High CPU usage

[Bostad]

Hello all!

I've got an awesome new rig.
Still I got these + 40 CPU when I'm in Live.

i5 4670
SSd 120 Gb
8Gb Ram

I mean, how is this even possible. Does it have to do something with Asio maybe?

Cheers!

[seanlinman]

Which version of live, and what have you got loaded on to it ?

What's the usage on build in sound card ?

[Bostad]

Which version of live, and what have you got loaded on to it ?

What's the usage on build in sound card ?

9.1 Live
Some Divachannels (I know it's heavy on the CPU, but not that heavy, not on this cpu)

What do you mean?

Thanks for helping!

[seanlinman]

'Some' isn't exactly accurate number. Lol diva can kill my mbp with one instance on higher settings (granted it's an old core 2 duo)

SSD will have hardly any bearing on performance, same with RAM in this instance.

Just check that you have Multicore Processor support switched on in Preferences/CPU Tab

I was just wondering if you are using external sound card, but come to think about it, it shouldn't have much bearing on the CPU usage anyway.

[ImNotDedYet]

Yes, make sure multicore processing is checked.

You can always increase your audio buffers as well, but best bet would be to bounce the tracks to audio

[olisharp]

Dude 40% cpu is no big deal! My MBP is 2 months old, and a completed tune will be running like 70 to 80% cpu.

If you're using a laptop make sure it's plugged into power - I've have 110% usage then when I plugged in the power it dropped to 40%!!

I've found that "tidying up" my Ableton set reduces the CPU load as well (grouping, routing similar sounds to busses, etc). I've also noticed that in the arrangement view, if you have lots of short clips looping it rinses my cpu - consolidating them sorts it right out!

The "freeze track" feature is great, make use of this if you're running out of CPU. Ableton won't let you freeze a track if side chain compression is involved - but there's an easy trick to get round this. Group the track you want to freeze (with just that track in the group) move the compressor from the track to the group, then you can freeze the track and still get the side chain compression.

[Jigglebizz]

Hey guys. Professional software engineer and computer scientist here.

You want to make sure stuff like chrome and steam are dead. I have a script that I run to start Ableton that kills all processes that are likely to compete for resources. An SSD actually might help - your samples will load much more quickly and there won't be a buffer between them and memory, which is handled via the CPU. RAM might help too. If you run out of RAM, samples are moved from RAM to the page file on your HD, which is handled by the CPU. When you want to recall those samples, another sample is juggled out and the old one brought back to memory. This will all contribute to high CPU usage, especially if your filesystem is fragmented and the CPU has to go through a bunch of symbolic links.

Just to be clear - there is a HUGE difference between a Core 2 Duo and an Ivy Bridge i5. There's a lot more to consider these days than Ghrz and Cores. The ram bus and cache sizes are much more important now, and ivy bridge processors don't even compare to the old core2's.

That being said, I've got a similar i5 in my laptop, cache drive, 16 GB RAM, and I still get pretty high CPU loads when producing. Your computer manufacturer does have a lot to do with it. Mine's a Lenovo, which has a pretty shitty USB driver. Because of this, a lot of resources a used up when I have more devices plugged in and samples dropped on the way to my interface. Who made your computer?

[djrickdawson]

are you running 32bit or 64bit ableton live?

running 64 bit uses a 64bit computer more effectively
running 32bit is a bottleneck... I had endless problems with crashes from the 32bit version

64bit sorted that out perfectly.