Ableton 7 + External Instrument + Vista? = overloaded mess

ARDJ · Post by **ARDJ** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:08 am

even on a brand new project when i put an external instrument in, send midi to my motu ultralite which goes to my moog voyager the cpu meter jumps into 180%, craps out all my audio and dies.

my set up

quadcore 6600
4gigs ram
vista sp1

what's up with this?

e-theory · Post by **e-theory** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 10:03 am

Vista....

Whoever is convinced that Vista is as fast or efficient as WinXP needs their head checked.

You only need to look at the latest recommended hardware sheets from a lot of the VST manufacturers that have started to support Vista to see that for Vista on average they recommend you have 1GB RAM to XP's 512mB RAM and a 2Ghz processor to XP's 1Ghz to be able to run things at the same level.

Do yourself a favour and ditch XP - it's a slow piece of crap for audio.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 12:11 pm

Then I need my head checked.

Turn on Aero when using Live in Vista, there is some bug that leads to extrem CPU load when using Live with Vista's Basic GUI. If the problem still persists it's very likely that your audio-driver isn't working properly.

The other thing is that external Midi output is still very buggy in Live. Make sure your Midi port is set to MME and not DirectMusic for the time being that helps to a good degree, albeit it's still far from perfect.

e-theory · Post by **e-theory** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 1:34 pm

Fair enough, everyone is entitled to their opinions here. I did a little extra research though on comparing the two OS's in particular as I always like to get information from both sides of the fence in every discussion, in particular for Ableton Live, but in the general sense, to add to my own experiences when I first bought my laptop ( which is now running XP thankfully ).

I cannot find one test that puts Vista ahead of XP in terms of performance. Not one. I have also had extensive discussions with the IT experts that work for the computer graphics company I am currently working for and they say that same thing. Not for graphics, sound, disk IO, nothing. Whilst I'll admit the terms generally used were "a minimal speed decrease" it was still enough for me to say that at this point in time Vista is definitely slower for the majority of users than XP, and, as with all new software, potentially rather unstable, which I experienced when I first received my laptop nearly a year ago.

Any speed decrease is too much of a decrease for me.

Good luck ARDJ, I hope that Timur's suggestion has fixed your problems.

ARDJ · Post by **ARDJ** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:02 pm

Timur wrote:Then I need my head checked.

Turn on Aero when using Live in Vista, there is some bug that leads to extrem CPU load when using Live with Vista's Basic GUI. If the problem still persists it's very likely that your audio-driver isn't working properly.

The other thing is that external Midi output is still very buggy in Live. Make sure your Midi port is set to MME and not DirectMusic for the time being that helps to a good degree, albeit it's still far from perfect.

if you get a discount for checking two heads instead of 1 let me know.

i believe Aero is on with my PC. i actually had to google what Aero was and from all the features listed it seems thats exactly what i'm already running. where would i double check that?(only had vista for a few weeks)

My soundcard is a Motu Ultralite and while its had Vista support for sometime i have had a few issues with it already. i changed over the midi type to MME but still having the same issues.

thanks for your help Timur this is an issue that really needs to be resolved because rendering a $3000 synth useless cause of non-working midi output is a slap in the face

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:23 pm

Could also be a Quadcore issue. Try switching off Multicore support for a test. Also try using another Midi interface, if your Mainboard comes with onboard MPU-401 that comes with Vista drivers (I had to download drivers for my Asus board and those only come in 32-bit flavor) then you should prefers this to any USB/Firewire solution, because it's PCI and thus comes with both lower latencies and jitter (though mostly on a small basis with optimized systems).

Just to make sure, go through all Midi ports and change them to MME. Also try both the "External Instrument" and simple routing to external Midi via a Midi track. How many notes are playing concurrently? Is any "Control Surface" installed (like Remote SL)? Try turning off any MidiYoke or MapleMidi virtual Midi ports, there seem to be some problems with MidiYoke and Live 7.02 (I can make Live hang/crash with this combination).

If your windows have that half-transparent glass look then Aero is running. Another easy way to find out is to click on the task-switcher icon in the quickstart bar, if it shows that 3D shuffling windows look then you're using Aero.

Generally I suspect your driver isn't running smooth with Vista, although still a good portion of the mess remains with Live as well. Try using only the Midi ports of your Ultralite while turning off the Audio engine in Live (or try using onboard audio for output) to find out if the CPU load comes from Midi transfers or Audio playback.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:30 pm

e-theory wrote:I cannot find one test that puts Vista ahead of XP in terms of performance. Not one. I have also had extensive discussions with the IT experts that work for the computer graphics company I am currently working for and they say that same thing. Not for graphics, sound, disk IO, nothing.

XP is great, no question and currently it's better suited for most applications. But there are several concepts in Vista that make it the better audio-workstation. I wrote an elaborate post about that here:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ight=vista

Unfortunately current software doesn't make much use out of these advantages. But you can hardly blame Vista for that. Also using 64-bit is the future for audio-production with all those memory restraints being removed for large project. Memory doesn't cost nothing anymore, so we want to use it (especially on notebooks). Beside those features mentioned in the above post and 64-bit I heard that driver developers have to try harder when writing proper drivers for 64-bit Vista which in the end results in a more stable system.

Nokatus · Post by **Nokatus** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:06 pm

Timur wrote:Unfortunately current software doesn't make much use out of these advantages. But you can hardly blame Vista for that.

For one, I'm interested in making music with something that works now, not with something that is likely to start working somewhere in the future.

There has been a lot of discussion on this lately, and that pretty much sums it up. It's not about blame, it's about the end result. Vista itself is theoretically better, and in time it will get the job done better (if they don't roll out a new Windows by then). In the mean time, if you don't have an actual reason to use it and XP already works...

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:39 pm

In the end it mainly depends on your combination of hardware and software. Generally Vista is running just as well for my setup as XP as long as I don't use its Basic GUI in conjunction with Live. So the future is now!

ARDJ · Post by **ARDJ** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:02 am

just wanted to let people known 7.0.3 has fixed this

my latency is good and no more overloaded mess, i'm sending 25 cc's to my voyager right now with complete success

cheameup · Post by **cheameup** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:52 am

Git ti say I'm using vista with 7.02 and I'm finding it the most latency free ableton experinece I've had in years

tarai · Post by **tarai** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:48 pm

upgrade to XP and you'll enjoy Live more.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:13 pm

tarai wrote:upgrade to XP and you'll enjoy Live more.

Hm, upgrade your brain and you'll enjoy Life more.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Do you have any meaningful facts to underline your statement?

laird · Post by **laird** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:00 pm

Timur wrote:Turn on Aero when using Live in Vista, there is some bug that leads to extrem CPU load when using Live with Vista's Basic GUI.

I just read that Aero uses an improved graphics driver, while the windows basic uses the old XP graphics driver... so maybe its not a "bug" so much as a Vista improvement?

to the OP: you can check under control panels/display
or just look and see if the edges of your windows look translucent. if you can see blurry stuff beneath them, you've got Aero glass on.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:50 pm

Nope, it's a bug, it doesn't happen in XP and it doesn't happen with other software in Vista.