I notice that when I am running Ableton Live (9.0.6 x64 Windows 7, i7-3630QM @ 2.4GHz, 16GB RAM) the CPU meter in Live always runs significantly higher then the one in Task Manager, usually around 10% higher... anyone know why that would be and if it can be corrected? I have noticed this in every DAW or standalone program with a CPU meter. I have "enable multicore" on in the preferences.

 

That's normal behavior, nothing you can do...at least as far as I know. The meter in the DAW is the amount of processing power before buffer underruns I believe.

 

Found this explanation too....

https://www.ableton.com/en/articles/why-does-lives-cpu-meter-show-different-load-activity-monitor/

 

Yeah it's the same thing just a more detailed explanation. It's basically the audio processing load as compared to the processing load.

 

One thing I know about Live meter is:

- load VST on one channel, meter will show 10-15% cpu load (per example Izotope Nectar for higher processing)
- load Nectar on second channel, CPU meter will show 8%

Even you use multicore, Live and all other DAW software just can't handle processes in that way... It processing per channels, so if you have 10 + 10 channels, first 10 will use first core, second ten's will be used second core and so.

Quad is the same, 2 ch + 2 ch + 2 ch + 2 ch etc...

In one stage of creating in Live meter jump to 80% and after add some channels go to 30%...

 

Every other DAW software handle memory like Live, that's truth...

Same thing is with plugins, maybe 5% of plugins can handle multicore cpu in the right way

 

except Reaper > http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul11/articles/reaper-tech-0711.htm, btw if the problem is a CPU heavy VSTi path, just sample it with (the VST version of) DirectWave (one click solution) and use the sampled version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ROoPtv9g5Q

as source