Live 7 = CPU hog, needs almost twice CPU power as Logic 8!

[poshook]

My 8-core 2,8GHz Mac Pro result in Performance test is 19% but activity monitor shows only 9%. Sometimes I get even bigger difference f.e. (Live 39%, AM 15%). checked this with Logic 8 and got these results:

18x
Stereo Audio Track with stereo drum loop 16/44100 (no warp) + 4x Artsacoustic Reverb default preset + 1x SSL4000 G-Channel Stereo (Waves)

+ the same 4+1 strip on Master Channel

= 76x Artsacoustic Reverb on Insert + 19x G-Channel SSL4000

with my Firewire card on 256 samples, Latency Delay Compensation ON:

IN LOGIC 8.0.2 cca 50% of whole CPU, no drops, audio sounds clean
IN LIVE 7.0.7 89% CPU LOAD!!!, sound absolutely broken

Activity monitor showed the same value in both tests (41-45%)

Live is CPU hog and there is no reason update Quadra core systems to 8-core if you stay with Live

[j2j]

live's cpu meter has a bug...


we know this, abe's knows this.... get over it...

[Johnisfaster]

My 8-core 2,8GHz Mac Pro result in Performance test is 19% but activity monitor shows only 9%. Sometimes I get even bigger difference f.e. (Live 39%, AM 15%). checked this with Logic 8 and got these results:

18x
Stereo Audio Track with stereo drum loop 16/44100 (no warp) + 4x Artsacoustic Reverb default preset + 1x SSL4000 G-Channel Stereo (Waves)

+ the same 4+1 strip on Master Channel

= 76x Artsacoustic Reverb on Insert + 19x G-Channel SSL4000

with my Firewire card on 256 samples, Latency Delay Compensation ON:

IN LOGIC 8.0.2 cca 50% of whole CPU, no drops, audio sounds clean
IN LIVE 7.0.7 89% CPU LOAD!!!, sound absolutely broken

Activity monitor showed the same value in both tests (41-45%)

Live is CPU hog and there is no reason update Quadra core systems to 8-core if you stay with Live

you're on a core2quad? the only time I've ever had live up in the 80's and 90's is when I was actually trying to break it with too many plugins. and let me tell you that was an absurd ass load of plugins and live was still playing perfectly!!! even at 90% I wasn't getting crackles.

I'd check my system if I was you.

[NorthernMonkey]

I've seen various explanations relating to the Live CPU meter readings, and absolutely none of them have made any sense whatsoever - it must be some secret algorithm known only to the Abes. And a few basic checks will show you that it's not related to the total main processor CPU usage.

From the manual...

"Note that the CPU meter takes into account only the load from processing audio, not other tasks the computer performs."

That is far too vague to use as a basis of comparison.

[leedsquietman]

If you're going to do tests, do ones that are relevant to real world situations.

I mean, you are hardly likely to use 76 reverbs each as an insert. You would group tracks, or use sends, surely !

You are correct though about Live requiring more CPU overhead. I have Cubase SX3 and that runs typically 8-10% less for audio and more like 15-20% for MIDI/VSTis.

However, Live has a freeze function which works, *Cubase's is kind of buggy/broken* so freeze your tracks. Even on a quad, you should consider freezing midi/vsti tracks, they are very CPU intensive.

[Lux Libra]

Even on a quad, you should consider freezing midi/vsti tracks, they are very CPU intensive.

what ?!
quads give you such huge processing power that i can't think of any realistic
scenario in which freezing make sense. ok, maybe some kind of uberproject
for films or conceptual art, but for 95% of producing the quads are more than
enough.

[ausgeno]

etc etc I'd check my system if I was you.

This.

[Machinesworking]

My 8-core 2,8GHz Mac Pro result in Performance test is 19% but activity monitor shows only 9%. Sometimes I get even bigger difference f.e. (Live 39%, AM 15%). checked this with Logic 8 and got these results:

18x
Stereo Audio Track with stereo drum loop 16/44100 (no warp) + 4x Artsacoustic Reverb default preset + 1x SSL4000 G-Channel Stereo (Waves)

+ the same 4+1 strip on Master Channel

= 76x Artsacoustic Reverb on Insert + 19x G-Channel SSL4000

with my Firewire card on 256 samples, Latency Delay Compensation ON:

IN LOGIC 8.0.2 cca 50% of whole CPU, no drops, audio sounds clean
IN LIVE 7.0.7 89% CPU LOAD!!!, sound absolutely broken

Activity monitor showed the same value in both tests (41-45%)

Live is CPU hog and there is no reason update Quadra core systems to 8-core if you stay with Live

Sound about right. I did a few tests in Live 5 and Logic 7 that showed Live reaching about 60% of what Logic can do. A couple things though, Logic is the most CPU efficient host there is, it was on PC when it was PC, and Apple haven't screwed that up yet. The run down we did went like this:

Logic 100%

Cubase / Digital Performer 80%

Live 60%

Now, there are a few things that would account for this, primarily it's the fact that Live polls all MIDI and audio tracks, clips, FX, etc. constantly, while the others poll the record enabled tracks only! The reason for this is obvious, if you're going to allow users to fire clips etc. at will, then they better not glitch when they do.
So, you can use a traditional DAW, and get better performance, or use Live and be able to actually treat your multi track song as a re-mix instrument.

[leedsquietman]

There are a couple of guys on the Cubase forum who swear that Cubase 4.1 is more efficient than Logic 8. Although I don't necessarily believe them, given that Apple supply the hardware and have had plenty of input into Emagic's team since Logic Pro 7, they should be able to optimize and know the little tricks that are not open to MOTU and Steinberg.

You are correct that a quad represents significant power. Try running Massive (whose audio can only be distributed on one core at a time, per track so 4 instances of Massive can be distributed across 4 cores) or the most intensive 5 rated (on a scale of 1-5) of Arturia's softsynths, especially the JP8V and you will chew out resources very quickly. So it might still be better to freeze some of these tracks to live plenty of overhead for the myriad of plugins. Audio plugins typically use less CPU than MIDI vstis/aus anyway, although there are some exceptions, notably convolution reverbs.

Instead of 76 algorithmic reverbs, try 76 instances of Massive on best quality mode and you will see what I mean !

The other thing to remember is - quads are still relatively new and a lot of software is not even optimized properly for dual core machines yet. When the software/hardware combintaion of quad is really properly optimized, there will be quite a bit more power yet to come.

[poshook]

If you're going to do tests, do ones that are relevant to real world situations.

I mean, you are hardly likely to use 76 reverbs each as an insert. You would group tracks, or use sends, surely !

You are correct though about Live requiring more CPU overhead. I have Cubase SX3 and that runs typically 8-10% less for audio and more like 15-20% for MIDI/VSTis.

However, Live has a freeze function which works, *Cubase's is kind of buggy/broken* so freeze your tracks. Even on a quad, you should consider freezing midi/vsti tracks, they are very CPU intensive.

Using them both a lot and I can definitely tell you that Logic 8 can do much more using the same plugins and instruments than Live 7.
Freezing is OK, but this thread is not about.

[poshook]

live's cpu meter has a bug...


we know this, abe's knows this.... get over it...

this is not a bug of CPU meter, this is a bug of whole audio engine. When Live shows 90% and audio is useless because of audio drops but CPU is in the middle of its power the problem is somewhere else

[poshook]

My 8-core 2,8GHz Mac Pro result in Performance test is 19% but activity monitor shows only 9%. Sometimes I get even bigger difference f.e. (Live 39%, AM 15%). checked this with Logic 8 and got these results:

18x
Stereo Audio Track with stereo drum loop 16/44100 (no warp) + 4x Artsacoustic Reverb default preset + 1x SSL4000 G-Channel Stereo (Waves)

+ the same 4+1 strip on Master Channel

= 76x Artsacoustic Reverb on Insert + 19x G-Channel SSL4000

with my Firewire card on 256 samples, Latency Delay Compensation ON:

IN LOGIC 8.0.2 cca 50% of whole CPU, no drops, audio sounds clean
IN LIVE 7.0.7 89% CPU LOAD!!!, sound absolutely broken

Activity monitor showed the same value in both tests (41-45%)

Live is CPU hog and there is no reason update Quadra core systems to 8-core if you stay with Live

Sound about right. I did a few tests in Live 5 and Logic 7 that showed Live reaching about 60% of what Logic can do. A couple things though, Logic is the most CPU efficient host there is, it was on PC when it was PC, and Apple haven't screwed that up yet. The run down we did went like this:

Logic 100%

Cubase / Digital Performer 80%

Live 60%

Now, there are a few things that would account for this, primarily it's the fact that Live polls all MIDI and audio tracks, clips, FX, etc. constantly, while the others poll the record enabled tracks only! The reason for this is obvious, if you're going to allow users to fire clips etc. at will, then they better not glitch when they do.
So, you can use a traditional DAW, and get better performance, or use Live and be able to actually treat your multi track song as a re-mix instrument.

Live 5 was not optimized for multicore systems...but Logic 7 was

[leedsquietman]

I don't disagree with you that Live requires more processing power than most traditional linear DAWS.

It would be nice if Ableton could improve their efficiency somewhat but Live 8 will probably be even more CPU intensive and probably will require at least a dual core machine with 2GB ram to even run at all in a barely satisfactory way.

My old clunker 4 year old P4 laptop will probably not be able to run it, I already have to freeze almost any vsti tracks and any tracks which have more than a couple of insert plugins and usually end up having to step up latency to at least 512 or even 1.024 samples on mixdown (to be fair, I usually am running more than 20, sometimes more than 30, audio and/or MIDI tracks and several plugins). BUt that old single core P4 is almost going into meltdown more often than it should be and in some cases, I have rendered all tracks and imported into Cubase for mixing because I can get more CPU efficiency from it.

[poshook]

I don't disagree with you that Live requires more processing power than most traditional linear DAWS.

It would be nice if Ableton could improve their efficiency somewhat but Live 8 will probably be even more CPU intensive and probably will require at least a dual core machine with 2GB ram to even run at all in a barely satisfactory way.

My old clunker 4 year old P4 laptop will probably not be able to run it, I already have to freeze almost any vsti tracks and any tracks which have more than a couple of insert plugins and usually end up having to step up latency to at least 512 or even 1.024 samples on mixdown (to be fair, I usually am running more than 20, sometimes more than 30, audio and/or MIDI tracks and several plugins). BUt that old single core P4 is almost going into meltdown more often than it should be and in some cases, I have rendered all tracks and imported into Cubase for mixing because I can get more CPU efficiency from it.

The way "buy our new version of Live but do not forget buying also new computer" is not the best in my opinion even when the overall sound quality is not adequate in comparison with other DAW (still often worse).

[nbinder]

I have similar problems. If Live takes more than 40-50% of the CPU, i get severe glitches. No matter how high I set the samples count (and on a proper audio interface, yes).

I would be very very happy if Live was able to use 100% of my CPU.