Ableton Forum

Here’s my situation:

I have a song with 70 tracks of audio. I know this is a little extreme. The song does did not play back properly on our Dual 1Ghz Mac with 2GB RAM running Live 4.1.4. Ultimately figuring it was a processor issue, we were recommended to buy a more powerful Mac. So, we bought the (just released) Dual 2.3 Ghz with 1.5 MB of RAM (an extra 2GB will come in the next couple of days). This Mac has the new Dual Core processor technology.

After installing Live 4.1.4 on the new Mac, the song still won’t play properly. We still hear lots of audio dropping out where the playhead has to go through many track of audio. This being a much more powerful computer than our last one, we’re not sure why we’re still having playback problems.

However, a close friend of mine said had no problems whatsoever when he played the song. He has a Mac Dual 2.7 running Live 5 (not sure how much RAM he has).

My questions are:

1. Is my new computer still too slow? (I was told that the new Dual 2.3 is just as fast as the old Dual 2.5)
2. Is Live 5 more processor efficient compared to 4.1.4?
3. Does Live 5 use Dual Processing?
4. Have you heard of the new Dual Core technology having problems with any versions of Live?

Thanks for your help.
We love Live!

Did your buddy have the identical audio card?

I'd check your audio buffer settings before upgrading any more...

Not sure about the audio card issue except that no third party cards are installed on either computer.

However, everything was fixed when I downloaded the Live 5 Demo and called up the problem tune. I turned on all 70 tracks and even set up a few with Reason running a huge combinator configuration. Live 5 didn't flinch on our new 2.3 Mac! I laid my foreams across the keyboard and it finally coughed just a bit. But a minor tweak of the buffer settings cured it.

By the way I tried running the song in Live 5 on my old Dual 1Ghz Mac and it could not handle the load. Not even close. So I'm glad we got the new Mac. We'll be downloading the Live 5 upgrade tomorrow.