84 vs 828 vs Studio One2 benchmark (and beta feedback)

[golemus]

OK so here is results of my firsts tests with Live84beta. I wanted to test if the problems I consider the most serious are still there (long loading/unloading times, sluggishness in large projects, crashing and not-dying Live8.x.x.exe).

I made the exactly same project with 1. Live 8.4 x64 beta, 2. Live 8.2.8, 3. Studio One 2 x64. This project has 50 instances of Z3TA 2.1 synth, nothing else. Then I measure 1. DAW startup time, 2. project loading time, 3. DAW quitting time from project 4. memory consumption (private/commit), 5. track/plug deletion time in a full project (how long it takes a track/plug disappears from pressing delete button or clicking mouse). Here are results:

Live 8.2.8
startup 13s project load 25.3s DAW quit 11.5s, RAM 822/983MB

Live 8.4 x64
startup 6s, project load 24.6s, DAW quit 14.7s, RAM 1017/1079MB

Studio One 2 x64
startup 12s, project load 11s, DAW quit 1s, RAM 693/865MB


The positive news is that startup time is much faster than with 8.2.8. But thats it about the positive news currently. Loading time is still 2.2 times slower than with Studio One (and most other DAWs) and DAW quitting time 15 times slower. RAM consumption has increased a bit but I don't see it as a big problem.

But what definitely is a problem is that the GUI sluggishness is still there. When I delete a track from the project I have to wait 1s or even a bit more before it disappears and I can continue working. This multiplies into huge amount of time because almost whatever you create, delete or reorganize you have to always wait. In studio one deletion happens almost instantaneously and I guess other corresponding actions too.

And the not-dying Live.exe is still there. Sylenth-x64 crashed Live instantaneously and after that the only way I could restart live was that I had to boot my computer, that is totally unacceptable.







Summa summarum, to me it seems strongly that Live 8.4beta is still not a total rewrite as many had hoped and anticipated but it seems to have the exactly same and malfunctioning architecture as Live 8.2.8. (although obviously with new 64-bit components).

If this is only for testing the new components (and the new architecture Live version is behind corner), then I guess it is OK but I would really want some official Ableton statement that are the architectural problems going to be repaired in the near future. I could really care less about 64-bit support if the GUI is still sluggish as hell and a serious workflow bottleneck. I would even rather have a 32-bit solution with fixed and efficient architecture. And I am sure that is what most of the 64-bit 64-bit yelling people really want and need.

I just wish that they would not even start to integrate Max4Live, SeratoBridge or other ambitious add-ons before correcting the core architectural problems because otherwise it will most likely never happen.


Btw. I have Win7-64bit, Lenovo Thinkpad SL510, core2duo T6670 2.2ghz, 6GB RAM, samsung 830 256GB SSD, NI Traktor Audio 2 interface.

[Bernd]

Hi golemus,

in this forum we only want to focus on bugs which only appear in 8.4 Beta versions but not in the newest released earlier versions. I can understand your frustration, if your experience Live to be sluggish, but I need to ask you to post your improvement wishes to the 'Feature Wishlist' forum. Regarding the Sylenth plug-in, if you can reproduce this, please be so kind and create a new thread only with this topic. I will lock this thread now to make it easier for us to keep track of the open issues.

Regards, Bernd.