Ableton Forum

I assume that this topic has been discussed very often. But I could not find the topic that concerns me with the search-function.

I have got a Medion-PC-Notebook Intel Dual Core 1,66 MHz, 1 Gig RAM, 5400rpm 160 GB Harddisk.
My Soundcard is a firewire Edirol FA-66.
Is this system sufficient for running VJ and Live together at the same time?

Lives Harddisk-LED is gleaming when a 10-tracks-arrangement is running together with a 50 MB-VJ-Video and I get some dropouts in music.
I tried to put the visuals onto an external usb-hd. But I still have dropouts.

How can I find out if I have the windows-xp firewire-problem. Maybe this is the reason für the offsets.
Has anybody a similar computer-system that is working with these two softwares running?

Welcome!

I run three instances of Live and one instance of Arkaos on a 2 x 2GHz G5 without a problem.

How well it will run all depends on what you're trying to do. The Arkaos VJ hardware effects are very light on the CPU, as the processing is done with the graphics card. The Arkaos software effects, however, can suck lots of CPU.

MIDI and simple sample playback in Live is obviously easier on the CPU than complex audio effects, softsynths, and multiple audio tracks.

Again, it all depends on what you're trying to do.

You didn't mention the most important-the graphic, is it Intel or proper graphic card ? If it is Intel only then you can forget about video even without Live
If you have Nvida or similar with 128 or 256 MB you should be able to run both but then if videos are high res and audio too your disc may choke.
I can run Arkaos or Zuma with reasonably sized Live set without problems. Since I use EMU PCMCIA can easily use my FW external HD. In your case try to run ext HD via express or whatever slot you have free - do not share with soundcard

My graphic card is a GeForce 7400. 64 MB RAM + 192 Shared Memory. Arkaos VJ alone runs very good with it. There is no delay.

@hambone:
My graphic cards supports Pixel Shader 3.0. So the fx I use are calculated bei my gpu, aren't they?

I do not use any Plugins or software-instruments in Live. It is just pure audio and midi.
The CPU-Load (both apps together) does not get even once to 100%. The average is about 70%.

So I think this maybe a Problem with my harddisk - maybe because it is only 5400 rpm?
Perhaps Windows tries to write some swap-file and this is the problem?

I put the visuals on a seperate USB-HD, but there seems to be no improvement too - there are still dropouts in sound and visuals.
I am getting 2 GB RAM now to see, if this is useful. Maybe I can load all Visuals in Arkaos to RAM and this will solve the problem.

I will tell you what happened, when I got the ram.

It is one of the best sources
http://www.kmelektronik.de/main_site/?S ... &fd=420444
Ram became cheap and you definitely need at least 2G.

I now have 2 Gig of RAM in my Notebook und everything seems to be a little bit better.

I outsourced the visual data on an external usb ide disk.
But still I cannot get run my Ableton arrangement with 9 simple stereo tracks on my internal device.
The funny thing is, if I put the arrangement on the (actually much slower) usb-harddrive and the visual data from arkaos und the internal disk - then everything runs perfectly.

I made a hd-benchmark. The USB-IDE-Disk reads constantly 30 MB/sec whereas my internal SATA-Disk starts with over 60 MB but goes down to 15 MB/sec over a longer time.
Maybe the SATA-Disks needs to be exchanged. I am going to run a diagnostic tool on it.

To get maximum from a HD you should keep it half empty, the tests show that 5400 half empty HD can be faster then almost full 7200.
Ideally OS; audio and video should be on separate HDs.
Firewire is better then USB2, if you have express card slot then use it for video streaming. That is what I want to get for my videos- eSata via express.
Though I have no problems with whatever combination, if I use video from internal then use 2.5 Hitachi 7200 in USB2 box. It is also my backup HD - 2 partitions _Music and Video. So for Arkaos and Resolume use videos from external- USB or FW- and with Zuma (which uses smaller clips only) use the external for audio. It is mainly due to my files organisation that i use internal for Zuma.
BTW. Resolume is practically impossible to use together with Live from same computer. Arkaos and Zuma , easily.

Ich will now get a Hitachi 7200 HD für my notebook - and leave it half empty.

I calculated that 9 Stero-Tracks are approximately 170 kb/s which should actually be no probleme even for a 5400 rmp disk to playback.
Maybe writing the swap file may slow down the speed of the hd otherwise I could not explain this phenomena.
It is still funny that video from the same internal disk is working perfectly.
But this could be explained because it is online one datastream that is read. For the 9 Tracks the read head of the hd has to be replaced all the time.

I will let you know how it works with the new disk.

Strange, my 5400 is almost full and I have no problem playing everything Live and Zuma from internal, same with Arkaos. Normally videos come from ext 7200 HD but I tested all from internal and no probs. I suspect there must be something else in your setup that causes the problem, anyway getting 7200 will help though you can say forget running from batteries then.