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Hey all... I've been workin with live for about a year now to create a bunch of tracks, many of which I have posted about here, and I'm gettin pretty close to being confident enough to make a demo and actually try to get out to do some live PA stuff at some local clubs. In my vision of doing live PA with live I"m goin out with my computer, a midi controller or two set up to launch clips and scenes from the tracks I've created in session view and about 10-15 tracks I"ve created in ableton in one large track so I can trigger said clips and scenes to move the crowd... However, I'm starting to realize that I may be asking too much of my computer (1st Gen black Macbook), as I"ve started to try to create the mixtape and I'm running into massive cpu issues. I'm seeing huge spikes on the meter, which of course are leading to sound cut outs, and I know it's because I have too many tracks loaded up.... I've tried freezing and even flattening everything, but I still can't get the cpu usage to stay within normal limits... Is it possible that adding more ram will help this (I'm maxing out my computer at the end of the month because I know it wouldn't hurt.... but I'm wondering if I"m goin to be let down after I do it.)
Now I know that live is supposed to be great for live performance, but I'm not sure I understand how people are using it for that if cpu usage spikes when you have too many scenes or clips in a set using session view... If you are using live for live PA performances, how are you doing it? Do you use session view and the clips and scenes you created for your own tracks? If so how do you set it up so it doesn't cause the cpu spikes?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Peace
TeachONE
Now I know that live is supposed to be great for live performance, but I'm not sure I understand how people are using it for that if cpu usage spikes when you have too many scenes or clips in a set using session view... If you are using live for live PA performances, how are you doing it? Do you use session view and the clips and scenes you created for your own tracks? If so how do you set it up so it doesn't cause the cpu spikes?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Peace
TeachONE
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Re: Using session view to do a live performance....
Thu, July 5, 2007 - 10:38 AMI'm curious about this, too. I have a smokin', latest and greatest, mbpro and
still get a cutout every once in a while. 2.3 gh with 2 g ram. Didn't think I would
have ANY problems with it.
So, I second the question. Thanks, all!
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Re: Using session view to do a live performance....
Thu, July 5, 2007 - 12:00 PMI find Lucian's comments more puzzling than yours, TeachONE, because I have a DJ set that I use exclusively in session view with two MIDI controllers that has 98 tracks in it. I don't use anything that hasn't been rendered out to an audio file, and in many cases have four tracks launched and I'm looping parts of each to augment & phuckify whatever the primary track is. I have a MacBook 1.83 GHz Core Duo and 2GB of RAM, I've never had any audio problems with the exception of when I have all of my audio routed through an aux loop through my Kaoss Pad, and that's only when I forget to add a limiter - all of the pops are from the pad itself.
I'm curious from both of you what kind of interface you're using, where your latency is at, and whether you are managing your decode cache or letting Ableton do it. -
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Re: Using session view to do a live performance....
Thu, July 5, 2007 - 12:04 PMWhen I say 98 tracks, by the way, I mean full-length tracks of anywhere from 4 to 15 minutes in length all from 320K mp3 files that Ableton has decoded into it's cache. I'm also committing the cardinal sin of running everything from the local drive - I don't use the external for performances, although I keep it along with me just in case. I've used this same set for... hmm... going on 50 performances or so
I only recently broke the master set out into smaller ones of 30-40 because it's too much to keep track of on a 13" screen... -
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Re: Using session view to do a live performance....
Thu, July 5, 2007 - 12:19 PMI've done a similar thing, arranging all of the songs in the clip view for indexing by bpm, then loading them in to session view for playback... I'm quite aware that MIDI tracks use much more cpu than audio...
I 'deactivate' all of the clips/songs which I'm not currently using, which seems to ease the cpu usage.
I choose to run my decoding cache and music library from a 7200rpm external drive, freeing the stock drive for program use.
The dual core is sertainly a benefit to the live performer, as is plenty of ram.
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Re: Using session view to do a live performance....
Fri, July 6, 2007 - 8:21 AMRev... When you say you have all of your songs rendered out into audio files, do you have different elements of the songs rendered so you can trigger them whenever you want, or are you basically mixing it as though you were a dj (you have the whole track and are cueing it to the part you want inside of headphones)... I have a feeling I'll be trying it this way soon, but I guess my next question whould be when you are setting up the different loops how is the screen rendering reacting simply because the user manual specifically says screen rendering is sacrificed for sound, which normally wouldn't bother me in session view, but if I"m tryin to set up a loop might be a bit irritating...
"I'm curious from both of you what kind of interface you're using, where your latency is at, and whether you are managing your decode cache or letting Ableton do it."
The last part of what you said is mostly in another language to me.... I've played around with latency to try to make it work better.... rather unsuccessfully, and I have no idea what the decode cache is.... so I'd love it if you cleared some of this up and maybe gave me some of the parameters you work within... (ie. where you have you latency set....)
Thanks though, at least hearing that somebody uses more than one or two tracks they created in live in their sets gives me hope that I'll be doing the same thing soon...
TeachONE -
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Re: Using session view to do a live performance....
Fri, July 6, 2007 - 3:46 PMyou can alter the latency settings for your audio interface (soundcard) and in Ableton, so that sound quality will be president to program reaction time to keystrokes...
the decoding cache is a file in one of the Ableton folders, which contains recently used samples or songs; the decoding cache holds WAVE renderings of all of your recently used MP3s, Lossless files... etc. for instant use. If your decoding cache is on your boot drive, it may have to compete with the programs for CPU... and, if it gets too big, it may be slow to access... it's a good idea to periodically clean your decoding cache of old or unused samples/songs, through the preferences menu.
I've DJed using session view by cueing up songs...etc... seeing both of the waveforms at the same time is pretty cool... potential for projection onto a screen.
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