Ableton Forum

hello guys,
jus tried live's demo and really loved it, so it would be really cool to get your advices on a few things I could not verify before I buy:

Performance on Mac :
So many people on this forum complains about performance on macs. I loaded about a 100 of heavy samples in the session view of Live and never reached 20% CPU... Would the problem reside in the use of live's effects then???? I want to rewire Live (and reason) to Logic for effects, anyone does that??? btw I ran the demo on a tibook 667 and a powermac g4 1ghz flawlessly
Recording audio :
How is live behaving when recording audio??? Is there a way to manage the recorded files intelligently? I mean, for example, in the folder where my files are recorded, can I select all the project's unused files and delete them?

Thanx a lot
Ben

Hi Ben,

You can save your song project as "Save Self-Contained". This saves the current Live Set, and copies all externally referenced samples into the Live Set’s Sounds folder. Then you can simply delete the rest.

hey benny,

i run both live and reason along with logic 6.3.1. the combo is fantastic. as far as performance on the mac vs. the pc... i have a dual 1ghz g4 with 1.5 gigs of ram and for the most part it does very well with live. unless i lay on the effects in a MAJOR way it doesn't bog down at all. i haven't done an a-b comparison with my pc so i can't give you any concrete numbers. perhaps others can. if you believe many of the posts in this forum, some would say that a stacked pc can handle more effect inserts than a mac, but i can't say for sure.

i CAN say that for the $, live on any platform is a must have. it is a truely unique application and in version 3 with the ability of clip envelopes to control everything from filter frequency to sample offset you can get some truly wicked results for your music production. if you use it in combination with reason, logic or any number of other programs you won't be getting out of the house (or studio, as it were) for some time.

hope this helps you a bit. good luck with the decision!

n8 dogg

Just curious, though I use both a PC and a Mac, I love my Mac, but when I have Live opened up with no other applications running and no samples or clips or anything (I too have the 667Mhz TiBook with 512MB ram) the CPU is at 13%...that's with NOTHING Loaded! On my PC it sits at 2%. If I load maybe 10 to 15 samples on 8 tracks and maybe 3 effects (one effect on one track, two effects on another track) then my CPU is at 50 to 60% on Live and it starts craawwwling. On my PC I can have 60 to 70 samples on 15 tracks with 2 effects on every track and it's maybe at 17% CPU.

I wish this wasn't so cause I love the intuitivness of OS X, but maybe I don't have something optimize right if you can have 100 samples and not reach 20% CPU!? Any advice?

Strange. I have an G3 iBook 700 MHz with 640 MB RAM OSX 10.2.8- so it should be comparable to your setup - if I launch live without anything I get about 5% (this is with processor set to automatic in energy saver preferences).

This is pretty much comparable to the results I get on my 600 MHz Athelon (turning the CPU management to max on the iBook and loading the reverb with best setting).

You have the 667 with 3rd L cache? What are your CPU management settings? Your repair permissions regularly? Crop scripts? Enough swap for the OS?

best,
Steff

on my tibook 667 I run live's demo under mac os 9.2, maybe that's the difference could not tell I'm not an expert.
on my powermac (at work), on 10.2.8
Both work fine... and never blow up 20% CPU without effects...

btw, what's the loop behavior when live is rewired to logic or reason (and also you know that little flag in live, it brings the playback at the point it was before it started, in reason and logic playback stops... well at the point it was at the moment I stopped. Can't get it)