Live 12 - Serious Issues - CPU Overload

[Sid.From.Ice.Age]

I'm having serious issues since installing Live 12.

1. The CPU overload indicator in Live keeps lighting up with even with like 4/5 stock Ableton plugins running and Ableton effects. Average % is around 35% which is insane. I could easily run 30 channels with 3rd party plugins from the likes of Softube, Universal Audio, Slate Digital, SSL etc before. Now Ableton stock barley works. It's very stuttery / laggy even loading stock plugins.

I have tried literally every forum / YT tweak out there configuring Windows, Ableton settings etc. I've even stripped down the PC and applied new thermal paste etc. Absolutely nothing will fix the CPU overload issue.

On PC side - There's hardly any CPU or RAM actually being consumed running Ableton and any background Windows processes etc so not sure why the load is so high inside Ableton. This was never an issue before.

It's a fresh install of windows with upgraded hardware, only licensed 3rd party plugins and ableton installed (no bloat).

Any help getting this resolved would be very much appreciated. Thanks in Advance

Full specs below:

OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H 3.20 GHz
RAM: 32.0 GB DDR4 3200mhz
Storage: 2TB M.2 SSD
Power Settings: High Performance (Turbo Boost Disabled For Cooler CPU Temps)
Tweaks: All Background & Unnecessary Services Disabled
All 3rd party VST Plugins etc are genuine

[Franksmusic]

I have the same problem. After instelling Ableton 12 a week ago all was fine. Now it's almost unusable. CPU spikes all the time....

[SundogIllionaire]

I had a similar issue in 11 a while ago that started happening after it automatically updated to a new version. All the live native spectral plugins and hybrid / convolution reverbs would make my CPU spike and overload almost instantly even when no sound was running through them.

I can't remember exactly how I fixed it but from memory I think deleting the preferences file and also fixing up my permissions setting in windows security fixed the issue because they were restricting Live.

I had some issues with Live 12 too with VST's, saving projects, cpu usage etc. Make sure Live is running as an administrator (right click on the application and go to properties; compatibility) and check in Windows Security if you can see any notifications of it blocking anything like folder access in Protection History. Make sure Live 12 is authorised in there too. And try deleting your pref file also (or moving/renaming it). This seems to have fixed all my issues, I've been using it for a few days since I did this with no issues as yet.

[[nil]]

I'm having serious issues since installing Live 12.

1. The CPU overload indicator in Live keeps lighting up with even with like 4/5 stock Ableton plugins running and Ableton effects. Average % is around 35% which is insane. I could easily run 30 channels with 3rd party plugins from the likes of Softube, Universal Audio, Slate Digital, SSL etc before. Now Ableton stock barley works. It's very stuttery / laggy even loading stock plugins.
(...)
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H 3.20 GHz
RAM: 32.0 GB DDR4 3200mhz
Storage: 2TB M.2 SSD
Power Settings: High Performance (Turbo Boost Disabled For Cooler CPU Temps)
Tweaks: All Background & Unnecessary Services Disabled
All 3rd party VST Plugins etc are genuine

If you're fine with it we could record a performance trace, as they can sometimes reveal the source of the issue. To do this:

(This uses tools that Microsoft ships with their operating system, called ETW)

1. First, download and install the latest release of UIForETW at https://github.com/google/UIforETW/releases:
   Download etwpackage1.59.zip, extract all to a folder it, then inside that folder go inside etwpackage then bin then run UIforETW.exe. It will quickly install a small package from microsoft called WPT (Windows Performance Toolkit) then show its main window.
2. Inside the "UI For ETW" window, press the "Start Tracing" button at the top-left corner.
3. Then start Ableton Live, open the Set that causes you trouble, interact with it a bit until you encounter the performance issue.
4. Alt-Tab to the UIForETW window and press the "Save Trace Buffers" button at the top-left corner.
5. After some time, the UI for ETW window will show a new element in the "Traces" list on the left. You can click on it, press F2 to give it a name or even add some documentation about what you were doing in the "Trace information" section to the right.
6. Then right-click the trace, click "browse folder" in the context menu and you should find a .etl file and possibly a .txt file next to it.
7. Compress that .etl file (and any .txt file next to it) to a zip file (right click on the .etl file in Windows Explorer and choose "Compress to Zip file")
8. Send a link to it to me via direct message. As the file can be quite large, we have to use something like Google Drive, Dropbox or Wetransfer

If my instructions are somewhat not clear, here's how Google explains how to do the same thing: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/ans ... e-etw-data

Once I get the zip file with the etl I'll need to analyze it to see if it can tell us anything concreate about why the CPU load is so high.

[Franksmusic]

still looking into this problem. It seems like some VST's just take a lot of CPU...

[cparadisi]

Similar problems here on a Win11 machine with plenty of RAM. Getting CPU spikes and audio drop outs in Ableton. Only really started in the past week or so.

[[nil]]

Similar problems here on a Win11 machine with plenty of RAM. Getting CPU spikes and audio drop outs in Ableton. Only really started in the past week or so.

I haven't received any trace from the original poster, I could have a look at yours. Can you follow the steps in my post here? posting.php?mode=reply&t=249995#pr1823952

[whisper]

I had similar issues on my machine...

Intel 14700K
ASUS ProArt Z790 Creator WiFi
64 GB RAM
2 TB NvME
1 TB NvME
ASUS TUF 4080 S
RME Digiface USB (ASIO)

Windows 11, 23H2

Basically I had very little load, in one case I just opened up Live and set up one audio channel, no plugins and I still got crazy random peaks. I had no CPU peaks shown in task manager and LatencyMon reported good results, no DPC latency. I compared Live 12 with Live 10 and I didn't get these peaks in version 10, granted I haven't tested much so can't say for sure if its free from issues.

After experimenting with various settings I ended up with this:

• Power schedule: Balanced. Most optimizaition guides recommends High performance, but that simply did not work for me - This is the single most important setting, Balanced mode resulted in the peaks dissapearing, clearly I'm not alone in this -->https://www.reddit.com/r/ableton/commen ... pu_spikes/. However average cpu usage increased, so in order to fix that I did the below steps.

• In BIOS:
  • Hyperthreading off <-- Not sure this is needed
  • C-States disabled
  • Speed step disabled
  • Speed shift disabled
  • Disabled Efficient cores <-- Not sure this is needed

[cids]

Does Ableton use hyperthreading?
Live supports and uses multi-threading. What is Hyper-threading? Hyper-threading is a feature of certain processors which allows them to further subdivide cores so that two concurrent threads can be handled per core. Hyper-threading is enabled by default in Live for computers with multi-core processors.

https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/artic ... processors.

[GLENN GILES]

'I am having this same issue, except on MAc, so I can't use the MS tool recommended above. Anybody every figure out a cause or fix?

[JasonW]

Have you tried the Activity Monitor or Task Manager utility to see it tells you anything useful?

[x3000]

I wouldn't deactivate the efficiency cores under any circumstances, as these are used by the OS, the substructure that makes the whole thing possible in the first place.
Live cannot deactivate or activate hyperthreading. Hyperthreading only simulates additional cores, which is normally ok, but not so much when it comes to audio latencies.
Disabling Windows security is always a good starting point:
- Switch on flight mode
- Virus scanner off
- Firewall off
- Folder monitoring/blocking off

Also in the power plan settings:
- Park cores off
- Full power on
- all energy-saving settings off (SSD, HD, USB etc.)


Also:
- A third-party VST plug-in is always suspicious
- a Windows update is always suspicious
- every driver is suspicious, especially Nvidia and, for example, various drivers for touchpads, network adapters, etc.

You could also run Latencymon alongside Ableton Live and see what causes the dpc spikes.

[Markwalford]

Yeah same problem here. I had this problem on Live 10 and Ableton were unable to source the problem. Now I have a brand new Asus Rog Strix Scar, full specs, windows 11, latest version of Live and the problem persists, so it's not laptop related, not related to the version of Live. All my plugs are legit. Sometimes it does it on a project with just two tracks and virtually no effects. I am sitting here now watching the cpu meter hitting 50 and i am not playing or even touching it, just running at 50 percent in standby. Serious problem.

[x3000]

Yeah same problem here. I had this problem on Live 10 and Ableton were unable to source the problem. Now I have a brand new Asus Rog Strix Scar, full specs, windows 11, latest version of Live and the problem persists, so it's not laptop related, not related to the version of Live. All my plugs are legit. Sometimes it does it on a project with just two tracks and virtually no effects. I am sitting here now watching the cpu meter hitting 50 and i am not playing or even touching it, just running at 50 percent in standby. Serious problem.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ROG- ... 931.0.html

The values of the ROG Strix are impressive, but the latencies are not good.

I don't know, but maybe sometimes a slimmed-down Windows version like atlasos, revios, tiny10 could be useful. I haven't tried it myself!

[Repentant]

Hey guys first time posting and i really appreciate all your posts and insight on this topic. I have recently downloaded Abelton Live 12 Standard and have noticed this CPU issue and I am not sure what to do other than be patient and see if this is just a bug that will be fixed in a future update.
My Laptop is an ASUS vivobook with AMD Ryzen 7 5800HS processor that has a base speed of 3.20 GHz (but when i view it in the task manager it is consistently running at 4 and change.) I have 23.4 GB of usuable RAM runs on Windows 11. I have done most if not all of the suggestions to no avail.
Made sure that the comp is running at 100% and at Best preformance setting on the Power mode.
This is my scenario :
6 tracks
One midi track with Drumforge drum vst on it (frozen track)
Three guitar tracks with STL Amp Hub guitar plugin on each. (Frozen also)
2 lead guitar tracks with STL Amp Hub plugin on each (these two are not frozen)

I enabled preformance impact on the tracks so i could see the CPU usage for each track. The tracks that i froze show zero draw on the meter at the bottom the only two that show any draw are the two not frozen tracks with STL Amp Hub on em.

The CPU usage meter in the top right of the screen is set to current and it hovers aroud 29- 49% This is at idle with nothing being played.
When i hit play the meter jumps around a bit mostly staying around the 43%- 58% range with the odd spike that gets upwards of 68%
When i view the task manager it shows abelton only using 9.5% - 13% CPU and in total with all background stuff running as normal CPU load is at 29%

So then i tried the disable wi-fi, and disable antivirus and basically any unneccessary things running were closed and it made a small difference to the CPU meter in ableton still idle at like 29-39%

Pretty weak sauce if you basically have to close down every single function of your computer to run Abelton. Especially considering i have such low draw according to task manager. And also only have two non frozen tracks running and its at near 50% on the meter in abelton. I am not a computer guy so things like BIOS and all that i have no idea what they are or where to find em. I really hope this is a bug that abelton can fix cause I will be very sorry i spent the money on a DAW that can only run two VST plugins what happens when i want to add compressors and EQ and vocals and bass. Anyway kind of a rant . Thanks for listening