Ableton Forum

Everybody here is crying for Altivec in Live. Indeed this only shows that Apple has a good advertising managment.

In fact, have you ever seen anyone with a PC crying for SSE extensions ? For those who dont know what SSE is : SSE is on the PC what is Altivec on a Mac : a way to optimize calculations but slowing down the whole development process of an application as you have to care everywhere about "Is a Mac or PC running my Code".

So if Ableton would use Altivec and! SSE extensions in their software, it would still run the same amount slower on a MAC (compared to a pc). Sad, but true. Further you would have to live with a slower developing process wich means that you get buggier releases, less features per release or have to pay more for the product to be able to pay more developers.
I think you all should bother Apple and not Ableton that they should finally make some affordable computers that are also fast (and not only looking nice). And Apple finally has done something : the new G5 looks promissing. Lets see if its again just a marketing gag or not.

This isn't about trying to make my Mac be more competitive with a PC. I couldn't care that adding AltiVec support to Live won't make the Mac version perform equal to the PC version. What I care about is that the Mac version will perform better than it currently does, so hopefully I can get some better performance out of my G4 dual 500.

My sentiments exactly.

php wrote:I couldn't care that adding AltiVec support to Live won't make the Mac version perform equal to the PC version. What I care about is that the Mac version will perform better than it currently does

[/b]

Live isn't optimised for any system. Maybe the G5 is getting on the same level as PC's we have to find out.

But agreed Apple uses such strong marketing. They also have great interface designers, but the marketing of them is very bad.

before i weigh in here, let me just sa that i don't entirely disagree with the original poster. but i don't think that SSE and Altivec can really be compared on a level ground. here's my opinion on why:

as far as i can tell, SSE and SSE2 are not really pushed by Intel at all, where much of the technological hooplah around the G4 was Altivec-based. the reasons for this are many... for one, i dont think that AMD supports SSE. so there's a big reason for SSE to not be in the limelight. another is that, according to various articles, SSE2 is not really pushed by Intel. their focus has been clockspeed for a long time.

now, apple, losing the clockspeed race some time ago, had to make up the performance difference in a different way. they new that the altivec libraries were excellent at certain mutimedia applications and typical floating-point routines. this is all they were intended to do. but when they realized that they were behind in performance, it seemed a great way to push the G4 to its limits.

now, being Apple, the library is extremely clean and easy to implement from a programmer's point of view (so i hear-- my programming knowledge is far below thhat of an Altivec programmer's). also, they promoted the shee-at out of it. it became many people's justification for the lagging clockspeed they had. it DOES make the mac faster in certain tasks.

in short, it became part of the fabric that was the G4. more than SSE ever has, and ever will, IMO. it's just not a part of the PC experience in general.

now you have altivec optimization all over the pro applications for the mac.. just about every media application includes it in some fashion. in fact, the operating system itself uses it all over the place. it has left the domain of a niche technology (where SSE still resides AFAIK), where it's primary focus was specially accelerated multimedia routines, and entered the commonplace world of the mac experience.

and this is why mac users want it so bad.


i hope that made sense!

cheers,

nokamrahp

pharmakonMtl wrote: it DOES make the mac faster in certain tasks.

"certain tasks" - that's the point. Some Mac users act as if every single application would instantly become 300% faster if someone only flipped the magical "Altivec enhanced" switch. If you consult the Ars Technica forums, there's a detailed post from a Maxon programmer on why the Cinema 4D 3D program doesn't get any significant gains from Altivec optimization. Still, the program is advertised as "Altivec enhanced", because Altivec is being used in some parts (outside the main rendering routines).

So, my tounge-in-cheek advice for Ableton would be to use Altivec in just one insignificant place in the program (without a costly rewrite) and put a giant "ALTIVEC ENHANCED! OPTIMIZED FOR G5" sticker on the box of Live 3 (including free updates 2.1.3, 1.5.3) to finally make those Mac users shut up. No one cares if it makes it faster or not, as long as it has nice buzzwords like OS X, G5, Altivec and QuartzExtreme written all over it.

Fellow Mac users (typing this on my iBook): Yes, Live performs better unter OS 9 than under OS X (btw, which program doesn't?). Yes, a 800MHz P3 will give you more reverbs than a 800MHz G4. You know it. I know it. Ableton knows it. We all know it. There's no point in starting a dozen threads about it, better spend your time making music, baking a cake or dating someone of the opposite sex.

stew wrote:"certain tasks" - that's the point. Some Mac users act as if every single application would instantly become 300% faster if someone only flipped the magical "Altivec enhanced" switch.

As a digital audio application, it is safe to say that Live needs a variety of algorithms to manage and manipulate sound.

DSP algorithms fall under the category of "certain tasks" that Altivec was designed to handle (vDSP):

-- http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/ ... aries.html
-- http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/ ... SP.sit.hqx

"vDSP is a collection of digital signal processing functions such as FFTs, convolutions and squares. It uses the vector engine when available and certain criteria are met on G4 equipped computers, and it uses the scalar unit on G3 equipped computers. vDSP is available in Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X."

Additionally, there is the "Vector Math Library" (vMathLib):

"vMathLib is a collection of numerical functions designed to facilitate a wide range of numerical programming for the AltiVec programming model. It includes computational functions (divide, square root), exponential functions and transcendental functions, to name a few."

Ignorance is no excuse, Windows users; educate yourself before mouthing off.

To that end, what do you care that Mac users ask for improvements?

Even though we're in the minority of users, we're probably footing the majority of the development costs anyway, thanks to a wide variety of Windows license cracking tools. We're probably paying for most of the features you'll be stealing in v3.

So back off and let us ask for what we pay for.

-Alex

stew wrote:

pharmakonMtl wrote: it DOES make the mac faster in certain tasks.

"certain tasks" - that's the point. Some Mac users act as if every single application would instantly become 300% faster if someone only flipped the magical "Altivec enhanced" switch. If you consult the Ars Technica forums, there's a detailed post from a Maxon programmer on why the Cinema 4D 3D program doesn't get any significant gains from Altivec optimization. Still, the program is advertised as "Altivec enhanced", because Altivec is being used in some parts (outside the main rendering routines).

So, my tounge-in-cheek advice for Ableton would be to use Altivec in just one insignificant place in the program (without a costly rewrite) and put a giant "ALTIVEC ENHANCED! OPTIMIZED FOR G5" sticker on the box of Live 3 (including free updates 2.1.3, 1.5.3) to finally make those Mac users shut up. No one cares if it makes it faster or not, as long as it has nice buzzwords like OS X, G5, Altivec and QuartzExtreme written all over it.

Fellow Mac users (typing this on my iBook): Yes, Live performs better unter OS 9 than under OS X (btw, which program doesn't?). Yes, a 800MHz P3 will give you more reverbs than a 800MHz G4. You know it. I know it. Ableton knows it. We all know it. There's no point in starting a dozen threads about it, better spend your time making music, baking a cake or dating someone of the opposite sex.

well, ok. but my point wasn't that Altivec will make it significantly faster, my point was that SSE cannot really be compared Altivec, barring their intended use.

yes i fully realize that not all routines can/will benefit from SIMD, but cinema4d is not Ableton Live, so i'm not sure what you meant to say there. Altivec is not a magic wand that makes it all go super-fast.

speak for yourself regarding your toungue-in-cheek advice (which i found pretty funny btw ).. i'm not a big fan of placebos.

---

i for one, would care if Altivec made my version of Live faster. i think that most people see Altivec as THE solution to make a program faster. that's why they want it. they don't really understand Altivec or the differences between x86 and PPC. things like timing, the size and frequency of chunks of code, the ordering of routines... people who learn to program for a certain architecture (CS majors learn x86 around here.. assembler knowledge therefore is x86-based) will generally program with that in mind simply because they don't know other ways to do it. i don't blame them. it's easier to port your code than to rewrite all the little details at the hardware level for a different architecture, and i think that that is what Ableton has done-- ported the x86 build to PPC. they may be using cross platform libraries and compilers, but i'm willing to bet, based on certain user reports here about performance being *dramatically* lower on g4's to p4's, that the low-level programmers were raised on x86 and so goes the code... were it the other way around, the x86, per-clock, might be slower than a g3/4/5. i don't expect ableton to have a seperate team of PPC programmers working in paralelle with the existing ones, although i would certainly welcome it! (please? )

having said all that, i'm relatively happy with my powerbook 800 and Live so far, although i haven't fully pushed the program yet (still learning it, you know). i did notice that just a few built-in reverbs can really push the CPU, and that seems rather weak coming from Logic Platinum 4.7 on a G4/400 where i can use over 20 effects on 16 audio tracks without a stutter at half the clockspeed (but on OS9) of what i'm using now. of course they are not the same program. i don't really see myself even having the time on stage to push the program around like that... i don't want 4 reverbs usually, that's too much. but then, as a mac user i am generally forced to adapt, and maybe that's what i'm doing now. i kinda like that aspect of being a mac-user. it's tough being an underdog

i intend to keep giving them my money (and opinion ) for every release of Live. because i want them to continue producing it for the mac. even if it's not "optimized" for the mac, i think it kicks ass! i chose the mac platform for audio, Live is available for the mac, end of story for me.

cheers!

koma narph

Alex Reynolds wrote:Ignorance is no excuse, Windows users; educate yourself before mouthing off.

dude.. chill. lest you be victim to your own words. the guy also said he's an iBook owner

Even though we're in the minority of users, we're probably footing the majority of the development costs anyway, thanks to a wide variety of Windows license cracking tools. We're probably paying for most of the features you'll be stealing in v3.

So back off and let us ask for what we pay for.

-Alex

this has little to do with the subject at hand, and is not necessarily true of the poster or windows users in general.



i appreciate what you are trying to say, Alex R., but you're just inviting argument instead of discussion with that tone. of course, you can just tell me to F*** right off!


cheers!

~markophan

pharmakonMtl wrote:i appreciate what you are trying to say, Alex R., but you're just inviting argument instead of discussion with that tone. of course, you can just tell me to F*** right off!

If you're dumb enough to write that Altivec will have no or little effect on Live, I won't tell you to fuck off but I will call shenanigans.

Cheers!

Alex

Alex Reynolds wrote:To that end, what do you care that Mac users ask for improvements?

I don't know about you, but I did the following:

a) sent Ableton a polite email describing my frustration over a poor OS X performance compared to OS 9
b) sent them a detailed bug report about a high CPU usage problem on my iBook in OS X (unrelated to general OS X problems)
c) sent them a report about a redraw issue with Live 1.5 and 2.0, which turned out to be fixed already in their internal versions by the time I sent that report. It's fixed in the 2.1 releases.

There is no point in complaining about the lack of Altivec support. Your voice has been heard, months ago. I'm sure it's high up on Ableton's list, it's just another thing of actually having the money and development resources to implement that in a proper fashion (after all, you want it to be stable and compatible, and modifying Live for Altivec support is probably a non-trivial thing in a cross-platform application).

So back off and let us ask for what we pay for.

You paid for Live 2.x and that's what you got. You had the chance of trying the demo before buying it and making your buying decision based on that. It didn't say "soon with 70% more Altivec" on the box, did it?

Alex Reynolds wrote:

pharmakonMtl wrote:i appreciate what you are trying to say, Alex R., but you're just inviting argument instead of discussion with that tone. of course, you can just tell me to F*** right off!

If you're dumb enough to write that Altivec will have no or little effect on Live, I won't tell you to fuck off but I will call shenanigans.

Cheers!

Alex

if you had read and understood my post you would not have written that. unless you are purposely trying to be inflammatory.

cheers!

ham-a-porkn

I never intended to say that its useless to use Altivec.

Of course there is room for speed improvement when using Altivec, but the point is that Apple`s processors are still that slow, that application developers have to spend much much time into developing special code for mac`s because Apple is not able to build fast computers (fast, in term of PC speed).

OSX is a monster regarding CPU waste. The whole system is just too fat for their old tiny processors. Ok, they have the G5 now, but this comes far too late. They should have been first release the G5 and then make running OSX on this processor only. Then we would not have all these discussons here and on all other software forums that run applications on OSX.

Many people are disapointed about the performance of OSX applications because of this reason. Its not really that the program that runs on OSX is damn slow, but the OS takes so many performance that there is not really much left for the applications.

I also didnt wanted to start another "the PC is better" thread. My point was only, that your "damn, my computer was not cheap but I can still not run 2 Ableton reverbs on it" comments should also go apple, and not only the application developers (Ableton).