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I have a huge Ableton live project with many effect units that are taking up a ton of CPU space. I know I could bounce the track but I do not want to remove the ability to modulate envelopes. What can I do to keep flexibility but reduce cpu usage?

I am using Massive, Nexus, Ozone and Fabfilter for plugins. I changed the global setting on massive to eco (is there an option like this for ozone? I find that is taking up tons of cpu).

p.s Is there a way to measure the amount of cpu each bus is taking up? That will be useful for diagnostics.

How many ozones you running? That's gotta be the primary culprit.

fragments wrote:How many ozones you running? That's gotta be the primary culprit.

Only one now. I bounced a few tracks that were running it and it lowered usage by about 15%-20%. How can I reduce this without bouncing? The laggy delay is pretty bad.

You can try adjusting your buffer settings or freezing FX/tracks when not working on them. Otherwise a system upgrade would be the only solution I can think of. How economic are you being with your FX? If I'm taxing my system resources, I usually start turning things off...and usually I find as I turn some things off the mix sounds better.

That's just me though. Something to think about.

re6ter wrote: I changed the global setting on massive to eco (is there an option like this for ozone? I find that is taking up tons of cpu).

I never knew you could do this. I'm using a 32 bit vista system with 4gig ram, and lately its been struggling with amount of vst's, fx, etc i'm using. I really don't like bouncing to audio. Is there a massive difference in the sound quality between Ultra and High settings?

It's really best to save stuff like Ozone for the later stages of the mixdown instead of using it right out the gate. It's a huge hog on resources because it's meant to go on the master bus instead of individual channels. Alloy is more geared towards individual stuff.

Also it's helpful to develop a process of when to bounce. When you have a track going, before adding tons of filters/delays/etc, just use effects that sweeten the sound up a bit like EQ/saturation/etc, Make the changes you know you'll commit to later and bounce before you get crazy with other stuff. . If you find you need to use EQ again later to make room in the spectrum for another sound, it's easy to just bounce it again after doing some more surgical stuff with the eq.

Do you know about the "Freeze" option in ableton? It's like bouncing with an option to "unbounce" any time you want. If that made any sense...
And of course remember to switch all massive synths back to ultra when you are rendering your track.

BTW. If you have Izotope Ozone 5 Advanced try using only a part of it that you need (Izotope Ozone Imager etc.) instead of using the whole plugin.
Izotope Alloy is also great and has some stuff like Multiband Transient Shaper that you can't find in ozone + I think it's less CPU efficient. Only down side of Alloy is that you can't use only a part of it like in Izotope Ozone Advanced.. still try it out!

And if you have Ableton Live 9 don't use any other EQ except EQ8! The new EQ8 is amazing and you'll have much more cpu space unlike with any other VST EQ plugin. Still, if you are on Ableton 8.. don't even bother looking at it.

- GL!

Icetickle wrote:Do you know about the "Freeze" option in ableton? It's like bouncing with an option to "unbounce" any time you want. If that made any sense...
And of course remember to switch all massive synths back to ultra when you are rendering your track.

BTW. If you have Izotope Ozone 5 Advanced try using only a part of it that you need (Izotope Ozone Imager etc.) instead of using the whole plugin.
Izotope Alloy is also great and has some stuff like Multiband Transient Shaper that you can't find in ozone + I think it's less CPU efficient. Only down side of Alloy is that you can't use only a part of it like in Izotope Ozone Advanced.. still try it out!

And if you have Ableton Live 9 don't use any other EQ except EQ8! The new EQ8 is amazing and you'll have much more cpu space unlike with any other VST EQ plugin. Still, if you are on Ableton 8.. don't even bother looking at it.

- GL!

I had no idea you could unfreeze the track! That solves a good portion of my problem because I do not want to bounce my stuff as much. Ozone is defiantly a beast VST, ill check out Alloy. Thanks for the help!

P.s what about fab filter pro Q vs lives eq?

Undrig wrote:It's really best to save stuff like Ozone for the later stages of the mixdown instead of using it right out the gate. It's a huge hog on resources because it's meant to go on the master bus instead of individual channels. Alloy is more geared towards individual stuff.

Also it's helpful to develop a process of when to bounce. When you have a track going, before adding tons of filters/delays/etc, just use effects that sweeten the sound up a bit like EQ/saturation/etc, Make the changes you know you'll commit to later and bounce before you get crazy with other stuff. . If you find you need to use EQ again later to make room in the spectrum for another sound, it's easy to just bounce it again after doing some more surgical stuff with the eq.

Gotcha there, thanks for the help!

fragments wrote:You can try adjusting your buffer settings or freezing FX/tracks when not working on them. Otherwise a system upgrade would be the only solution I can think of. How economic are you being with your FX? If I'm taxing my system resources, I usually start turning things off...and usually I find as I turn some things off the mix sounds better.

That's just me though. Something to think about.

I think the freezing/unfreezing solution will work best for me, because it is almost like bouncing but with the ability to go back (I love that!).

Thanks for the help man.

Getting rid of any unnecessary programs on your pc will help (and normal computer maintenance type stuff)
Aero uses heaps of cpu in windows.... I would highly recommend disabling visual effects (control panel > system > advanced)
Id also tweak your virtual memory

re6ter wrote:

Icetickle wrote:Do you know about the "Freeze" option in ableton? It's like bouncing with an option to "unbounce" any time you want. If that made any sense...
And of course remember to switch all massive synths back to ultra when you are rendering your track.

BTW. If you have Izotope Ozone 5 Advanced try using only a part of it that you need (Izotope Ozone Imager etc.) instead of using the whole plugin.
Izotope Alloy is also great and has some stuff like Multiband Transient Shaper that you can't find in ozone + I think it's less CPU efficient. Only down side of Alloy is that you can't use only a part of it like in Izotope Ozone Advanced.. still try it out!

And if you have Ableton Live 9 don't use any other EQ except EQ8! The new EQ8 is amazing and you'll have much more cpu space unlike with any other VST EQ plugin. Still, if you are on Ableton 8.. don't even bother looking at it.

- GL!

I had no idea you could unfreeze the track! That solves a good portion of my problem because I do not want to bounce my stuff as much. Ozone is defiantly a beast VST, ill check out Alloy. Thanks for the help!

P.s what about fab filter pro Q vs lives eq?

I did an A and B with those two EQs (with oversampling checked on live 9 EQ8) and the sound was quite the same (unlike when compared to izotope EQ) except that the pro-q uses more CPU.

You on Windows 7? This guide helped me a lot back before I converted to Steve Job's crew.

http://uk.focusrite.com/answerbase/opti ... -windows-7

koncide wrote:You on Windows 7? This guide helped me a lot back before I converted to Steve Job's crew.

http://uk.focusrite.com/answerbase/opti ... -windows-7

ty kind sir

koncide wrote:You on Windows 7? This guide helped me a lot back before I converted to Steve Job's crew.

http://uk.focusrite.com/answerbase/opti ... -windows-7

Solid! Thanks.

about freezing, i will usually duplicate whatever it is, that way the midi remains in the frozen channel (in case you're using the create new audio track -> drag everything from frozen track onto it method) also watch out for sidechain compressors, they will stop you from freezing. easy fix is ctrl + X on the compressor and ctrl + V onto your audio track .

curious to see less "common sense" solutions in here and more intricate ways of preserving cpu. i don't really have this problem because my comp is a beast but i work in 96k usually and it gets up there pretty quick if i don't bounce stuff.

difference wrote:about freezing, i will usually duplicate whatever it is, that way the midi remains in the frozen channel (in case you're using the create new audio track -> drag everything from frozen track onto it method) also watch out for sidechain compressors, they will stop you from freezing. easy fix is ctrl + X on the compressor and ctrl + V onto your audio track .

curious to see less "common sense" solutions in here and more intricate ways of preserving cpu. i don't really have this problem because my comp is a beast but i work in 96k usually and it gets up there pretty quick if i don't bounce stuff.

96k would fry my laptop with the size of my project files

Speaking from a reason 7 perspective I find bouncing to audio quite long and tedious. It's absolutely indispensable for large project files ofc, just wish the days of monster CPU capability would hurry up and reach us and make bouncing to audio for performance reasons a thing of the past

My issue with freezing is when I have routing attached to the channel, ableton wont let me freeze. I don't want to bounce because I lose flexibility.

RARRR_ wrote:Getting rid of any unnecessary programs on your pc will help (and normal computer maintenance type stuff)
Aero uses heaps of cpu in windows.... I would highly recommend disabling visual effects (control panel > system > advanced)
Id also tweak your virtual memory

That's correct, in my experience Aero will slowdown even high spec machines. It's always the first thing I switch off. Go for Windows Classic Theme instead (Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization)