run inside Live, which would save more CPU.

You could download and try the free Kore player, which is pretty similar and would give you a better idea of how it works.

Thank you for your help, this is great advice.

I'll try it out tonight and see if it can help us.

Thanks again !