Ableton Live 9 now available!

[Berni]

[quote=MBTC;302758]I realized I had a light version of Ableton Live 8, so I've been checking it out, learning the Live way of doing things etc.

One of the things I noticed was that CPU-intensive plug-ins start making cracking and popping noises if I push them even a little. For example something like Diva I tried the same patch being played the same way on Live8 and FLStudio. The ASIO driver for my Saffire Pro 24 has what I assume is a fixed buffer size of 384 and 9ms latency (I'm not able to change the setting either in Live or FLStudio, whereas it is adjustable if I use the Creative X-Fi Asio driver) but the symptom sounds similar to when latency is set too low. The CPU meter will show about the same % in each application, but the sound difference is like night and day, very clear in FLS and sounds like the monster synth Diva can be, whereas in Live the same synth crackles, cuts out, sounds like its robbing notes. I'm 100% sure the settings are the same in each plugin instance, same PC, same audio interface, etc.

I know its probably solvable with a setting somewhere and is not Live itself, but since I can't change latency / buffer size I'm not sure where to start. I seriously doubt there is any sort of compatibility problem with the audio interface or driver, because Ableton/Focusrite seem to have kind of a partnership here and Live is basically what the audio interface recommends by shipping a Live Lite CD with it.

You can adjust buffer size/latency in Live's preferences.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Berni

You can adjust buffer size/latency in Live's preferences.

Yeah, I wrote an update about that (see above). The reason the values were locked (read-only) in Live is because with a Firewire Saffire audio interface, you have to change it in the Mixer control.

But still, even with ridiculously large buffer sizes I still get crackles and pops with CPU heavy synths, yet I can do same in FLS without any problems. I did a lot of reading on the forums and some folks seem to never get past this point in Live This would be a deal breaker for me.

I saw one guy say that if you have more than one sound device (i.e. in my case the external audio interface plus an internal sound card) you have to be sure your system sounds are sent only through the regular sound card while Ableton uses the pro audio interface. I tried everything short of physically removing the soundblaster card. Maybe I will do that today. But it's frustrating to run into something like this that works fine in FLStudio.

[TweakHead]

That's not normal. In my system, which is a mac, it goes the other way around. I have a good performance on Logic, but I feel that Live is somewhat lighter on the system. What I think you should do is contact your soundcard's manufacturer with as much detailed info as you can, as I'm sure you won't be the only one with those problems. They may even have some step-guide to fix it - worth giving a shot I guess.

But all in all, Diva is one heck of a cpu eater.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by TweakHead

That's not normal. In my system, which is a mac, it goes the other way around. I have a good performance on Logic, but I feel that Live is somewhat lighter on the system. What I think you should do is contact your soundcard's manufacturer with as much detailed info as you can, as I'm sure you won't be the only one with those problems. They may even have some step-guide to fix it - worth giving a shot I guess.

But all in all, Diva is one heck of a cpu eater.

I have a feeling it is related to having two audio interfaces in the PC, but it's very weird that it doesn't occur with "light load" sounds. I saw folks in the Live forums that apparently just accepted this sort of limitation as the way things always are with software synths. It made me wonder if that's why software based synths have a rep for being inadequate compared to hardware? Maybe its due to underlying technical troubles like this.

The audio interface is Focusrite, the Live 8 Lite edition was distributed with it. Even when I load Live, the splash screen says "Focusrite Edition". The other sound card is a Creative X-Fi. That could be related to the problem, still investigating. I hope not, because I have yet another audio interface, the Ultranova (which is just not plugged in at the moment because I wanted to eliminate it as a culprit), so if multiple audio interfaces is an issue that could be a bigger problem for me going forward, as I could potentially have as many as five audio interfaces to a PC at once:

1. Onboard sound
2. Creative X-Fi
3. Focusrite Saffire Pro 24
4. Novation UltraNova
5. Virus TI audio (assuming I get another Virus in the future)

At least the first 4 above work like a champ, no questions asked with FLStudio on same PC. I really hope it doesn't come down to the PC version of Live just not being as reliable as the Mac version.

Scary to see people on the Live forums that have conceded that Diva, Zebra, Omnisphere and such are just too CPU intensive. That's not the case when things are properly configured.

[Berni]

Originally Posted by MBTC

I have a feeling it is related to having two audio interfaces in the PC, but it's very weird that it doesn't occur with "light load" sounds. I saw folks in the Live forums that apparently just accepted this sort of limitation as the way things always are with software synths. It made me wonder if that's why software based synths have a rep for being inadequate compared to hardware? Maybe its due to underlying technical troubles like this.

The audio interface is Focusrite, the Live 8 Lite edition was distributed with it. Even when I load Live, the splash screen says "Focusrite Edition". The other sound card is a Creative X-Fi. That could be related to the problem, still investigating. I hope not, because I have yet another audio interface, the Ultranova (which is just not plugged in at the moment because I wanted to eliminate it as a culprit), so if multiple audio interfaces is an issue that could be a bigger problem for me going forward, as I could potentially have as many as five audio interfaces to a PC at once:

1. Onboard sound
2. Creative X-Fi
3. Focusrite Saffire Pro 24
4. Novation UltraNova
5. Virus TI audio (assuming I get another Virus in the future)

At least the first 4 above work like a champ, no questions asked with FLStudio on same PC. I really hope it doesn't come down to the PC version of Live just not being as reliable as the Mac version.

Scary to see people on the Live forums that have conceded that Diva, Zebra, Omnisphere and such are just too CPU intensive. That's not the case when things are properly configured.

Well I don't know about anybody eleses set up but I can run the virus & dozens of soft synths, samplers & FX without any problems or getting near to critical mass so to speak so it's definitely not a limitation of Live only other peoples systems & lets face it EVERYONE is different. I have some pretty CPU intensive synths, Massive etc. & it runs many instances without a problem & my buddy who is also a Live user runs all the synths you mentioned on his set up all day long.
Abletons support is really very good so I would also contact them about the issues you are having with the soundcards.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Berni

Well I don't know about anybody eleses set up but I can run the virus & dozens of soft synths, samplers & FX without any problems or getting near to critical mass so to speak so it's definitely not a limitation of Live only other peoples systems & lets face it EVERYONE is different. I have some pretty CPU intensive synths, Massive etc. & it runs many instances without a problem & my buddy who is also a Live user runs all the synths you mentioned on his set up all day long.
Abletons support is really very good so I would also contact them about the issues you are having with the soundcards.

I have a feeling it is something that Live doesn't like about my particular PC. I've tried just about everything at this point except for trying another PC which I might do in the future. I have no doubt the experience on the Mac is different -- that's one thing I commonly see with software that supports multiple platforms, sometimes one platform's version gets slightly more attention than another, and to be fair their QA department has a lot more work cut out for them on the PC and the myriad hardware possibilities than they do on a Mac.

I tried disabling everything that might remotely interfere, including the NVidia HD Audio drivers (which are weird, they are there apparently for the HDMI port on the video card... don't remember asking for these!).

Anyway without meaning to, I've kind of screwed up a thread about Live 9 with a bunch of woes about Live 8.4, so I should probably just bug out - sorry for that, as its not really the right place. I might bail on Live for now and try it later with a different version (as far as I could tell, Live 9 Lite was not a download option for me). If anyone is using Live 8 on a PC and can possibly help, even if a PM, its appreciated.

[Berni]

Live lite has been replaced by Live intro, its $119 usd. They will probably throw it in for free on future gear bundles.