Ableton Forum

Ok, there have been threads on this topic before, but as I was in the middle of a very CPU heavy project and remembered to try this now -- it gave so good results I really felt like writing a short heads-up. My workstation is i7-3770K based, running Windows 7 64-bit, and your mileage can of course vary.

In short, disabling the power saving mechanic of parking CPU cores can give better performance in a multi-core audio environment. The settings aren't usually visible in the power profile settings, but there is a convenient little utility called ParkControl to do it. It isn't even a constantly memory resident thing, just makes the appropriate changes to the power profile to turn this on/off.

I tested this with a project running several Bazilles and Divas (multi-core mode), on a pro system with a buffer of 64 samples and very low DPC latency throughout. I pushed it to a point where it was glitching heavily just because of the CPU load. Then I disabled core parking, and just like that it completely stopped glitching.



These are the settings to try: completely disabling the parking. The number "100" indicates the percentage of cores kept running at all times, i.e. 100% of cores will be running and won't be parked.

Seriously, try it out! Needless to say, AT YOUR OWN RISK , but it worked like a charm here.

http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

Just wanted to add my 2 cents for those debating the effectiveness of core parking. I was struggling with getting my new 4th gen I7 2.2GHZ 8 core PC to run Ableton 9.1.6 on Windows 7 pro without pops and clicks. I initially addressed DPC latency and performed a seemingly endless amount of optimizations and tweaks to no avail.

Once I downloaded the core parking app and ran it my issue dissapeared. I am now seeing way better CPU efficiency, and most importantly, I no longer experience any pops or clicks when running a 128 sample buffer. Clicking around the session view used to cause stutters/static that no longer exist as well.

I can confirm that disabling core parking made a HUGE difference in my case. I suspect that those who didn't enjoy a performance boost must have another bottleneck somewhere else in their system/set-up. Reportedly, there are some minor risks associated with disabling core parking but I have experienced zero issues myself and am excited that I can finally use my new PC to the fullest.

Hope this helps those on the fence!

Is there an equivalent to this procedure on Mac? I could really use some help getting my performance rig to stop stuttering.

I did a search but Apple apparently stopped offering their tool "CPUpalette" which you could allegedly use to accomplish this. Anyone have any suggestions?

Afaik there is no such tool for mac.
But you can go the Hackintosh way and overclock/cpu tweak away.