Hi guys,

I've been looking for an answer and asked to some of my friends, but none of them gat a real answer.
I'm using Live and I've just updated my computer, so I was hoping that my sessions would run smoothly, but hey, it's not even a half better.

When I'm in live, CPU (of the daw) is about for example at 7X%, but when I'm looking at my processor, he's just at 1X%, like? What?

So it seems that the DAW is processing the sounds, while processor is processing the daw, but the daw isn't using the processor to process sound. Yeah it's a bit confusing...

As far as I've found, it must be the sound card that affect the cpu of the daw, I'm using a focusrite scarlett 6i6 (1rst gen) and I was thinking about changing it.

So guys do you have answers?
Are DAWS fucked up with their process?
Is it the sound card or not that will change the quality of the process?
If it's the case, should I change my sound card? And so for wich one if you have some ideas?

Also I'm only using 2 in and 2 out, so nothing big.

If you only have some answers about daws/processor deal, I'm really curious to know what's really happening.

Take care guys

 

Absolutely possible if you use a lot of CPU-heavy plugins on a single track. You can see in the Task Manager that only one thread is used at a very high load, while the rest is almost doing nothing -> high DAW load, low overall CPU load.

EDIT: That's not Live's fault, even Reaper, which is known for extremely good multi-thread support, is doing this.
To reduce the DAW-load, you could route the track into a subgroup and distribute the plugins among the track, subgroup and mainout.

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2020

So sound card isn't linked to this? A friend told me he had some trouble with an old sound card and change it to a better one, it solved many of his issues on Protools

 

If you need a tool to help investigate what causes your cpu to behave like that during certain task.. python psutil might be handy..

https://pypi.org/project/psutil/

You can investigate from command line and its lyk omg so cool +geek x)
#havefun

 

This problem is caused by the way Windows handles realtime audio. A better sound card, or more precise, better drivers, can improve the latency and stability, but the basic problem still remains.
That's the difference between DAW (realtime) performance and CPU performance.
The more expensive solution would be a better CPU (better single thread performance, higher clock).

 

Please give us a little more information on your system.
OS (Windows/macOS version)
CPU
On-board video or add-in video card?
Motherboard platform
Memory (amount & how many dimms/sticks, speed)
How do you use your system (production only or a mix of uses)?
Have you followed the optimization guide from Ableton or, others like Avid?

This info will help guide those attempting to help you solve your system issues.

 

Last edited: Oct 20, 2020

Hey, I'm under w10
Ryzen9 3900X
GTX 970
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra
4*16Go Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600MHz C18
I use it for music and games.
And yeah already done all the optimization guides

 

You should not be having any issues with that system if setup properly. Hopefully you setup the BIOS for default XMP memory profile & PBO.
Let the system boost clocks as needed for audio production. Don't force.

Also if not done already, launch 'msconfig' from the Start Menu Run window, click the 'Boot' tab, click 'Advanced options' and make sure the top four check boxes are empty/unselected. Restart system for any changes to take effect.

Another possible issue is the video driver. Windows update tends to replace the NVidia driver. Download & install the latest driver from NVidia if needed.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Ableton Live & Studio One are very quirky with ASIO drivers & plugins.

Ableton recommendations for Threadripper
https://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?t=235076

Note that Ableton says turn off PBO for Threadripper.

 

Last edited: Oct 21, 2020

there are 2 main measurements of CPU load,
one is the total cpu usage, for ex. how much all your cpu cores being used,
second is realtime cpu usage, means how fast a task can be processed by cpu overall - this is crucial for audio,

most modern audio interfaces and daws allow adjustments of audio buffer setting - this defines length of the audio block to be pushed into cpu to process - shorter means lower latency but obviously higher realtime cpu load,

and then, there's Windows - shitton of bloat constantly running in the background, services, drivers etc.., all burdening the cpu a little bit all the time, effectively crippling cpu realtime performance no matter what - use DPC LatencyMon to observe how much your computer realtime performance gets crippled when idle,

among other optimizations you can do, I do recommend setting max. overclock same for all cores, that way performance won't hopefully fluctuate as much no matter how many cpu cores are actually being pushed, also don't hesitate to disable whatever you don't need such as onboard audio, unused sata ports etc.., disable windows updates, indexing, telemetry spying... - this all will minimize Windows resource usage hopefully leaving more headroom in realtime cpu stack to be rather used for audio processing when needed

(very simplified basic mindset)

 

Could you run some benchmarks, like Cinebench (free) for example, so we can see if your cpu is performing as it should? My 3900x scores around 7600 in Cinebench R20, but I am overclocked a bit. Because if your cpu is working fine, then it has to do with Ableton. What was the old cpu before you updated by the way? This is very weird. We have the exact same cpu and you have faster ram. And I'm able to run tons and tons of plugins with 32 buffer size with no issue. Does your system have any issues in games? have you enabled XMP in the BIOS?

If you want to see if it's your sound card or not, enable the MME/DirectX driver in Live, and see if your cpu meter goes down. I highly doubt it's the sound card, but it could be.

In task manager, do you see many cores being used, or are most cores at low utilization, and one or two are very highly utilized?

I second reinstalling your Nvidia driver with the newest one from their website. I've heard of Nvidia drivers doing funny things with DAWs, and windows can sometimes decide to install it's own video driver. Also making sure your focusrite driver is up to date is a good idea. To make absolutely sure you get a clean install of the drivers, go into the uninstall page in control panel, and search nvidia and focusrite and ASIO, and uninstall all the drivers that are there, and then install the new drivers. When you uninstall the graphics drivers your screen will look a bit funky till you install the fresh drivers but it's okay don't panic.

It could be something funky in the BIOS, have you messed with that at all?

The cpu indicator in Ableton is not a cpu meter per se. It's how fast the cpu is rendering samples before playing them. for example, if your cpu meter in Live shows 50%, that means the cpu is processing samples twice as fast as they're playing. That's why the cpu meter in Live can show over 100%, because samples are being asked to play faster than the cpu can process them. This means that hard drive and ram speed can cause the cpu meter in Live to go very high, while the cpu meter in task manager is low, because as far as Live is concerned, it's taking forever to render samples because of how slow it's pulling them from the ram and hard drive.

Probably irrelevant but are you running the latest version of Live?

 

Last edited: Oct 21, 2020

Your situation has me wondering if there is a component level issue.

Overheating CPU (cheap thermal paste, uneven contact pressure?
CPU cooler in Pull rather than Push orientation?
Poor DIMM slot contact (pull & reseat memory)?
Good air flow over VRM & chipset?
Quality USB cable rated for high speed 2-way data transfer?

 

Open Task manager and see how the load is spread over the cores.
Youcan even get 100% CPU load in a DAW reported when only one core is maxed out ;)

 

First of all guys, thank you for your answers. Since 2 of my disks dropped, I won't be able to test with my sessions all your recommendations but still i've tested some stuff and here are the results :

Checked that, I've puted asio4all before and I've looked on the threadripper. I've made some changes since I haven't done anything funny on my bios before, you can check now my bios with the pics attached. Also, threadripper was really good, I've put some changes on the system, still I have 2 questions, should I go on windows 1903 with X399 chipset? Since I'm on windows 2004, should I change it also?
XMP was off, I launched it.
What's PBO?

You have the results of latency as an attached file.

Runned cinebench, I'm at 7116.
My old CPU was an i7-3770K Costa Rica.
I was on 128 buffersize actually.
Done the test with ableton running with nothing, when i'm on the driver of the sound card I'm at 4%, when I'm running DirectX I'm on 1% and when I'm on Asio4all I'm at 0%.
Sadly I can't test right now the multiple usage of cores with ableton open since my disks are dead. I'll check this when my disks are back and working.
I update drivers with Geforce Experience, should I go for website update all the time?
Already checked drivers update and already tried to reinstall it clean.
Never played with the bios, I've let the settings like it was, just checked the disk for boot.
And I'm on Live 10.1.25

How can I check overheating CPU?
My CPU cooler is a Thermaltake Water 3.0 360 Argb Sync Aio
DIMM slots are fine as far as I see/know
How can I check good air flow over VRM & Chipset?
The usb cable with the sound card is the one that focusrite gave me.

Again thank you guys with your time and help

 

I can see "LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 0:01:00 (h:mm:ss) on all processors." - 1 minute test won't tell anything, let it run around 2-4 hours to make it able notice anything

 

Alter the sample rate inside your DAW and see what happens.

In FL Studio for example, when the sample rate is 44100 HZ, CPU usage in task manager is not zero (by using FL Studio ASIO as the output device), but when I change it to 48000 HZ, CPU drops to zero.

 

This is weird. It seems like your cpu is running fine. One thing that stands out to me is in your BIOS, the BCLCK is 100.25 MHz. Normally it's at 100 MHz. This probably shouldn't effect anything, but BCLCK does effect how the components of your pc communicate, so it could be possible that having it slightly above 100 is causing a weird latency between your cpu and ram, or cpu and hard drive, or something like that. Try chaning the BCLCK to 100 MHz and see what happens. As a side note, try disabling AMD Cool&Quiet function in your BIOS. If your pc being a little noisier (and only a little), isn't a concern, and your cpu isn't overheating, this will get you more performance. I attatched a screenshot.

Download HWiNFO64, https://www.hwinfo.com/download/ which will give you a full overview of everything going on in your system. Look at the CPU (Tctl/Tdie) temperature to see your CPU temp (attached a screenshot). But since your score in Cinebench is about where it should be, I wouldn't think your cpu is overheating. But Cinebench is a quick test and maybe after your cpu runs for awhile in your DAW, it might be heating up. Work on a project in your DAW and keep HWiNFO open and keep an eye on your cpu temp.

It sounds to me like your hardware is fine and it must be a problem in Ableton or maybe windows. Your sound card driver is up to date right? 0-4% change between DirectX and sound card isn't a big deal. My cpu meter in ableton is sitting at 5% now with an empty project.

 

I dont meant heat with maxed out. I mean just have a look of the load of the individual cores in task manager.

 

I would give Sysinternals Process Explorer (free from M$) a try. It can show every single CPU in a graph and if you hover over a graph you are informed about the process that has the highest load (which TM can't do). Or, you can watch the overall CPU load of processes.
Now, I started Live (9 Lite) with an older sketch that uses several Vsts, and Live says it uses 13% while playing. But overall, the CPU load measured outside Live is 5% to 6%, with no other tasks except the OS. I think this is normal. My sketch uses several fx and grain processors, and they might have a background impact that can't be measured correctly.
Also, there should be an overhead for realtime processing that is targeted to prevent the daw from being overloaded. If you see your song using 70% you may hesitate to stack another Fx or synth on a track.
I saw this difference between CPU consumption values in Reaper and the old Cantabile 2.0, too.
The real problem is then, at which values the crackling and jittering begins, not those numbers.
I do not know about the Ryzen's behavior with thermal throttling. Luckily my notebook is relatively stable, but I have seen it sometimes slowing down the turbo under heavy load, so the hwinfo tip above is to be recommended (I used coretemp a while ago).

 

I think this issue is only due to Live 10 and it's completely independent from your hardware. Have you upgraded from 10.1.14 to 10.1.25 as of late?
I had exactly the same issue before upgrading to 10.1.x from 10.0.5. The reason was very simple, I did not clearly uninstall the previous version. For some reason it messed up because of old traces in various folders ( C program data etc.) ...
Following I did a totally clean uninstall and upgraded to 10.1.14, same VST plugins, same samples, same everything. This way the performance improved significantly by a lot, the issue completely disappeared! Have a try.
Good luck!

 

A latencymon for more than 2 hours with a session on ableton running in loop (over 70 to 80% of the daw capacity)

Yeah already though about this, it's a good point but I already tried and it changed nothing sadly...

You have some screenshot about all the processors while a session is running on Ableton