Ableton Forum

Hi

I have just installed my boxed copy of Live 7 onto my brand new HP laptop. It's quite a beast (12GB RAM, i7 processor, 1TB hard drive) I think, but loads of stuff seems to be causing me a problem. Which is ruining my enthusiasm for my new toy.

The main issue is plugins. Loads just don't seem to appear inside Live. They are physically in the folders, and I am sure they flash past my eyes when Ableton scanned the folders, but they are not appearing in the list.

I have been reading about the 32/64bit issue with plugins. My laptop is 64bit, but I am sure that Live 7 is 32 bit? Maybe someone can clear that up for me at first.

If that's the case, then my 32bit plugins that were fine on my old laptop that I am copying from should also work? The OS being 64bit shouldn't matter should it?

The reason I am unsure is that my WAVES bundle seemed to install and scan OK, but only SOME of the effects show up inside Live. That is odd right?

And another effect, Replicant, installed fine, but didn't show up inside Live until I moved it to it's own folder then rescanned. I did it as an experiment, and it worked, but I don't know why.

Anything else I can try to troubleshoot would be much appreciated.

Thanks a lot

Live 7 was 32 bit only, I think it went 64 bit at version L8.1

32 bit plugins in a 32bit DAW, on a 64bit OS, should be totally fine. I have a 32 bit version of Live installed on win 7 x64, and it works fine. I don't use it much, but it works.

Thanks for the reply.

It is odd, I assumed my setup would be fine as you say, but I am just having so much trouble. Perhaps its a windows 8 thing? Not sure where to start.

32/64 bit OS does not really matter - overall!

I'm running Windows 8.1 64 bit. Within your file system you will find a folder called something like (program files X86) with is where windows stores 32 bit programs (and 32bit plugins).

So you can run Live 9 as a 32bit application or a 64 bit application - only until last week I was running it as a 32 bit application because most of my plugins were 32 bit. However, this is more down to laziness in not downloading new 64 bit versions. Whatever, with Live you should be able to download which version you want, 32 or 64, from 'your' Ableton account page under software.

Most companies now do 32 and 64 bit versions of their plugins... At one point many only did 32 bit so it was easier to stay with 32 bit. However, times have change and most companies now do both 32 and 64 bit version. Most will let you interchanged and use both if you are a registered user.

Recently I've been using my Akai MPC in standalone 64 bit so decided to go 64 bit with Live and managed to download and use the same registrations for the 64 bit plugins.

You could used Live 9 in 64 bit and try to use your 32 bit plugins via something like jbridge:
http://jstuff.wordpress.com/jbridge/

I have to say was rather useless for me, so I'd not go that way!

I could never get my WAVES plugins to work in 32 bit mode (possible at the very end just before I went 64 bit) however they certainly work with Live 64 bit using the 64 bit waves plugins.

Personally, only if you have loads of old synth plugins at 32 bit I'd now go 64 bit.

Hope this helps a little?