Ableton Forum

I am running the latest version of Live 4 on WinXP SP1 on a VAIO with dual Pentium 4 processors, each at 2.4 gHz. I notice that when I open the task manager and click "set affinity" for Live, my second CPU is unchecked. If I assign the second processor to Live, the CPU usage meter in Live does not change and performance does not improve. Is Live designed to use multiple processors, and if so how can I make it work? Also, during my live performances, my computer will occasionally glitch and skip the audio (very painful!) when I trigger a new clip. Would having access to both of my processors improve this condition? I suppose it is possible for me to simplify my live setup, but I would like to avoid losing artistic flexibility at all costs. Thank you for your help

-Nick

nutshell: Live cannot use both processors.

-tim

Live 5 does not use 2 CPU on Mac OS X machines either. This makes me sad.

Not entirely true. Currently the audio engine is one single thread, and can only run on one processor. But if you have a dual CPU machine, everything appart from the pure audio stuff runs on the other CPU, and this means you can max out one CPU for audio without slowing down the interface. This is a significant performance boost. As far as true multi threading is concerned I am quite sure some day you will see a Live version which runs on 10 CPUs if desired and available. ( No, this is not an official statement, this is just a prediction of what every software company which is doing CPU intensive realtime processing will have to do in the future since this is where computer architechture is heading to )


Robert Henke
Ableton

I agree with Robert.

Run Activity Monitor while running Live, and you'll see both processors in use. If it's anything to go by, both processors on my G5 seem to be sharing whatever's going on under the hood while Live is running, although under higher Live demands, one processors bears most of the processing. It would be nice to see it shared equally.

thanks for the advice / knowledge

i assigned just about every system process apart from audio to my second processor and assigned ableton to the first...things are working much better now, no more hiccups during a gig...thanks again!

-Nick