Ableton Forum

Picture says it all:

Just last night mine jumped to 355% and crashed .... REASON has never done this.

From what I've read on here, the architecture of Ableton Live that allows real time clip launching, tweaking, etc is what makes it so hard on the cpu.

I agree though. My biggest "feature" request for Live is increased efficiency.

Maybe Photoshop, Firefox + Flash player, Chrome are using a few resources?

I'm betting by the scrollbar you maybe have a bunch of other crap running too?

Any VSTs running in Live?
a picture says a thousand words, but explaining how you're using Live it does not!

lots of things make it spike...and lots of ways to work around the problem

need to say exactly what you were doing and there is probably a fix

simmerdown wrote:lots of things make it spike...and lots of ways to work around the problem

need to say exactly what you were doing and there is probably a fix

I've contacted Ableton support, though after some research, I'm fairly sure Maschine is the problem. I froze Maschine and my CPU usage dropped like 60%. I found a thread on NI's website containing many complaints of Maschine's CPU usage. Luckily freezing tracks is so easy.

I'm gonna contact NI about this. At the moment, all's good because I can freeze Maschine, but what if I get into live performances..?

88 processes...!!!

WoW !!! I have reduced mine to 15 when idle.
You have way too much processes going on.
Many software uses up your RAM and CPU power.
Try to eliminate them....

You must have running anti-virus too.
I use only Kaspersky, because it can be shut down totally
and leaves no hidden processes in the background.


And about the CPU usage: Live is hungry, especially with VST-plugins.
Reason can't be compared in this way with any VST-based DAW.
Reason has it's own closed system and low resources use.

I use now StudiOne for main work with VST instruments and effects and it uses half CPU then Live.
Therefor you are right to complain at some point.
Live is not efficient !!!

man your computer is sick, reinstall windows ASAP, there is WAYYYY too many processes running
and before saying ableton uses too much, do a restart and dont start crap like flash and chrome

As stated before, I froze Maschine and it dropped like 60%. Running on 256 samples buffer size, I get less than 30% CPU usage (and this is with many plugins). My computer is fine. As for all the processes, I am using JBridge so I can use my 32-bit plugins in Live's 64-bit BETA. JBridge opens up auxhost processes.

What I'm not understanding is that task manager says CPU usage at 40%, when Live says it's over 90%.

However, like I stated before, it's probably Maschines fault. Freezing Maschine works a miracle.

Remember that the CPU meter in Live is not actually showing the CPU usage for the computer overall - it's a relative measure of the amount of processing resources require to be playing your current set in realtime.

If you were to raise your buffer to 2048+ samples, the CPU meter would likely go down pretty significantly (at the expense of latency obviously)

Also, close out all the other stuff you're running, specifically Photoshop and Firefox and any other utilities that are not actively using.

I assume you have Flash player and Firefox open because you're watching a tutorial. If you're just watching stuff on Netflix or whatever, close that out to free up resources. Flash video is a huge burden on CPU resources

Also if you have any synths with long release times, you could try temporarily shortening them and turning them back up when you export (or just freeze if you are not actively editing the sounds)

man your computer is sick, reinstall windows ASAP,

This is assuming a lot. The auxhost entries are Jbridge processes for using 32-bit plugins, and the other stuff is all supposed to be there (although not a great idea to be doing it while working in Live if you're running into CPU issues)

You might want to try using Google Chrome rather than Firefox - I find it tends to have a lighter footprint on the CPU/RAM than Mozilla browsers

agent314 wrote:

man your computer is sick, reinstall windows ASAP,

This is assuming a lot. The auxhost entries are Jbridge processes for using 32-bit plugins, and the other stuff is all supposed to be there (although not a great idea to be doing it while working in Live if you're running into CPU issues)

You might want to try using Google Chrome rather than Firefox - I find it tends to have a lighter footprint on the CPU/RAM than Mozilla browsers

he does, he has chrome and firefox 32 running, plus flash, and 75 other processes (my windows machines while running live only had like 22 total processes running so i think 88 is an awful lot

so i think 88 is an awful lot

But if there's an auxhost entry for every VST and he's got 12 tracks with 2 VSTs a piece, that's 24 right there

Didn't see that he had Chrome running too - there's no reason to have both browsers going at once

If you don't play any midi keyboard, then 256 buffer is too small
and cause you heavy process usage too !

Use 1024 or 2048 for start or even 4096!
You have a little late starting when you press play, but then you have a nice working project.
Small buffer size is needed only when you play live.

I am sure you can bring down the CPU usage to half at least with bigger buffer size...

As for the processes, try this site: http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/

There you get info's about services running on your system
and how to tweak them or turn off the ones you don't need.
I reduced my resources to 15 in total when my XP is idle doing nothing,
and uses 140MB RAM only at this stage.
That leaves you many RAM for programs and processes with your music and plugins in Live.

Turning off printers and other services you don't need frees your processor and RAM!
On this site you'll get detailed descriptions of each service and if you really need it.

Happy tweaking...