Ableton Live 9 now available!

[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.