RAM/CPU: "Load New Region" & disabling eSampler

#1

I have some questions about reducing RAM and CPU use. I’ve just done my first live gig using Ebosuite as part of a live drum triggering set up with all the MIDI triggers on my drum kit linked to different video clips for each track. I’m also manipulating these through velocity, expression control on a Keith McMillen BopPad and an expression pedal and am running lot of audio plug ins and software synths, etc. As a result I’m putting a lot of strain on CPU and RAM. I’ve been experimenting with ways of reducing this but wanted to ask a couple of things.

  1. I’ve been using “load new region” to free up RAM but does this free as much RAM as actually trimming the original clip outside of Ebosuite and only loading the shorter complete clip? I’m wondering if I’m better to go back and trim all of the original clips in to parts. If this second approach does free more RAM would there be a way to build a “create new clip” feature in to the eSampler so that it generates a new shorter file?

  2. Disabling eSampler? During my live set I’ve been trying to disable devices when they’re not in use (either manually or using the Green Switch or Mute Means Disable device to automatically disable all devices on a muted track). However, I’ve noticed a weird bug with the eSampler in that I can’t seem to switch it on and off. The “on” button in the top left of the eSampler is permanently “on” and lit yellow and doesn’t go off when I click on it. However, I’m mostly using the eSampler inside of a drum rack or instrument rack so I’ve generally just been disabling the entire rack instead. It doesn’t seem right that you can’t turn the eSampler off though. Are you able to check this out?

Overall I’m loving EboSuite. I’ve been posting some videos on my instagram channel @stubrowndrums of my recent experiments and live use. I’ll upload some here shortly. I’m going to be using it a lot more in the near future so I just want to get everything running as smoothly as possible in Live now so that my live shows go without any technical hitches.

Thanks!

Stu

#2

HI Stu,

Thanks for your questions and input and for sharing your explorations on Instagram, very nice!

First off: how do you notice the strain on the ram and cpu?
And… do you run Ableton Live in 32bit or 64 bit mode? (64 bit mode is recommended, this will give less RAM issues).

  1. Yes, ‘load new region’ has the same effect as ‘trimming the clip’. This will free up RAM.
  2. It is not possisble to disable eSampler, this is by design. This is due to the fact that enabling/disabling m4l devices can lead to all sorts of weird situations. Currently there is no easy way to disable eSamplers, but they don’t use that much resources when not playing (apart from #3, see below)

Other things to keep in mind:

  1. tuning is very cpu intensive (the upcoming update will make this much more efficient)
  2. low framerate can also be due to:
  • that your disk is too slow (do you use ssd?)
  • that you do not use HAP files
  • that the resolution of your files is too high for your system and processing demands
  • that your gpu cannot keep up (memory or processing wise)
  1. crackling audio can also be due to:
  • a lot of automation
  • a buffersize that is too low

I hope this helps a bit

Cheers

Timo

#3

Thanks for all of this and for answering my question about loading regions and disabling eSamplers.

I had already tried all of the above suggestions but thanks for clarifying them. It’s appreciated! I am running Ableton Live 10 (which is automatically 64 bit mode) on a 2016 13" MacBook Pro 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 with 16GB RAM . The problems happened when I went from having each “song” in a separate Ableton session to combining them all in to one session. I think I may just need to streamline the way I’m doing some of the audio side of things in order to cut down on the CPU strain. It was actually ok on the gig but I had a couple of crashes and bugs in rehearsal and had to increase the audio buffer size to 256 (which is the point where I start to notice the latency more when playing with drum triggers. 128 generally feels ok). I definitely noticed an improvement when I loaded regions in to the eSampler instead of complete files. Before I did that I has having a lot of problems as I think the RAM was getting pretty full.

When I have enough time I’m going to go back and reconstruct the set from scratch, taking care to to do things like combine audio effects for different tracks by using sends instead of inserting them on every channel, etc. There was a bit of overlap when I dragged all the individual songs in to the one session.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again,

Stu