live4 is best thing since sliced bread...

[ew]

For some reason absynth will pop up, but the audio is just a click, in any configuration, and on any preset. maybe just my system has problems with it, I don't know, but reaktor won't make any noise at all. So far about 15 other softsynths do work on it for me, so I couldn't care about losing absynth. It always crashed my FL Studio too when trying to open a project with an absynth channel in it. I use Kingston RAM (1 gig), but only have a 2000XP processor. maybe that's why. Not a big deal to me. If it weren't for those programs not handling those VSTi's well (Sonar handles them fine), I really wouldn't have explored some outstanding other VSTi's that are available. many of these being freebies, that I never knew existed.

No,I doubt that's it.I run Reaktor and both A2 and 3 in Live,Sonar and Tracktion without issues,and I'm running a 933 PIII with 512 Mb...
What's the version numbers of the .dlls in the folder Live's looking in(2.04 for A2 and 4.13 for Reaktor are the current versions),and are they the same version number as the standalone?
ew

[vurt]

live4 is best thing since sliced bread...

Wrong, wrong, wrong.....

A well-matured Cheddar cheese melted over Branston Pickle is the best thing after sliced bread.

Everyone knows that

i bet ianb will disagree

altho im almost with you surely its cheese slices?

[Pawelm]

Who said sliced bread was any good??? Personally I like to see the loaf as a whole, I think the updated slicing technique ruined everything

[headquest]

I bought Live 2 thinking I would get into it, and didn't really. Then when I read all about Live 4 I thought to myself "this is coming of age...time to upgrade and get my money's worth"

To start with I would have agreed that it's the best thing since sliced bread. I for one love the way you Live *does* MIDI sequencing. I like the overall look and feel of it more than any other sequencer at the minute, and have gotten used to spreading the workload between the two views.

However, I am now becoming increasingly disappointed with Live 4 ... because it doesn't replace my DAW. I think the problem is not with Live 4 itself, but with the hype that has surrounded it, and particularly all the media and marketing claims that it will replace your other software.

The problems with the program are:

1 without a freeze function I can only load a handful of instruments before the CPU maxes out, so I have to bounce everything straight to an audio loop

2 once CPU reaches around 60% the audio engine falls over

3 VST handling seems ineffiecient... loading 4 VSTi instruments and one instance of Ambience caused 80& CPU in Live (with audio cracking up) but the same MIDI file and VST configuration in Tracktion only had 60% CPU, which reduced to 30% when I used Tracktions freeze.

4 Audio recording directly into Live seems more susceptible to clicks/pops/drop outs/etc than in Tracktion or Audition (my other software) and is unusable except by applying intensive care in Audition first

5 No PDC

6 Audio only 24-bit, I master at 32-bit.

This may seem like a list of moans, but in fact I still love Live 4. I have simply needed to revise my expectations of what it is capable of. Live 4 - for me at least - cannot function as a full-on DAW for production, but is a really fun loop tool that works well and can no doubt be relied upon in a live context.

I've also found that sliced bread is variable - some loaves more yummy than others.

[pHz]

headquest ...

... to be fair ... it seems to me that points 1 to 4 on your list MIGHT be less to do with live4 than with some peculiarities of your individual setup because i dont recognise and of those problems on my system here ...

... points 5 and 6 are fair enough and point 5 will CERTAINLY be addressed by ableton AFAIK (when is another matter though)

slainte rob

[Emerald Tablet]

bread shouldn`t be sliced

it's so much more tasty in chunks with a nice knucklebone to kick off your animalistic maul morning. It makes you feel so close to nature. Away with computers to - nothing beats blowing through a goatshorn or beating on a fat buffelskin

[headquest]

headquest ...

... to be fair ... it seems to me that points 1 to 4 on your list MIGHT be less to do with live4 than with some peculiarities of your individual setup because i dont recognise and of those problems on my system here ...

... points 5 and 6 are fair enough and point 5 will CERTAINLY be addressed by ableton AFAIK (when is another matter though)

slainte rob

Hi there,

Not sure what you mean about my setup, but quite a few people have expressed similar concerns about the audio falling over with only 60% or so CPU. Check out the Ableton forum.

Also, lots of people asking for Freeze (point 1).

Regarding the setup, I'm on a P4 2.8 Ghz laptop running XP, SP2. Edirol UA-20 interface over USB. I have set maximum latency/buffer size to try and minimise audio-dropout/glitches (but I've *never* had to do this with any other software...)

As I said, Tracktion seems to use noticeably less CPU to run the same track/VSTs, which I think is strange.

I really don't mean to criticise Live, because I still love it and don't at all regret upgrading to v4.0.4. I basically like it so much that I *wish* I really could use for everything!!

Can you think of any suggestions for getting this to work better on my system?

[pHz]

since i also have live4 and tracktion ill try a similar test later and get back to you on how my system (dell 9100 laptop ... 3.2Ghz P4 ... 1Gb RAM ... XPpro SP1 ... echo indigo) compares ...

slainte rob

[pHz]

hmmmnnn ... just tried a little test ...

... similar to you - 4 VSTi tracks (all playing the same MIDI files in each host) and a master reverb ...

DR008 (yellowtools grunge kit - simple 4/4 pattern)
symptohm:melohman (challenge pad preset - simple 3 note chord)
impOSCar (bass scream preset - simple 8ths pattern)
sampletank2 (clean electric guitar patch - little solo pattern)
silverspike R2 on the master (drum room (insert) preset)

... all running on the above mentioned system through the echo indigo at 44100 samplerate and a 512 sample buffer ...

(all CPU usage measured using windows task manager for consistency)

live4 ... 27% - 33%

tracktion ... 17% - 23%

energyXT ... 19% - 24%

... so live4 DOES appear (for whatever reason) to be considerably more CPU hungry than tracktion or energyXT ... i would initially bguess that the answer lies in the fact that VSTi support is new in live4 and hasnt really been optimised yet ???

what is interesting is that you say four VSTi plus ambience is killing live4 on your system ... R2 is a much more CPU friendly reverb than ambience but even so ...

(from testing it when it was new i know that running under tracktion my system can run about 8-9 ambiences at 100% quality before it falls over)

i wonder how the other 'big' sequencers fare on a similar test (i know its DEEPLY unscientific but ... ) since tracktion and energyXT are both self-confessed lean-n-mean sequencers ...

... anyone have live4 and sonar or cubase (even fl-studio) who can do similar comparisons on their system just for interest ???

slainte rob

[headquest]

since i also have live4 and tracktion ill try a similar test later and get back to you on how my system (dell 9100 laptop ... 3.2Ghz P4 ... 1Gb RAM ... XPpro SP1 ... echo indigo) compares ...

slainte rob

Thanks! I appreciate your effort.

[headquest]

Thanks Rob,

Interesting results. You have a much better system than me reading your spec, but proportionately your results seem the same as mine.

I think you may be right about the cause being Live 4 new to VST, but even so I hope the Abletons will deal with this as soon as possible. If Live 4 ran with Tracktion's CPU efficiency I would probably move over full-time, but as it is I guess I will be upgrading to T2 when it appears.

Ambience is *way* heavier than any other Reverb I have tried, but I really like its sound. I'm not fond of Live's built in Reverb. I use Reason via ReWire for a lot of stuff, and Rv7000 is the best software reverb I know of to my ears.

I know that people use Ambience for CPU benchmarking, but I don't personally see the need to run more than one instance on a bus. Perhaps that's just the way I like to work. Using 100% on the quality/CPU knob, Ambience uses up to 35-40% of my CPU, but I've not done *all* the Windows tweeks, so perhaps I'm just not trying hard enough!!

I've done another search on the Ableton forum, and I noticed that quite a lot of hardcore Live users have uninstalled v.4.0.4 and reverted to 4.0.3. Also there are some who have actually returned to Live 3 because they "can't" rely on Live 4 in a live context. I guess that the Abletons must be working all out to rectify this, so lets hope for a really cool update before too long

Cheers

[suburban grilla]

i prefer baps

[Amberience]

Its a common observation of mine that the people who complain about Live are the people who are interested in getting a "professional consumer driven" sound.

The people who are actually creative don't have a problem at all!!

[stale bread]

that was un-called-for.


but on another note: live 4 rocks, I can't believe how happy I am with this software, even the work arounds are inspiring and fun. by the way check out the new live 4 power book, if you bought the live 2 powerbook in the past and were dissappointed because there was no 'power' in it you won't be disappointed this time, live 4 power will give you something to chew on.

[headquest]

by the way check out the new live 4 power book, if you bought the live 2 powerbook in the past and were dissappointed because there was no 'power' in it you won't be disappointed this time, live 4 power will give you something to chew on.

Thanks for the tip - I'll take a look at that