POLL: Are you having servere LAGTIME using arrange view?

[supster]

NOTE... UPDATE!!: There are now over 900 views and only 68 votes ....

PLEASE if you are reading this, and you DONT have a problem as described in this thread .. take an instant to click NO so if it turns out to be a few unlucky souls, abelton wont waste too much time fixing a problem that isnt yours.

This is an unscientific sample, but please just click YES or NO either way so we can get some indication of how many people this problem is affecting.

Thanks. Only takes a second. click. so easy ...

ALSO: if you are having this issue, please take the time to mail support@ableton.com directly with system specs:

Copy the following and paste your specs in if it makes it easier for you

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A Live version and how many versions have you had this problem

B System:

CPU Type
Chipset
OS
RAM
HDD
Video Card
Audio Card

C Project

CPU Load (avg while problem is apparent)
# of MIDI Tracks
# of Audio Tracks
Devices on or off?

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This so we can find some common denomintors to the problem. Is it a chipset? Is it a particular video card / driver combo? Is it mainly a PC or MAC problem? Or any combination of other issues?

This is what theyve asked us to do and i think this is the best the way to put pressure on them to address this ASAP. There are too many people complaining about too many things in these threads for them to read it all

again, thanks

--

ISSUE


This is an issue has been brought up for a few years now by multiple features in multiple threads. For instance here:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... range+copy

.. where numerous people immediately recognized thier problem when it was described. Which is

There is a severe lag time performing any copy, paste, duplicate, move, or other changes to clips in the arrange grid.

Example:

Live Version:

5.02 ... however: its been the same and getting worse since Version 2! ie since i started using this program ...

System specs:

AMD 2600 XP
VIA chipset
Win XP SP2
1 GB RAM
7200 RPM HDD
RADEON 2600
M-Audio 24/96 PCI card

Project:

Approximately 20 MIDI tracks, 5 audio

Most MIDI VST's are off for this example. ie. the power button is off, all return FX are off, FX are on in the inserts because its not practical to turn them all off atm ... I have one drum VST running and an audio clip.

Operation:

CPU at 30%. CTRL-C to copy MIDI clip down the grid.

Audio continues but the screen freezes.

Lag time is anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds or more.

I'm averaging about 20 seconds. Per clip. Every single clip

NOTE: this is just for the copy. The corresponding paste takes another 20-30 seconds!

So this is up to and over 1 minute to copy and paste a single clip

This is for ANY size clip. Tiny one shot, 32 bar, Audio or MIDI: same.

Again ... any copy, duplicate, paste, move ... even CTRL-E to split the clip.


This means:

Routine use of the arrange grid for arranging and composing is for all intents and purposes unusable.

Some of us are long time loyal users that have been committed to using this sequencer for everything and we have tolerated this ... thinking that it could be our gear ... or that its something we have to live with until they will:

1 - acknowledge there is a problem and

2 - make it a priority to fix it


However its getting to the point where we cant work with it anymore. Its not practical. These operations are so basic and there are so many hundreds or thousands that need to be done for a project it isnt something that can be ignored.

If it takes you a full minute for every web page to load, and there are no indications that its your machine ... what do you do?

You get a new ISP. Why? Because using the internet is not practical anymore. You cant accomplish anything and the frustration is not worth it.

Ableton:

PLEASE - we all know it seems that there are endless bugs and feature requests and complaints, but we are hoping you understand that this is an app killer ..

You risk losing countless people to the competition and even long term loyal users by not addressing this openly and not giving any indication that it can and well be fixed.

I'm sending a modified copy of this to support@ableton.com.

AGAIN - Please dont be lazy and ignore this if you are having this issue! IF you expect it to be addressed there needs to be a large enough number of people that are taking the effort to pressure them

Thanks!!

[peeddrroo]

well i wouldn't say really nice and smooth, but it's very bearable.
one thing to think about before copying/duplicating is to stop the audio. this will reduce processing time a lot. it's just a question of habit: press space bar before Ctrl-D or V.

[supster]

yes, stopping audio marginally improves the issue but CPU usage is not the source of the problem:

ie. its worse the higher your resource meter goes, but in my example above the CTRL-C is still a 20 second wait. stopping audio output only reduces that by maybe 5 seconds.
.

[supster]

*bump

[Angstrom]

yes, dragging chunks around is very slow.

Doing a similar operation in Cubase is very fast, like no lag whatsoever.

In Ableton I can feel the application carrying data like it weighs 20 tons. saying to itself - " hmm, beat one, move that -4 bars, the velocity is 90, is that it? splutter, right next note ... "for about 30 seconds

in Cubase it is like there is a teleport button, like this - "moving - moved"

Sometimes I still open up my old copy of Cubase if my Ableton arrangement starts turning to syrup as I re-arrange.

I hope the Ableton team can figure out how Steinberg manage to drag huge amounts of data with no lag.

[Nokatus]

Yes, it needs to be emphasized that stopping audio is not the key here. This is not about the project CPU load, and occurs whether or not you have audio running.

In another current thread on the subject, I commented on a project of mine consisting of multiple channels behaving this way. I went and checked, and it's 43 channels to be exact. The thing is, there seems to be some sort of leaking issue in Live involved in all of this. As I'm now trying it, the project I wrote about behaves very nicely when first opening it. Ctrl-drag works as it should, everything is fine. After I have worked on it for a while, the speed of doing edits just gradually comes crashing down: a single Ctrl-drag operation can constantly give a near 10 second wait even if I try it with only 2-3 clips in the project. CPU load is at 0-2% and audio is stopped.

A more detailed description of the non-finished project: there are four instances of Impulse, and each of their slots are routed to an individual audio track (well, only five of them in the last instance). All Impulses are receiving MIDI from one single "Impulse Master" MIDI track. There's a Scale plugin in front of every Impulse in order to make them all receive an individual octave on the keyboard, essentially enabling me to use the Impulses accross four octaves on a keyboard through arming only one MIDI track. There are also four audio tracks for collecting each of the Impulse's individual slots into one group again before sending them to the Master outs. Also, there are four (still empty) Simpler instances and currently two effect sends with the Filter Delay and the Reverb active.

So, when not playing anything, the CPU load indeed sits at 0-2% at all times. And still, when the slowing down starts, a simple drag operation can give you a looooong wait.

[supster]

Yes, it needs to be emphasized that stopping audio is not the key here. This is not about the project CPU load, and occurs whether or not you have audio running.

..., there seems to be some sort of leaking issue in Live involved in all of this.

thanks for the replies guys - the more people that own up that this is happening and give some detailed descriptions the circumstances the more likely we are to get this addressed. again if you havent done so please take a minute to copy and mail your issue to support@ableton.com directly,
the more that do this the better our chances ..

another factor that might or might not indicate that Live has memory addressing or memory leak issues - and this is conjecture, im not a programmer:

Live has never been well behaved in releasing resoures on shutdown. and when i say never - again, its since i started using it - version 2

ie when shutting down, it takes a long time for it to "let go". the gui stays up and taskman shows hi CPU and memory usage for a good minute or two.

then when the gui disappears, its still shows in the taskman as a process. more often than not i need a complete reboot.

its a sign of basic inefficiency in the way that its coded.

just like the slowness in the arrange view, this problem on shutdown is a long term (very important to grasp, its not related to any new version or changes .. its a basic problem) issue that has never been adequately addressed

and i think people have been like myself: they have been so excited and so impressed by what Live does well, that they have tried to troubleshoot this and upgrade gear and tweak thier OS and once in a while have mentioned it on the forum ...

but they have accepted either "thats just the way it is" and/or have decided its only something about thier gear that is causing the issue, and therefore have not taken the effort to really pressure them about fixing it.

unfortunately i do think they are aware of it and by now theres a good chance this is not so simple to fix: it might need a complete overhaul to the core of the program because design errors were made back at the begginning and the rest of the application was built on a shakey foundation

in that case this is really bad news: for everyone, not just the people that have committed most of what they do to using Live, but for Ableton..

i do think theyve probably done very well for themselves over the past four years and will realize that sometimes you have to bite the bullet, admit that something screwed up badly, and invest the money and manpower into rebuilding some things from the ground up.
.

[Nokatus]

when shutting down, it takes a long time for it to "let go". the gui stays up and taskman shows hi CPU and memory usage for a good minute or two.

then when the gui disappears, its still shows in the taskman as a process. more often than not i need a complete reboot.

I agree on the fact that there's something fundamentally wrong with the editing functionality. However, I haven't experienced anything like this during Live shutdowns (and I'm an owner of both Live 4 and 5) so I'm not sure if these two issues are linked on such a fundamental core level. At least I hope they aren't

You're absolutely right that people who are currently having problems with the editing should definitely speak up and describe how the issue is manifesting on their setups. It's a real show stopper if one constantly has to be afraid of the "wait bug" kicking in while doing a tune.

Reading this forum and also discussing with my local Live using friends, it seems that there are definitely more users who are facing unrealistic wait times during simple drag operations than users who have never noticed the bug. The bottom line: editing material in Live would otherwise be extremely efficient and intuitive, so it really saddens me to bump into situations where it's evident that this one single nerve-wrecking issue has actually started to give it an overall bad reputation as an editing environment

[[nednerb]]

I haven't noticed the editing problem as intensely as some of you, but I did notice in task manager that Live "5.0.2.exe" slowly gains mem usage even when I'm doing nothing in Live. Editing does slow down some, but I have other problems that arise in my setup. I do notice as the program drains my RAM that audio breaks up in certain circumstances. When I record on a monitered track while another track is playing back, I get scratches so layering with instruments while hearing what was just made has become very difficult. Four days ago, no problem like this existed that I could detect. I sent support@ableton.com a letter. I like Live, but want it working well. [/list]

[Nod]

The thing is, there seems to be some sort of leaking issue in Live involved in all of this.

Agreed. There have been several posts about this on the forum. With 5.02 Abe's said that one leak had been fixed - "Depending on the audio buffer size, the number of audio clips within a Live set and the number of audio clips with the 'RAM' switch activated there was a memory leak which could in a worst case increase the memory usage because an overflow in an internal queue"

Which is great. But it still hasn't addressed the problem of why Live 5.0 uses so much RAM in the first place and why it seemingly uses it so badly. I should counter this by saying that 'it might just be my system'. I've noticed that even creating a basic 16 channel template with a Live gate & eq on each channel - uses a whole lot of memory even when it's not doing anything/no clips in session or arrangement.

System:

CPU Type: P4 2.6c
Chipset: Intel Perl
OS: XP SP1a - absolute minimum services & config
RAM: 512Mb DDR 400
HDD: 120Gb SATA Int & 200Gb Firewire Ext
Video Card: Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb
Audio Card: Audiophile 24/96 PCI

[Crealive]

LAG:
I experience the same lag when editing as mentioned above. Typically I have a wait of around 10 sec when dragging and dropping clips, which is a pain. I have learned to live with it but often find myself bitching at Live - This is a number one problem for me.

MEM:
Live takes up far too much memory and for some strange reason it has started eating more ram the last few weeks (might be my system - still eats a lot of ram though) - my latest song is getting harder and harder to work on. And yes, I also experience Live getting slower and slower after using it for a while. Rebooting and Restarting fixes this for a while. Also a huge problem!

CLOSING:
Live does not close properly. I nearly always get blue-screened when closing it. It's the only program on my PC that does this. Otherwise my system is rock-solid. In regards to closing Live I have also experienced several times that Live has to be re-registered when opening it again. So it somehow deletes or make my config files fail.

RECORDING:
Several times I have experienced that the red recording button stays on. It simply won't go off - this always ends with Live telling me that something went terribly wrong and that I have to save my work. Saving my work kills the file I'm saving it to. When opening the file again I get nothing. Therefore I save my work very often to a new file each time.


I hope the reason why we haven't heard much from Ableton the last weeks is because they are working hard on fixing these issues. They are, as is mentioned in this thread, truly show stoppers and application killers. Could not agree more.

System:

CPU Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor 3.2 GHz with Hyper threading
Chipset: SiS 648FX
OS: XP SP2
RAM: 512Mb
HDD: 60 GB Unknown Brand
Video Card: ATI MOBILITY RADEON? 9600 with 128MB external DDR-SDRAM
Audio Card: Tascam US-122

[elemental]

Thanks for starting this thread, this is the number one source of frustration when trying to finish a track in Live!! Makes everything take soooo loooong!!

I dont understand why Ableton have not even given us a reason why this is so and if they are working on it or what... we pay our money for a product that is billed as "... the choice for demanding productions and remixing. Live delivers the professional features you need to produce and perfect your music."

Sorry, but copying and pasting clips in arrange is a basic requirement of a music production program. Not even a 'professional feature' ... so please, at least show us you're listening.

[Emissary]

I belive this has to do with the flawless audio engine.

So the audio stream doesnt cut out , things like copy/paste are but into the background,

I guess it happens a little when the audio stream isnt playing aswell doesnt it though. Maybe when you hit stop, you could have a button that turns the audio engine off aswell, like Sonar.

But i would prefer slow graphics and a constant audio stream anyday rather than the other way round.

[Alien Leg]

50 midi tracks in my project, no instrument, no fx, playback is stopped, cpu: 2%, 1 midi clip: dragging of this one clip takes 15 seconds! Unbelievable!
Until this gets fixed no one can consider Live a serious DAW.

[Nokatus]

I guess it happens a little when the audio stream isnt playing aswell doesnt it though. Maybe when you hit stop, you could have a button that turns the audio engine off aswell, like Sonar.

A little?

...


A little??



Seriously, the audio isn't playing, CPU load is down at a minimum, and still we're seeing wait times like 10-15 seconds just to Ctrl-drag one puny clip to another location... In a project with a total of only three clips! This isn't "a little". After a while of tedious dragging, waiting, dragging, waiting and dragging some more, we are actually ending up with several minutes of editing time for simple, intuitive tasks which should only take seconds. It's against everything Live has stood for.

Also note that if it really was about the flawless audio engine, the editing behaviour would still be consistent. Now there might be hardly any noticeable lag during edits when you first open a project, then after a moment editing has gotten cumbersomely slow. For this reason alone, the audio engine priority is not an acceptable explanation.