Hey guys I've recently starting using a lot of processing from plugins, mainly kontakt. A lot of the time it will be fine, but here and there I'll just get the pin wheel of death trying to open something and the application doesn't respond. What do you guy do to improve performance in your daw? And your computer at that

I'm running on Mac 10.8.5 btw

Read something in a previous thread that everytime you preview a sample live creates am add file? After a while will this decrease lives performance? If so, how and where do I delete these files, also what other temp files should I be aware of?

 

it's not every time you preview a sample.. it's only when you actually load up an audio file into a track.

the files that it creates are .asd

they are located at...

user>music>ableton>user library>samples>imported

 

Use another DAW.

 

And you can turn off these analysfiles in the preferences -> file/folder -> turn off anlyse files.

 

Two main things in general, to improve performance while making music on a Mac:
1) turn off fucking spotlight (use EasyFind instead, in case you search for something)
2) if you use an external drive, keep your drive spinning with a little free app called "Keep Drive Spinning"

Btw. using Live here on Mac ended up always ( i tried several versions) in deleting Live, just to spare my nerves.
Not only that the beach ball became my enemy, Live itself crashes quite often too, when it comes to plug-ins.
Couldn't work with Live longer than a few minutes....

Now i have no problems using Logic. *yes*

 

Yeah live it's pretty picky about plug-ins. Btw dunno how but I got my actual setup to do the job
without hassles, never had a crash in months. But I'm using relatively few 3rd party plugs now.
I can't believe how stable it is, I had my bad moments with live too
LPX is giving me more problems than Live to be honest, always that fuckin' error "can't process audio stream in time" -> stop playback
(and no it's not buffer, even at max value it's the same...it does so with 4-5 heavily automated instance of WOW2,
while live doesn't glitch even with 15+ )

BTW you have to do some customization under the hood, like Xsze on others said get rid of dashboard,
notification center, launchpad, mission control and spotlight, basically apart Spotlight all that crap that came post-Lion, and you're ready to rock
I even kill LilSnitch while producing, I just switch Airport off. So I'm forced not to come on AudioSex every 20min and I can actually produce

 

Don't forget to disable inputs and outputs that you don't use, in Live audio preferences. You'll get more room for cpu & ram.

 

there are bunch of great tips there. thank you guys

 

Mehhhh, you can do whatever you want, but it will always be crap until they doing something...

Look, when you have scanned all plugins and sounds (I put results at the fresh start of app)

1. starting Live 9 ... 1-2 min on good preferences and tuned machine (always scan plugins + load database)
2. starting PTools 10 ... 1-2 min on same machine (always scan RTAS + some wierd checks like DAE0012311, DAE2131231, DAE_shit... )
3. starting Reaper 4 ... in second (like thunder)
4. starting Samplitude X ... in mili-second (like double thunder)
5. starting Renoise ... in 3 second (like mini thunder )
6. starting Studio One ... in 20 seconds (scaning vst's, vst3's, audio devices, midi devices, melodyne etc...)

and there is a question at the end, WTF ???

It's the same with the plugins side

1. starting Massive or any NI product ... 10 sec.
2. starting Sylenth1 or Spire ... second

Database (scan things) kill perfomance always, I don't understand why devs using databases in this type of software, it's not public library, when every bit of CPU is important when we doing some sounding

Favorites can be made simple without database, with folders and aliases in xml file where is not need 50% of CPU for parsing.

Scanning of plugins... it's not a big deal... ok, first scan will be slower, checking vst routines etc... it's ok, but the next app enter

Code:

error = {}

foreach vst in database[]

if file_exist( vst.path )
// it's there
loop
else
// add to error array
error.add( vst.name, vst.path )
end 

next

if len( error ) > 0
// something is wrong with this plugins
// do check again ... maybe path was changed or is erased ... ???
form_error_check.show()
// etc.... do whatever you want
end

and this code will run like a thunder on modern machines, in seconds (it's a pseudo code, just for understanding)

For Live and they ableton.search service, it's great but that must be a addon on app, so if I need to do some search I run option from

Database->Search (add, edit, delete) etc...

and must be not integrated like now.

When I use Winamp Lite 5, I have choice to use database functionality or not, and it's cute

 

Nikon is right!!! I say either upgrade your mac or get a very strong cooling fan. i7 and 8 gigatitties of ram. or get a cooling face. Cooling fans can do miracles as far as cpu performance.

 

what would you guys recommend for another cooling fan in a mac pro tower 4,1? (2009 dual quad core)… thanks!