Ableton Forum

I just recently recorded a rock band in Live using a lot of multi-mic setups and doing 2-3 takes for most parts for comping. The track count added up in a hurry even with somewhat bare bones instrumentation, so I started getting frequent HDD overload errors when it came time to edit. I have a dual drive system with SSD for the system drive and sample library and a 1-TB 5400-RPM HDD for projects (including recorded samples).

I don't want to put all these samples into RAM mode, but I would love to be able to load all the large recorded samples into the Ableton Cache folder I have set up on the SSD. It would be great if there were a an option to do this in the preferences for us 2-disk SSD/HDD system users.

For now, I'll have to work on the comping for basically one instrument at a time and constantly move tracks in and out of the project if I keep my normal file structure. I guess Option B of moving the entire project to the SSD temporarily is ok, but it would be great if Live could do that without my intervention.

I'm recording a rock band as well, and the sessions have added up to 127+ tracks on many of the songs. (14 tracks for each performance on drums, four tracks for each performance on bass, two guitarists with multiple overdubs 5 tracks each take, vox and percussion layers. Yes those tracks add up fast)

I definitely had to boost up my buffer size into the four hundreds to get rid of pops, clicks and drop outs.

I'm running a MacBook pro 17" with 8g ram 1tb internal drive for just software and operating system, eSata external 1tb drive for recording, and 1tb eSata drive for any samples. None of these drives are SSD.

I definitely use compression and eq on all channels (more effects on some) and about 10 aux sends. My workflow has been to freeze tracks, and save dated versions of sessions, and as I progress, bounce down to stems and deactivate the source tracks. Then as I get closer to mix, I finalize eq and effects on each instrument, update the stems and delete the source tracks in the new session. This way if I ever need to go back to re-work an instrument I can copy from an older session.

I would definitely be interested in hearing what other peoples workflows are for large track count sessions, and how they get the most out of their machines to handle the high demands of recording real instruments.