my troubles with Live, in a nutshell

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 6:47 pm

The main 'trouble' I've had with Live comes from two things a) playing midi into the EIC instruments, which are heavy on the resource util, so I have to be careful how many at once I load, and b) making lots of MIDI notes happen at once, whether via controller or clips/chords, causing CPU chokage.

So I experiment to see where the boundaries are, and put things in place/balance the instruments I use to avoid exceeding those. Most of the time, it's not like I can't make due with some less hi-fi variant of the instrument that plays the one dinky phrase that pushes it all over the edge.

StinkyPat · Post by **StinkyPat** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:45 pm

Does freezing tracks help you out at all with your CPU load???

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:51 pm

StinkyPat wrote:Does freezing tracks help you out at all with your CPU load???

Yes it does, but I want to play notes live so that doesn't necessarily do it for me.

One thing that I've noted is that if I route my incoming midi into a 'input source track' and then in turn route it from that into other armed tracks, that uses more CPU than if I route the midi in directly to the armed tracks.

There can be a workflow disadvantage to that, though, because it can be handy to apply your plugins to a single input track, as opposed to copying them into each individual midi 'receiving' track. But it is noticably lighter on CPU.

weeddigger · Post by **weeddigger** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:23 pm

You mention sending in many MIDI notes in at a time.

I can't remember where I saw this exactly, but have read that too much MIDI data being sent at one time can jam pretty much any MIDI sequencer/arrangement/whatever...

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:37 pm

weeddigger wrote:You mention sending in many MIDI notes in at a time.

I can't remember where I saw this exactly, but have read that too much MIDI data being sent at one time can jam pretty much any MIDI sequencer/arrangement/whatever...

I'm thinking that's true. Now, it is easy to do with Live, using only the tiny pencil, chord plugs and chord trigger on arpeggiator.

Really, what i'm saying is 'this is the sum total of my recurring issues, and they are not outlandish'.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:37 pm

I think the general impression of the EIC and using Live as a sample playback machine is that they suck ballz. use SampleTank or something similar. I regret buying the the EIC.

usually it's that the built in plug ins with Live are so damn light they can stand up to other VSTs eg. if Operator won't cut it for you, rack 12 of them and see how it works vs. synth X at a certain CPU load.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:49 pm

The EIC is OK. It stands up to Reason's factory soundbank for NNXT/NN19. Although it IS more CPU intensive. But Reason's soundbank is not processed in a rack with tons of FX like Live's sounds often are.

Sampletank is fine but not much less CPU intensive, mostly because the sounds are not wrapped in verbs, delays, choruses and other rack fx.

Freeze tracks.

Or look at how the sound is constructed. Because of RACKS in Live 6 and 7, quite often lots of extra FX processing is added as an insert into the sound and if you already have verbs on a send or mod fx on a send, you might not require them and deleting them can help. I mean, I see some presets in Tension, Analog, Operator, Sampler and SImpler/EIC that is sometimes stacked 7 or 8 FX deep and then people wonder why the CPU usage is so high !!

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 5:50 pm

Tone Deft wrote:I think the general impression of the EIC and using Live as a sample playback machine is that they suck ballz. use SampleTank or something similar. I regret buying the the EIC.

I don't know that I regret it, because I like the way it sounds-- but, yeh: especially compared to other Live built-ins, I did not know that it would generate such a crushing load.