Ableton Forum

Hello!

A little while ago (maybe a month) i noticed that ableton has started using more CPU than it ever has; even for simple tasks w/ few tracks. About 2 weeks ago, while finishing up a project, I noticed that Ableton is using about 25-35% when the project is idle. And when i try to start mixing it jumps to 95-103% and brings along some unbearable distortion that i cannot work through. Another weird thing about this issue is changing the buffer size has little effect. The distortion persists until i hit 1024 samples but at this level its replaced with alot of dropouts and a bit of distortion. Raising the buffer size decreases the CPU usage to about 80% which is still ridiculously higher than i have ever witnessed when working on a project. Still using the same computer as well: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012); Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5; Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3).

This is a new issue so i don't think the issue is my computer, but ive tried changing the buffer, sample rate, decreasing cpu usage outside of ableton but no luck. If anyone could help point me in the right direction i would truly appreciate it. thanks in advance!

I have had serious problems with Ableton's 10 Lite CPU consumption; I can not record a single-channel-with-no plug-in without audio clipping. I have had this problem despite I have already adjusted all the things that Ableton's 10 Lite manual suggests to do when there is a high CPU consumption. I wondered if you can help me to fix this issue.

I got this problem after install the new version of live (10 lite) and after install new version of my focusrite interface driver (Focusrite 2i4 1st generation).

PC or Mac?

TLW wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 4:10 pm

PC or Mac?

Mac

Try going to the “tips and tricks” part of the forum and searching it for “Windowserver”. There’s a thread that suggests altering Live 10’s screen refresh rate using an options.txt file which fixed a problem I was having that sounds similar to yours. Live 10 seems to hit the Mac video system particularly hard and pushes the cpu and some gpus to the point they can barely keep up when Live has an empty project loaded and is doing nothing.

Happening to me as well on my mac. I've got about 9 different VST instruments going (but only one has to be active for the glitch to happen) and every time I open my project and hit play, the CPU usage spikes really high and everything sounds like crap. It only seems to happen every once in a while, and if I give ableton a break (like I did when writing this comment), and come back to it things start working again. I'll be sure to post here if I find a fix to the problem, hopefully it's not my mac.

FOUND A FIX
So some dude was talking about his new car he got and how crappy the tech in his car was, and how he couldn't play an mp3 file. He then proceeded to talk about how he lowered the bit rate of the mp3 file and how it fixed his problem. I then went ahead and went to live's preferences, messed with the sample rate a bunch of times (I lowered it from 44.1kHz to 32, to 22, and then back to 44.1) and that seemed to fix my problem. Hope this helps ya, good luck.

theangrybagel wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:11 am

FOUND A FIX
So some dude was talking about his new car he got and how crappy the tech in his car was, and how he couldn't play an mp3 file. He then proceeded to talk about how he lowered the bit rate of the mp3 file and how it fixed his problem. I then went ahead and went to live's preferences, messed with the sample rate a bunch of times (I lowered it from 44.1kHz to 32, to 22, and then back to 44.1) and that seemed to fix my problem. Hope this helps ya, good luck.

lmao the moment I posted this the problem happened again, but I did what I said I did and sure enough, it solves the problem

I recently discovered a fix for my issues using Ableton 10 on a mac, though I have some specific circumstances, older computer.
Laptop:
Mid-2012 15inch Macbook Pro, Retina, 2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16mb RAM with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M
OS X Mojave (issue was happening on High Sierra as well)

Notable peripherals:
Echo Audiofilre 8
2 attached monitors:
BenQ SW2700 monitor, 2560x1440 resolution, connected via minidisplayport->displayport
A very old Dell 1080p monitor connected via HDMI to a HMI->DVI adapter

Symptoms:
higher CPU usage in general:
A project with a single short drum loop sample would be at 32% CPU before pressing play for the first time, just idle

momentary CPU spikes resulting in audio glitches:
These would would happen every 20-30 seconds, switching sampling rate would solve for a few minutes, then it would return

Giant never-ending CPU spike:
Occasionally switching a device would trigger this, sometimes it just seemed to happen on it's own: CPU usage would shoot up and never get better, even if nothing was playing. Activity Monitor showed CPU usage fluctuating between 728% and 810%, crazy mangled sound, need to force-quit Ableton.

I thought it was an issue with my audio interface initially (Echo no longer makes them, so the drivers are pretty old), so I borrowed an old Presonus, with current drivers, and the same issues occurred. I had already followed the Ableton CPU usage recommendations

I tried a few things -- creating the Options.txt file and limiting the frame rate to 30 helped with the first issue, but the "Giant never-ending CPU spike" would still happen. So at least some of my issue was tied to rendering the program.
Options.txt contents:
-_ForceGdiBackend
-MaxFpsMac=30


I accidentally found the main issue -- I unplugged the HDMI connection to my second monitor. Now everything is fine. Works great. Normal CPU, no glitches, no crazy distorted feedback at 800% CPU usage (as noted in Activity Monitor, not Ableton). And if I plug the monitor back in it all goes to crap.

So this it may be a combo fix -- I have not tried removing my Options.txt to find out, but I'm pretty sure that I did disconnect all peripherals when first trying to fix this, and still had the momentary spikes.

My guess is this had to do with the new-ish GPU screen rendering and scaling, and the fact that I have an older machine with a discreet Nvidia GPU (that Apple, as of 2 OS's ago, refuses to allow updates for via the Nvidia OSX web drivers or CUDA drivers). Curiously, the higher resolution monitor, connected via Displayport, does not cause any issues; only the HDMI connected monitor.

theangrybagel wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:13 am

theangrybagel wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:11 am

FOUND A FIX
So some dude was talking about his new car he got and how crappy the tech in his car was, and how he couldn't play an mp3 file. He then proceeded to talk about how he lowered the bit rate of the mp3 file and how it fixed his problem. I then went ahead and went to live's preferences, messed with the sample rate a bunch of times (I lowered it from 44.1kHz to 32, to 22, and then back to 44.1) and that seemed to fix my problem. Hope this helps ya, good luck.

lmao the moment I posted this the problem happened again, but I did what I said I did and sure enough, it solves the problem

theangrybagel wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:13 am

theangrybagel wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 22, 2020 2:11 am

FOUND A FIX
So some dude was talking about his new car he got and how crappy the tech in his car was, and how he couldn't play an mp3 file. He then proceeded to talk about how he lowered the bit rate of the mp3 file and how it fixed his problem. I then went ahead and went to live's preferences, messed with the sample rate a bunch of times (I lowered it from 44.1kHz to 32, to 22, and then back to 44.1) and that seemed to fix my problem. Hope this helps ya, good luck.

lmao the moment I posted this the problem happened again, but I did what I said I did and sure enough, it solves the problem

its fixed mine