Ableton Forum

I just purchased Live 6.0.3 recently and I'm having annoying performance issues. I'm running a 2.8 ghz 2gig ram Acer TravelMate laptop but I just can't seem to run more than 8 tracks before my cpu overloads. The fan starts working hard, the CPU meter reads up to 80-90% or so & everything starts to freeze up. And some of those tracks are just used for sidechaining so they're not using that much processing power. I even deep freeze all the audio tracks & VSTs that I can, but this doesn't help that much, it still hovers at about 40-50%. I've even opened the laptop up & cleaned the fan out but this hasn't helped. I've seen people with massive arrangements and I'm very disappointed that I can't have that!? Am I using too many effects or something? I'm using the hercules as my soundcard could this be my problem?
Any advice would be welcome

Check your sample rate. If it is over 44100, then your computer will be using a lot of processing power in using higher sample rates.

also using mono channels/samples etc helps a lot (better for lead vocals, guitars and bass anyway, as they centre better), a lot of stuff does not need to be stereo. also running Xp computers on 'background tasks' rather than 'programs', defragging HDDs, using task manager to stop any non essential programs or services etc. can help. running higher latency if possible also helps. Actually, I'm flogging a dead horse here, this is all common knowledge, so I'll stfu now

Not always common knowledge.

You can head over to www.musicxp.net for tweaking your system to perform its best for audio. Be careful though, when you get to the services think hard before you turn anything off. If you use your computer for something other than audio, you may turn off something important. Depends on your knowledge of XP.

Best,
AB

Besides, Ableton has to increase performance!

Live 6 seems to me totally goin out of control in case of performance.

Thanks for your replies! I think I'm gonna have to invest in a new laptop soon, I was running Cubasis before I bought Live & I could run many more tracks than I can in Ableton. Don't get me wrong Ableton is an awesome program, but I think it needs some more optimizing their side. Its like just because they've implemented dual core support now they've forgotten about everyone who isn't running a dual core system. And in any case laptops are often inherrantly slower than desktops, and seeing that Live is mostly aimed at people using laptops in the live environment, all the more reason for Live to be streamlined and less prcoessor heavy than other DAW's that are designed for desktops.

BigBuddha wrote:Besides, Ableton has to increase performance!

Amen to that, has always seemed too cpu heavy since v5. Although i suppose they are trying with the Deep Freeze & Flatten functions.

Just to get an idea, how powerful does your laptop need to be to use Live as a DAW & not just a DJing tool? I feel like I've been conned a bit, because I thought I could get everything done on one machine, and I thought I could DJ & produce using just one program. I guess thats not the case. So now I have to decide if I should shell out the money for a new laptop to run Ableton smoothly or just buy Cubase to do the producing side of things. I hope I can get Live running properly to do my producing cause I really like it

Sorry for my double post but will buying an external 7200rpm hard drive improve things that much? Will it take some load off the CPU? I know the one in the laptop is 5400rpm