Ableton Live 9 now available!

[accvi242]

I am most excited about the new clip automation recording. It works for the track in which I have virus control as an insert. Normally I add new MIDI tracks to play all 16 internal parts of the Virus. But how is it possible to record clip automation by turning knobs for these other tracks which have no virus control inserted? I didn't get it.

[Berni]

Originally Posted by accvi242

I am most excited about the new clip automation recording. It works for the track in which I have virus control as an insert. Normally I add new MIDI tracks to play all 16 internal parts of the Virus. But how is it possible to record clip automation by turning knobs for these other tracks which have no virus control inserted? I didn't get it.

Your virus can actually play 16 parts! What did you do? Hot rod it or something If you want to use the virus to control other functions then you have to use the midi mapping mode to assign the knobs to the parameter you want to automate.

[Berni]

OK my bad, I see what u are saying now. Although you can automate anything on the midi track the plug-in is on there doesn't seem to be any way of automating the midi channels playing other parts. I don't use multi mode too much so I have not noticed this before. There has to be a way but I'm still pretty new to Live & still getting my head around all the new stuff with 9.

[Berni]

So I have had a little time to play around with all the new stuff in Live 9 so here goes. It certainly is not quite as stable as 8 although it is certainly usable I find old sessions or even new ones take longer to load. It has crashed a couple of times when I have been really pushing it.
The new browser is cool although it could use more organisation but that is more down to me than ableton.
The audio to midi function is REALLY cool & works remakably well. It's not so good with samples that are very busy & have a lot of instruments/sounds in them but can provide some interesting results. It fairs better with solo instruments & drum loops that have clear transients. There are 3 modes to choose from, convert harmony, melody or drums to new midi track. Obviously the choice you make depends on the source sample. Depending on which option you choose Live will then assess the sample then put the resulting notes into a midi track along with a suitable instrument to play the result. If you have a drum loop for example it will split the midi notes into hihat, snare, kick etc. & load them into a drum rack. You can make any drum loop your own in a matter of seconds.
The other thing I'm in love with is the Max 4 Live devices it comes with. Max 4 Live is a totally user programmable language that lets the user create there own FX, instruments & sequencers. It comes with a lot of pre made stuff & there is a large community of enthusiasts constantly developing new stuff, most of which is free! Here's a short video about one of the devices that I really like, the monolake granulator...

http://youtu.be/9pn_b7OUO6I

[MBTC]

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.

I know this isn't the Ableton support forum and I've already been searching for clues there, but I thought I'd look for suggestions here as part of my research.

UPDATE #1: One thing I keep forgetting is that my latency / buffer settings are settable in the Saffire Mix software, then it applies to the ASIO settings for all apps. So I went back and experimented with different values and got same results. Plugin buffer size is set to same as audio interface.

UPDATE #2: Above I said if I start "pushing things a little". Pushing things a little to me might be overkill for some, but I noticed the popping before I started setting up ridiculously CPU intensive scenarios to reproduce and test. One that I've been using is the patch called "BS Mono Trancer" for Diva (under Patches > BrontoScorpio), then I change Mono to Poly and Accuracy to Divine. This is a brutal supersaw patch that will quickly put a major load on the CPU for sure, but this plays in FLStudio fine with plenty of room for more sound. Some of the less CPU intensive patches will play without pops of course. I can also reduce pops by choosing a ridiculously high buffer size, but that's no good because the latency is too high to play effectively (and there will still be pops even at 1024!)

[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.