Pro Mac Producer/ Performers wanting optimized Live code

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Dec 14, 2002 9:33 am

Hello! Ableton Live is an incredible product. I enjoy your demo product immensely. I look forward to using the 2.0 version on my ghz tibook (it's already been ordered). Using Reason 2.0 is amazing on my 333 iMac (I expect even more from my tibook). However, reading this board concerns me. I would appreciate some kind of response (if possible of course - I realize coding is a very difficult task - and you aren't a huge company - but a very gifted one!). Let me tell you... I use a ghz AMD right now (with XP Pro), and I'm dumping it to upgrade to the tibook. Yes, I'm sick of the cheap keyboard, the unispirational interface, and poor usb / firewire cards in this machine - not to mention the problems with midi and audio cards. I don't need the fastest machine around. That's right. I would rather have the most professional and inspirational peice of hardware & software instead. That means a lot more. A computer that feels like an instrument which influence's my creative spirit in a positive way. I choose Mac. They look better... they feel better. They respond the way a computer should respond. The GUI is the most usable and has the most potential (i.e. - upcoming firewire 2 - and upcoming mlan audio protocol). I would appreciate it if you (Ableton), as a company, could let Mac users know that you will be supporting Mac OSX Audio Units, and Alti Vec settings.
I hope everything is well there, and I wish you guys much luck in tuning up Version 2.0 of Live. I'm sure it will be a great product!
Cheers from Vancouver!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Dec 14, 2002 10:35 am

if you really read the post about this topic you'd know that they've responded already over and over and over.
I have an idea, lets give them such a headache that they stop supporting mac altogether.

NeutrixX · Post by **NeutrixX** » Sat Dec 14, 2002 6:45 pm

So I guess Mac users shouldn't line up and ask for Alti Vec or Audio Unit support? What's the matter with you? Have you ever heard of the "squeaky wheel gets the grease"? Do you know what that means?Have you used audio applications in OSX 10.2.2? Please wake up. Perhaps Ableton as a company will see that most musicians & producers are using tibooks & desktop g4s, and might change their minds. That's what this is about. The original poster wasn't "bugging" anyone on the board. Merely stating that better support of Apple hardware is needed. Maybe Ableton as a company needs to hear that over and over again to realize how passionate Mac users are - and how many of us are musicians, producers and performers. Maybe that will change their minds on how much more coding Live 2.0 will need for a great Mac release.
So, ya, this Mac user has every right to bring up a topic that you may consider "dead". That's what a "forum" is used for. Making your voice heard.

I'll second his request, as you may have guessed, I'm a Mac user as well.

macaddled · Post by **macaddled** » Sat Dec 14, 2002 9:42 pm

they've heard, they know, the horse is dead, they've responded, be patient, etc, etc, etc.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Dec 14, 2002 10:38 pm

That horse is dogfood. mmm dogfood.

One problem I recently came across the answer to deals with latency, and maybe someone here knows the explanation.

I run a tiBook. On internal audio card, I need to actually add 40ms latency compensation in the audio preferences section, in the "overall latency" box.

This is on top of in and out buffers.

Now the manual is actually incorrect here, kindly acknowleged by Ableton, when it says that mac users don't have to worry about this. Well, it actually seems that soundmanager and CoreAudio add 40ms of undocumented latency.

This means that without 40ms in the box, clips are out of sync, by 40ms late.

As a live performer i detest latency.

Who has any ideas about how we, or the Abletons could reduce this 40ms?
Where does it come from? I thought core audio supported latency of a few ms.?

What is this 40ms for?

-SongCarver

macaddled · Post by **macaddled** » Sat Dec 14, 2002 10:41 pm

wouldn't it be the driver for your card at fault? I have virtually no latency on my mac...

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Dec 14, 2002 10:42 pm

NeutrixX
maybe you didn't know it but most of ableton are mac users, they've said that they will do it when they can.
ps i'm a mac user too.

the8bitdeity · Post by **the8bitdeity** » Sun Dec 15, 2002 1:21 am

get the point folks?
It's been said, bitching about it won't change anything. [/img]

NeutrixX · Post by **NeutrixX** » Sun Dec 15, 2002 3:32 am

First off, nice cartoon. Second off, I'm a newbie to this forum - so a little patience would be in order - please. Yes, I now understand that I'm talking about topics previously discussed. I would like to remind all of you that there are many things missing from the Ableton site - mainly details of what type of optimizations are within the Live program. Why wouldn't Ableton mention on their website that they are "planning " to optimize for the G4 chip, Audio Units, etc - so as to avoid "newbies" like me repeating questions already asked 2 weeks ago in the forum. Yes I have to beat a dead horse here, in the forum - because they have kept obvious details off the front end of their website. Most people doing audio on Macs are wanting to hear about optimizations for OSX - the whole audio industry is waiting for it to mature - why would anyone leave these details off the website? No, I don't want to search over the entire forum looking for something I believe is important, and in fact, alot of forum talk is second hand info anyways. So now I have to search for who is the moderator from Ableton manning this board, and search for his or her response? Please. Have a little patience for newbies. Perhaps remind them not to start new threads for overused topics. In the meantime I'll try to remember to not "clutter up" the forum with such "overstated" topics, like our first guest did. Perhaps that advice should have been mentioned to him or her instead of just sniping back....
And by the way, mentioning something in a forum is far from "bitching about it". Take a look at the entire thread - there has been no "bitching" about anything, merely requests and questions.
Thank you.
I'm sure Ableton's Live 2.0 is going to be awesome!

dpel · Post by **dpel** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 12:01 am

NeutrixX wrote: Please wake up. Perhaps Ableton as a company will see that most musicians & producers are using tibooks & desktop g4s, and might change their minds.

with all due respect, stop hitting the snooze button and use your PC for now until Ableton is good and ready to properly address AltiVec.
at that point by your ti book or whatever. it'll be that much cheaper then.
dp

dpel · Post by **dpel** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 12:03 am

oh yeah,
and i'm a mac user.
dp

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 12:29 am

Neutrixx,

this is the info you're looking for, by Bernd from Ableton:

Bernd wrote:Hi, all.

First I have to say sorry for the slow beta. I forgot to remove some not needed code. So don't worry, the next beta will be at least as fast as 1.5 but probably a bit faster.

To your Altivec postings. It's not that we don't wanna do this. It's just not doable in some days. Like I wrote already on other places here in the forum we are planning to do bigger performance boosts in the next release. But before we can do good altivec optimisations we have to rewrite some parts of the code. This will already boost the performance on both platforms. We will see if we have enough time to do altivec optimisation also in this release, I cannot promise.

So please believe me. We all at ableton are with you. We also suffer on the slow performance on macs relativ to pcs. But again, it is just not a quick and easy job. It will take a while. So please give us a little more time to do all these things. At the end - I am pretty sure - you will be more then satisfied.

Kind regards,

Bernd.

I agree that this should be top priority for the very next release... even more so than features and other optimisations.
Regards,
format

ipimps 'n' ibitches · Post by **ipimps 'n' ibitches** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 10:08 am

there we have it again............

[/quote]...I choose Mac. They look better... they feel better. They respond the way a computer should respond. The GUI is the most usable and has the most potential (i.e. - upcoming firewire 2 - and upcoming mlan audio protocol)....

but does it work? now? NO!

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 10:17 am

ipimps,

there you go.... nail right on the head!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Dec 18, 2002 3:55 am

I appreciate all you guys replying. I will (of course) use my ghz AMD (which I recieved for free by the way) till the Tibook arrives. Now for a few thoughts just to clarify. I've been on faster systems than my iMac (333mhz). A ghz P4 system, a ghz AMD system... and yes, they functioned. But guess what? The hardware felt (to the touch) like crap. One word... cheap. In fact I've never seen a peecee set up that looked desirable, let alone feel good to the touch. They just don't feel like an instrument (I play 12 string as well as MC). But, surprise, the first time I touched a Tibook - it felt like an instrument - not just another laptop (not to mention 10.2 being so much more visually appealing than XP). So, to conclude our little "peecee vs. Mac" tit for tat, I'll wind up with this. Pro Tools dominates the Pro music recording industry. Mac dominates this market. Why? Did it take longer for Digidesign to optimize code for the Mac market? Guess what? Doesn't matter. Are Mac systems faster on the whole? Again - doesn't matter. In fact I'll go on record to say that when a company get's the Mac release right - it's most often a better release than the peecee release (digidesign, microshaft, adobe, etc...). When programs work well on the Mac, they feel better than they do on any given peecee (I don't care how fast when comparing the two - again missing the point - raw speed does not make up for the complete user experience). I've worked on a peecee and Mac, and that's my conclusion. No big deal, just my 2 cents. By the way, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing feels as good as the Tibook.
One more thing, would you question a musician buying a $1200 (Canadian made) Larivee 12 string acoustic guitar over a much cheaper ($400) (Korean made) Yamaha 12 string acoustic? Probably not.
There you go....
end of story.

Pro Mac Producer/ Performers wanting optimized Live code

Pro Mac Producer/ Performers wanting optimized Live code

Ok, but the squeaky wheel still gets the grease...

Re: Ok, but the squeaky wheel still gets the grease...

You guys don't get it....