So... is Live optimized for Altivec engine for Mac??

Geraldo · Post by **Geraldo** » Sun Oct 20, 2002 4:51 am

Alex,
You are so articulate.

Dirtystudios,
They may not have a lot of money but what they have should be spent on Altivec. Ultimately. it is solely Ableton's decision of course but Gerhardt himself said the message board is here so Ableton can know what features to give their customers. So I'm gonna keep whining until I hear them say no.

Post by **Bernd** » Sun Oct 20, 2002 4:55 pm

Hi, all.

Live is currently not optimized for a specific processor. And sorry to say, it will not be optimized in the upcoming version. But we are planning to do this in the future. Talking about the performance I would like to know what is really the bottleneck of you user experience. There are two areas that are pretty different.

a) Audio Performance:
The pure audio performance visible at the cpu meter in Live covers all audio calculations. Please have in mind that all third party parts - like vst effects and driver processor usage - in it cannot be influenced by us. But the rest can. But before we do the platform specific stuff like Altivec we will optimize the internal structure of the audio engine itself. This will boost the performance on all platforms and it is a nessassary change for platform specific performance optimisations.

b) Gui Performance:
This means the reaction time when you do some commands like copy/paste, zooming... . I have the feeling that currently that is a much bigger problem then the pure audio performance. Correct me if I'm wrong. We are currently optimizing this part and have already a precise list of what we want to improve but it would be nice to hear from you what is really disturbing you.

Regards, Bernd.

Alex Reynolds · Post by **Alex Reynolds** » Sun Oct 20, 2002 6:14 pm

Thank you for an official comment.

Essentially, there are a number of speed and quality problems with the way that Live handles sound under the Mac platform.

The GUI is probably not to blame for most Mac users using audio applications under OS X. Evidence is from many other audio applications under this platform not having the same issues that plague Live. The bottleneck is not the operating system any longer.

While more difficult to code than improving look and feel stuff, I look forward to major, fundamental improvements in how Live manages audio.

It might make sense -- and may be inevitable -- to look at some platform-specific "optimization" by using CoreAudio libraries for fast, multichannel audio.

A paid, major upgrade should address shortcomings in the application. At this time, Live's performance is one such shortcoming that most Mac users on this forum have complaints about.

-Alex

Geraldo · Post by **Geraldo** » Sun Oct 20, 2002 7:16 pm

I agree with Alex but I want to emphasize that the audio should be the primary focus. If Ableton indeed has limited resources to work with then please lets address audio performance before we worry about the GUI. I once again loaded the demo arrangement on my Tibook and my PC and I see my Mac is at 29% at bar 49 and my PC is at 18%.
The two machines are:

Tibook 800Mhz, 1GB RAM, MOTU 828, OS9
PC PIII 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, M-Audio Omi Studio/Delta 66, Windows 2000

The Tibook is maybe 20% slower than the PIII but uses faster RAM (1Mb DDR L3 cache). It should not be slower by 1/3. With the faster RAM it should (hopefully) perform similarly to the PC (I get even worse performance in OSX). This means I get 1/3 fewer tracks to play with on the Mac before I start to hear dropouts. I need more tracks and effects to do useful work on the Mac.

tjwett · Post by **tjwett** » Sun Oct 20, 2002 7:51 pm

mhz aside i think there is definitely something weird with the Mac performance. we did a test at work once that went like this:

G3 PowerMac(Blue&White) 450mhz, 512mb RAM 7200 RPM HD
vs.
Wintel P3 400mhz, 256mb RAM 7200 RPM HD

using the same audio files on each machine the Mac's CPU was at 33% and the PC was at 18%. the Mac was indeed a faster machine with more RAM and should have spanked the PC but it didn't.

Andrew K · Post by **Andrew K** » Sun Oct 20, 2002 9:33 pm

Hi Bernd,

Thanks for responding.

With regard to Mac perfomance, I'd guess 95% of us are more concerned about the Audio handling as oppossed to the GUI.

For a clear indication about the performance differences between Mac & PC you can go to the following thread:

Live Performance Test 1 and 2:

Curently there are about 85 posts on the subject and you'll see that Mac lags far behind in performance with Ableton Live.

Its great that you will be optimizing the code regadless of the platform so when you eventually do potimize it for Mac it will be much better.

Keep us posted.

Andrew K

os · Post by os » Mon Oct 21, 2002 8:55 am

Bernd wrote: Gui Performance:
This means the reaction time when you do some commands like copy/paste, zooming... . I have the feeling that currently that is a much bigger problem then the pure audio performance. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hi Bernd...

I think you're wrong. It's all about audio performance on my TiBook - the GUI is fine.

cheers,
os.

jory · Post by **jory** » Mon Oct 21, 2002 7:04 pm

thanks to Bernd for reaking the silence on this issue and many thanks to all of you who are expressing the needs of the mac user so eloquently.

FORMAT · Post by **FORMAT** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 7:33 am

Yes, thanks for the official comment - something way too seldomly given by software companies

cheers,

yon@ableton.com · Post by **yon@ableton.com** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 6:40 pm

Geraldo wrote: The Tibook is maybe 20% slower than the PIII but uses faster RAM (1Mb DDR L3 cache). It should not be slower by 1/3. With the faster RAM it should (hopefully) perform similarly to the PC .

As an aside, I will just interject here that L3 cache speed does not seem to have any significant impact on performace, across a wide range of applications. The main advantage cache provides is averting accesses to main memory, the penalty for which is much larger than that to access the L3. This was described in a white paper by one of the Apple upgrade manufacturers recently (possibly Sonnet?).

In any case, logic alone tells us that L3 speed has no impact on the streaming memory bandwidth of the system, which is, on the other hand, an important performace bottleneck for audio. (Not saying this has anything to do with the difference in performance you have noticed. I don't know anything about the machines involved, or hardware you are using.)

--yon

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Oct 27, 2002 7:32 pm

Who cares if the GUI is a little sluggish? The audience can't HEAR that. You can't HEAR that on a recording.

Audio dropouts should be FIRST PRIORITY!!!!!!
(and I DO experience audio dropouts on os9 and osx)

Geraldo · Post by **Geraldo** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 5:44 pm

Thanks Yon,
I am confused now. Does LIVE stream from RAM or the Hard Drive? If from the Hard Drive than it still must be stored in cache to buffer the stream. Right? Are you saying the L3 cache is only used as over run or what? Oh well, that's why I'm still in school. I am very happy to hear that Ableton will continue to improve audio efficiency. That will be very important for the future success of Live.
Anyway, I've switched back to OS9 and my clicks and dropouts have gone away. W2k/OmniStudio may acheive better CPU performance but LIVE crackles a little even at low work loads and OSX Jaguar was a big dissapointment for audio. OS9 is still faster on its feet for audio. I assume because the GUI is not so demanding. I have been happily working in a LIVE project in 9 on my Tibook/MOTU 828 and all is well. The cpu meter does not seem to necessarily indicate actual performance. I get higher meter levels on the Tibook but it can handle it better than the PC which breaks up lower. Go figure. The solution for me at the moment is OS9.

So... is Live optimized for Altivec engine for Mac??

Who cares about GUI? -- AUDIO!!!!!