dragging parts or copy in arrange still appallingly slow

roby · Post by **roby** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:34 pm

forge wrote:I'm really starting to think there needs to be an option in the Prefs to choose between studio or live mode - live mode gives priority to uninterrupted audio at the expense of CPU, studio mode frees up CPU and eases off on the real time side of things

I would definitely put it in studio mode for most of the time then only use live mode for working on live sets and doing gigs

might give it it's own thread - I have before, but worth bumping...

i suggested this once too... http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... highlight=

unusable · Post by **unusable** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:17 pm

longjohns wrote:
anti-banausic wrote: I have noticed this from time to time. Both things in fact. Something strange happened about a week ago....My logitech MX-310 optical mouse starting creating spikes just when moving the cursor around. Don't know why, but it happened when I was using a Belkin USB hub to try to connect the mouse, the BCR2000, and the UC33e into two USB ports on the laptop. When I bypassed the hub, and just utilized three USB ports (which for a reason is not optimal) the problem went away.

this is almost exactly what was happening for me, except replace controllers with BCF and Oxy8.

Who knows for sure what the current state of IRQ's is in Windows? I was under the impression that worrying about this wasn't necessary anymore because of IRQ sharing in XP or whatever.

However, when I was diagnosing this problem and saw that my video card and USB root hub were sharing an IRQ, i was very suspicious. Especially because the problem seemed to be with a conflict between activity on the USB controller and video performance.

I disabled the USB hub which was sharing with the video card. I think moving the mouse off the USB was the kicker for me, but I figure removing that hardware coinflict can't have hurt either.

just curious lj(or anyone else), have you spoken or corresponded with tech support on this issue? Have they suggested the USB IRQ conflict as a possible root cause? I for instance notice that redraw is very slow, but having my USB externals causing the problem seems pretty stupid and useless.

roby · Post by **roby** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:21 pm

you would also have to consider USB dongles, etc. but they probably don't hog as much resources as a USB mouse or keyboard...

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:37 pm

Interesting hearing this about USB hubs - I had actually forgotten I was using one - I have a 4 way unpowered USB hub/(splitter?) with a wireless optical mouse, and a USB keyboard (which I hardly use any more) and the printer which isnt always turned on - I have all this on the last of 3 USB2 ports - so the first one is the UC33, the 2nd one cable modem, 3rd one, hub

I seem to recall the USB root hub on the motherboard has 6 ports available (spread accross the 3) so all of that uses them up

going to bed now but I'll check it out tomorrow

supster · Post by **supster** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 5:59 pm

unusable wrote:just curious lj(or anyone else), have you spoken or corresponded with tech support on this issue? Have they suggested the USB IRQ conflict as a possible root cause?

actually with the amount of surrounding this long term issue with thier product, over the course of a couple of years now there has been little to no suggestions or much public acknowledgement of it.

it went on for a long time before someone (robert) came foward and said they definitely were aware of it and were working on it.

i dont have any USB IRQ conflicts and (obviously, look at my number of posts) the problem is very very bad on my system. so it cant be the root cause from what i can see

i think its definitely one of those issues where - there are a number of factors that can make it worse (lack of RAM, overtaxed RAM, conflicts .. etc etc) but these things only make it worse

none of them address the root cause, which is a faulty design

.

supster · Post by **supster** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:29 pm

NOTE: another thing that seems to help

after youve worked on a project to the point where nothing seems to be making much of an improvement on the problem (bouncing VSTs to
audio, deleting them etc) ...

- save the set as a new set under a different name

- save self contained.

- close Live and re-open your new set and work on that

this seems to marginally help for a while. does *not* make the problem go away, but copying and pasting seems to go faster.

as before, any moves by dragging / duplicating / CTRL-drag copies are still very slow to the point of unusabilty, but (top of my head) this seems to make it about 30% faster

so its two things that point to this being a very odd issue:

1 - What is the difference between Copy (CTRL-C)/Paste (CTRL-V) and
Drag/Duplicate/CTRLdrag copy? and why is the former so much more efficient and the latter almost completely useless on these systems.. and

2 - What is it about an ALS that becomes "gummed up" the deeper you get into the projects, so that re-initializing the project to a new ALS makes any difference at all

I think answering these two questions is part of the key to solving the whole thing

.

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 12:49 am

supster wrote: 2 - What is it about an ALS that becomes "gummed up" the deeper you get into the projects, so that re-initializing the project to a new ALS makes any difference at all

I think answering these two questions is part of the key to solving the whole thing

.

Robert was actually trying to explain memory leaks to me and this "gumming up" you mentioned sounds like it could be something related

I could have missed important bits but what I understood was that it was to do with buffering and the computer not correctly letting go of a buffer after playing a sound - so for example a for a hit hat to play it grabs a bit of memory - very small - for the hi-hat then lets go of it when the sound has played, so if it doesnt properly let go of the buffer then over time what is only a tiny bit of memory builds up and becomes a problem - like wise I think it can affect the plug-ins auto disable (the way plug-ins are designed to bypass when they are not used to save cpu) so if the sounds arent being properly released from memory then the plug-in doesnt bypass either - also using up CPU

I could have got that all wrong, but it seemed to make sense when he explained it

Sweetjesus once mentioned "looking under the hood" when he was getting the spikes and one of the comments he made was there were memory leaks and the point Robert made about memory leaks is they have to be systematically found then squashed - you have to find them in action before you can get rid of them - but then once you've got rid of it it stays got rid of

anyway, I'm sure they are working on it and you can be sure they dont want this to be happening - I guess live is doing un conventional things with its real time eemphasis so it must create a new bunch of problems that need to be found and squashed

Also I seem to have noticed when Ableton is quiet about something it usually means they're working on it - they only seem to comment on it when they have something tangible to say, either good or bad, but if they havent solved it yet or decided it cant be solved they dont tend to comment

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 1:20 am

unusable wrote:just curious lj(or anyone else), have you spoken or corresponded with tech support on this issue? Have they suggested the USB IRQ conflict as a possible root cause? I for instance notice that redraw is very slow, but having my USB externals causing the problem seems pretty stupid and useless.

no, i haven't ever talked to ableton tech support, about anything, actually.

supster · Post by **supster** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 10:30 pm

forge wrote: anyway, I'm sure they are working on it and you can be sure they dont want this to be happening

yes i remember reading this post of yours a while back

well i should hope they dont want it to be happening because its destroying the reputation of thier product as a writing tool.

ive been living with and beating my brains out on a basically non-functional product for the better part of a year now. its not that im masochistic:

all of my time investment is in learning Live as a production tool and this is what i know how to use. im also committed in the middle of a bunch of projects and wont/cant redo them completley in another sequencer.

but other people ive talked to are not nearly as committed as i am, and dont bother to learn to use it the way i do, because of this and the audio problems.

they use it for soundesign and doing mix sets mainly. the only person i know personally that uses it as a full arrangment tool is (like i said) on a dual G5 with 8 gigs of RAM. and even then it hitches under load whereas his logic 7 never does

.

wildcon · Post by **wildcon** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:15 pm

Hi,

This is a problem with Live as a program.

I have a completely optimised DAW (by professionals) there is nothing running in the background etc. It is set up for music only.

I have 2 gig of RAM.

I have no usb devices plugged in.

I tried to move tracks (about 6 tracks in the middle of the overall mix) within a DJ mix and it proved impossible.

I actually gave up and had to put out the CD mix as was.

This is frankly unacceptable for a professional program.

Is there anyway to move using a nudge type function.

I exported all the tracks to Cubase and had absolutley no problems, but obviously lose the flexibility of Live.

dpel · Post by **dpel** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:44 pm

we may have to revert to earlier versions of Live.
I remember working very fast and efficiently with V3.
But now that i use live as a full production DAW i need the MIDI.
so maybe i downgrade back to 4.0.1
it's interesting though, all of the convinient features in 5.x (browser, gui things, locator) makes getting around very easy. but maybe these features are what's
causing the slowness, stickyness of the program.

supster · Post by **supster** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:01 pm

dpel wrote: it's interesting though, all of the convinient features in 5.x (browser, gui things, locator) makes getting around very easy. but maybe these features are what's
causing the slowness, stickyness of the program.

this doesnt seem to be the case.

the arrange view was never efficient, it was never fully "functional" in the sense that you could freely move copy duplicate paste and do serious audio editing in a project under load

its was very bad in version 4 and it was bad in version 3 and bad in version 2. it was always bad. again - point i keep coming back to - by design. its bad because of the way its been designed and implemented, not because of the customers hardware or because we're asking it to do more than reasonable.

I know this because the core of my system (motherboard, chip) has remained the same over the past 2 and a half or three years and everything else has been replaced, down to the case and power supply. so i have had a chance to see this problem over muliple versions of Live with all these other factors removed and replaced

Nothing has 'fixed' it. Some things and techniques will make it marginally better, but there is no cure other than overcompensating Live with tons of CPU and RAM.

going back is impossible because:

- there is no conversion utility to convert 5 projects to 4

- certain features / instruments in 5 are essential to the way i work already and

- Live 3 doesnt support VST, and so many other essential features that bouncing to all audio and trying to finish tracks in that would limit and hamper the creation way too much

.

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:26 pm

Anyway, I have a feeling Live 6 will see some major overhaul to arrange - Robert at the Brisbane Live clinic mentioned how they were well aware of it's short comings and are keen to sort it out

Personally I think the automation in arrange is a pain in the arse too - really fiddly and not at all easy to get accurate - plus no constrain direction if you want to drag a breakpoint, no exact values - it could be ALOT better and Arrange was always the inferior - navigation is not brilliant by any stretch

Arrange is one of the biggest problems now so I think it will be largely sorted for 6

supster · Post by **supster** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:15 pm

forge wrote: Robert at the Brisbane Live clinic mentioned how they were well aware of it's short comings and are keen to sort it out

the day i boot up Live 6 and im moving stuff around, copying, zooming in and making edits and crafting whole tracks without wanted to punch a hole through my monitor will be one of the most relieving, satisfying days of my entire life

im not dramatizing.

it will be .......

.

dpel · Post by **dpel** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:44 pm

supster wrote:
forge wrote: Robert at the Brisbane Live clinic mentioned how they were well aware of it's short comings and are keen to sort it out
the day i boot up Live 6 and im moving stuff around, copying, zooming in and making edits and crafting whole tracks without wanted to punch a hole through my monitor will be one of the most relieving, satisfying days of my entire life

im not dramatizing. it will be .......

.

agreed 100%
good points in previous reply also.