Ableton Forum

I must be doing something wrong, but here's the setup...

Live 5 on Mac OSX 10.3.8 on G4 733mhz with 1.5GB of RAM. All fine and great until I try and add a AU plug-in to an Audio track for guitar amp simulation. I tried Amplitube and NI GuitarCombo and all I get is huge latency (its about 50 ms from playing a chord to hearing a sound come through) and constant popping sound. Its almost like the sound is being fed through the plug-in over and over again.

Is there something wrong in the way I'm doing this? Or is my rig not powerful enough for this?

I use these plug-ins with Logic all the time and NEVER have any problems like this. They work great there.

Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

Vlad

I use some of the Apple AUs regualrly (Reverb, Multiband compressor) and they seem to work just fine. Tried any others yet?

>I use some of the Apple AUs regualrly (Reverb, Multiband compressor) and they seem to work just fine. Tried any others yet?

What's the specs on your rig for this? What version of Live are you running? How much RAM do you have? What kind of Mac is it? What version of Mac OSX?

Vlad

iBook G4 800MHz 640MB , Mac OS X 10.4.3, Live 5.0.3, buffer size 200 samples upwards.
I've also done multitrack recordings on this machine through my Motu Traveler and recorded my guitar through a chain of Live effects. No stellar performance but worked flawlessly so far.

Ever tried it with GuitarRig or Amplitube?

Vlad

sorry, no, I use my J-Station or my PSA-1 to record guitar, I don't quite trust the latency issues when it comes to software amps, but never tried them really.

i have no issues with any of the AU's from PSP, Wave Arts, EAS, MDA, U-he, Sonalksis, AudioDamage, Alphakanal, Cycling74, and Digitalfishphones.

G5 1.8ghz iMac. 1.5GB. Live 5.0.3, OS 10.4.3

I'm noticing a major performance difference with Amp simulators over other AU plug-ins. But I'm going to keep trying to optimize this so that I can get it work in some way. Right now its non-functional for me.

VLad

ok, I just downloaded and tried the Guitar Rig 2 Demo and can confirm that theres a problem with the AU version. Sound is chopped and completely fsckd up. The VST version seemed to run fine in Live 5.0.3 on my iBook/Traveler with buffer sizes down to roughly 500 samples.

I also tried guitar rig standalone ... it was using a lot of CPU, did produce pops when used with a 23msec latency or lower and I didn't find the high-gain sounds convincing at all. UI was sluggish as well. I seriously suggest you take a close look at the Johnson J-Station (not in production anymore, therefore probably cheap on ebay), Line 6 Pod or Pod XT. Spending half my CPU resources or more on a Guitar Amp simulation just doesn't seem right. IMHO the hardware amp sims sound better, most have at least SPDIF or even USB audio interfaces and you can use them without a computer as well.
hth and good luck!

Thank you so much for going to the trouble to test this. I thought I was going out of my mind with this. Yes, my experiences are identical to what you have. I found that with one track in Live, I can get SOME of the amp simulation working in GuitarCombo, but as soon as I add another track to Live, it starts popping and generally dying on me.

I'll definately check out the hardware simulators that you mentioned.

Vlad

Every Audio Unit in a Live set seems to use some amount of CPU (2%?) even when it is doing nothing. Surely this can't be right? I have a hunch (but I haven't tested it) that some songs I've done using AUs only would be lighter on the CPU if I used their VSTi versions (which luckily exist for most). Any comments?

I have never experienced this severe performance hit or 50ms delay with Guitar Rig; I use it as an AU plugin to Live and my latency is perfectly acceptable for real-time playing. And this is with a 3-year old Powerbook.

I do notice a bigger CPU hit with amp simulators, but this applies to VST as well as AU. This is because amp modeling is very processor-intensive compared to a lot of other functions (delay, filters, etc). Given the choice, I always use AU plugs ahead of their VST versions, mainly because the ones I have in both formats (especially NI: Absynth and Guitar Rig) seem to have more problems in their VST interfaces, at least for me.