Using Ableton Live which has never stuttered on me, I've just started using the instrument racks where I've been loading around 3 VSTi's in each.

I think I have about three of these racks Live and started playing my track, then I got Ableton stuttering and the CPU indicator up at about 85% and Disk overload lighting up.

Should I replace my 10,000 RPM Raptor disk with an SSD first or scrap that and get a more CPU heavy PC, like an intel i7 or something.

I have 8GB RAM.

Appreciated any tech help!

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To run 3 measly instruments, you definitely don't need a fast computer or a fast hard drive. I was managing just fine with that load over 5 years ago, on not-so-state-of-the-art hardware.

The one thing you didn't bother to mention is probably the most important, and that's your sound card.

Are you using the worthless onboard "HD Audio" that came with your motherboard? Yes? Stop using it, and get an audio card that's designed for media production.

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quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut To run 3 measly instruments, you definitely don't need a fast computer or a fast hard drive. I was managing just fine with that load over 5 years ago, on not-so-state-of-the-art hardware. The one thing you didn't bother to mention is probably the most important, and that's your sound card. Are you using the worthless onboard "HD Audio" that came with your motherboard? Yes? Stop using it, and get an audio card that's designed for media production.

Bingo.

The other thing to check is that you have your chipset drivers installed for your particular motherboard and flash the latest BIOS.

I can't tell you how much my last PC DAW saw in improvement from that - it was like I upgraded to a brand new computer.

These men speaketh the truth.

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Try turning them off 1 by 1 (instruments and effects) to find the culprit. Ableton is particularly bad with resources. You can max it out by running plugins that do not support multi core.

I had the same thing going on where my production partner had dual cpu quad core xeon and couldn't play the track while I had it running smoothly on an old amd 2500+.

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Last edited by Storyteller on Aug-17-2011 at 10:58

Ok great thanks for these tips.

I'm using a USB2 Edirol UA-25 External sound card, not enough bandwidth via USB maybe?

I am using allot of samples but consolidate them down to single samples and I've also tried using the "load to RAM" setting Ableton has without much difference.

I thought windows7 automatically downloaded all the latest drivers but I can check the driver versions for the chipset.

I'll let you know how I get on with the driver update, any tips on the sound card I own appreciated too.

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Last edited by daeus on Aug-17-2011 at 20:59

Updated chipset/BIOS no change. Soundcard?

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quote:

Originally posted by daeus Updated chipset/BIOS no change. Soundcard?

Storyteller is right, disableton is a bit of a hog when it comes to resources and sometimes there's no immediately apparent logic to it.

However, you'll need to update the driver on your soundcard. That edirol needs to use the win7 64 bit driver in advanced mode, otherwise it will not give great performance,

Sell that PC and get a mac.

Then get logic

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Hm.

Maybe its the project itself, I will create a new one and start adding iRacks and VSTi's to this to see what happens, I'll make a note of any cpu intensive Vsti's.

I know Mac OS is supposed to be more efficient but surely with the power I have it shouldn't be a problem.

By the way I have 40 channels in use, some have sounds I use from time to time others have midi patterns I don't currently use, I don't know if this is a problem.

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Last edited by daeus on Aug-17-2011 at 22:34

Found an ableton live performance tool and users system comparisons so will spend some time figuring out where my machine stands.

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=111880

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I run way more than that with duel core 2gb ram on xp...

Somethings certainly not right