Ableton Forum

Playing around with Live, messing around with the sampler.
On Windows XP sp2.
I opened up my task manager (checking on cpu use) & noticed that Live (with just one sampler open (APMI Akai 256 meg grand) was using over a gig of memory!!!!!
Thought that was strange so I investigated further.
Turns out it was because I had been deleting & instantiating various Live instruments & vsti's on the same track.
It appears that if one keeps swapping out vsti's Ableton 'lets go' of the memory.
But if one is swapping Ableton instruments Live continues to hog the memory, rather than releasing it.
Try opening ones task manager & monitoring Lives Memory use.
open a vsti - the memory use will rise.
Delete the vsti from the track - the memory use will fall.
Now try it with sampler or operator etc. & note that the memory rises, but never falls.
If you play around for long enough the memory will just continue to rise.
Maybe this is a long term problem, maybe new - it's not something i've ever really looked for before.
It's certainly disturbing.

tried it with multiple operators & some large samplesets in sampler - definately doesn't release ram.
however if one saves the set & then reopens it the ram useage is normal.
Just a simple test set where I had swapped various instruments for a while & ended up with a ram useage of around 155 meg was down to 106 when saved & reopened.
Have been playing around with ustilising analogx's maxmem - but that eventually causes a fairly harsh crash.

hi diverdee,

partials of the memory allocated for instruments are not freed, but it's re-used when you load another instrument.

best wishes,
matthias

thanks for confirming that for me.
thought it was just the system I tried it on.
Obviously it's not often that one would instantiate & then delete multiple different instruments on the same track (was jsut a case of preset browsing & trying/testing various different things ), so it shouldn't really be much of an issue (I think).