Live 8.34 is sluggish... Does it need to be?

[SLEEarts]

Hello,

I'm working on a project with only 2 audio tracks (24/96) in the arrange view feeding two loopers. There are a few vst plugins; nothing too heavy. What this project does have is a ton of audio edits: warping, fades, cutting between takes, etc. This will end up being an album length piece of music.

For the first 15 minutes of the project, Live was in great shape. Then one day it hit the wall (about 20 minutes in) and began to run very slow. This makes it difficult to make edits like warping or drawing a crossfade.

This decrease in performance came with a huge jump in the size of my als file. During the first month of work on the project, the als files ranged between 60k and 350 k. Then one day it was 12 mb.

In my Win 7 performance monitor, I see that Live is using about 750 mb of RAM, well below the 4 gig limit. The cpu meter is around 25% when playing back, and less than 5% when stopped and editing.

I tried a fast USB stick with readyboost, but almost no data is being written to or being read from the drive.

My machine is a 64 bit win 7 desktop with 6 gigs of RAM and a dual core pentium class processor, with an Echo Layla PCI card using an ASIO driver. It's never had trouble with complex live sets before.

Any ideas why this project hit the wall when RAM and CPU usage is so modest? Any ideas how to fix it?

Thanks,

Matt

[Zygi]

most of performance problems with computers, especially the windows ones, begin with a slow HDD. Or HDD at all. Readyboost... Does anyone actually believe in this?

try consolidating some clips, resampling or RAM clip mode.

[KrisM]

Honestly I could see some problems with Live trying to read .ald files and audio at the same time. If they're spread out all over the place the head has to seek back and forth whenever it needs information on warps, fades, etc.

Though I would expect .ald files to be kept in RAM? So maybe I'm talking out of my ass

Does Live stream large audio files from disk or load them into RAM, too? The more I type, the less convinced I am that I am right

But brainstorming is fun anyway

I will say that Readyboost is in theory faster than a Paging File on a HDD, but the varying quality of flash memory in USB sticks and SD cards could pretty much negate this or make things worse. But that's a little OT since the OP says they aren't noticing it even being used.

[SLEEarts]

Thanks for the responses... RAM clip mode isn't feasible for the entire project... There's going to be 2 tracks of 24/96 audio for 40-60 minutes once everything is in place. Besides, the system performance issues continue while the transport is stopped. I am streaming from an external drive over USB2, so I'll move to an internal SATA drive and see if that helps at all. Still, the streaming was great for the first 15 minutes and there was that big increase in the size of the .als file that coincided with the decrease in performance.

I made sure to use the fastest USB stick on the market for readyboost, but as you pointed out, it looks like it's not being used much, so I doubt that's the issue.

I'll also load up as many clips into RAM as possible and see if that helps. I'll report back later today.

Thanks for the help,

Matt

[re8]

... There's going to be 2 tracks of 24/96 audio for 40-60 minutes once everything is in place. ...I am streaming from an external drive over USB2, so I'll move to an internal SATA drive and see if that helps at all.

Sounds like you're mastering an entire show/DJ mix. Yea, you're going to hit the HD hard with that huge file. An internal 7200RPM drive (or external 7200RPM over USB3/FireWire) that has been defraged should have no problem. But high-res audio over USB2 5400RPM drive, might have issues there.

BTW, it would be best to use a separate drive, or atleast split it into programs & data partitons for audio & video work.

There should be a FAQ somewhere for this kind of stuff...

[SLEEarts]

... There's going to be 2 tracks of 24/96 audio for 40-60 minutes once everything is in place. ...I am streaming from an external drive over USB2, so I'll move to an internal SATA drive and see if that helps at all.

Sounds like you're mastering an entire show/DJ mix. Yea, you're going to hit the HD hard with that huge file. An internal 7200RPM drive (or external 7200RPM over USB3/FireWire) that has been defraged should have no problem. But high-res audio over USB2 5400RPM drive, might have issues there.

BTW, it would be best to use a separate drive, or atleast split it into programs & data partitons for audio & video work.

There should be a FAQ somewhere for this kind of stuff...

Not exactly, I'm building a stream of audio to feed a looper... Creating a repetitive trance thing.

Also, one thing I should have mentioned is that playback is not a problem. The 7200 RPM drive I'm using over USB2 performs just fine for the playback. The performance degradation is only in my ability to execute edits like warping, fades, etc. This is even a problem when playback is stopped.

[madlab]

I would rather think about memory leak from the looper.

[SLEEarts]

I would rather think about memory leak from the looper.

Wouldn't the system performance monitor catch that? I haven't observed Live consuming more than 1 gig of memory yet, and the monitor always reports plenty of free memory.

[Zygi]

Tried the x64 beta?

[SLEEarts]

Tried the x64 beta?

No, I usually stay away from beta releases. Maybe this is a situation where it would be worth trying it out. I haven't followed this beta release at all, is it open?

[re8]

Also, one thing I should have mentioned is that playback is not a problem. The 7200 RPM drive I'm using over USB2 performs just fine for the playback. The performance degradation is only in my ability to execute edits like warping, fades, etc. This is even a problem when playback is stopped.

I assume the "working" directory for Ableton (where the temp files are kept) is also on your external HD? If so, the perhaps if you can somehow change the temp directory to your local HD, can help... but if you're re-writing the .ALS file then yea, I would move it all to local.

Personally, I would do all editing on a local drive, then back up on the external (even not keep it connected all the time). Partly why I payed extra $$$ for a laptop with 2 drive bays.

Beta is open (see pinned post above).