Ableton sooner clicks and pops than Reaper

mixnar · 06-30-2010, 09:45 AM

Hi There,

I have a pc quadcore and when I use Ableton I'm getting clicks and pops when the CPU is about 60% in use. When I use Reaper I can go to a 100% without clicks. When I compare the two I use a VST plug in and the same midi file. No audio tracks or effects. I can play more copies of the track in Reaper then in Ableton. When I use an Ableton instrument I get the same results (only in Ableton of course). Is this normal? Anyone a idea what's going on? Anyone experiencing the same thing? Does it have anything to do with my (Nvidia) graphics card?
Thanks very much for your help!

Greetings, M

PC XP sp3
quadcore 9300
Asus EN8400GS Silent graphics card
Creamware Pulsar 64 or 128 samples asio

nb. sorry for this strange topic in this forum...

NoiseMan · 07-01-2010, 04:12 AM

Yeah, I know, I'm a pretty weird guy, and therefore, I come up with pretty weird suggestions now and then. I know it's completely off the mark, insane almost, but...

... what about asking in an Ableton Live dedicated forum? Or maybe even *gasp* the Ableton support? I could be completely wrong, but there's this strange voice in my head telling me you will probably rather get an answer there.

All IMHO, of course.

mixnar · 07-01-2010, 06:32 AM

Haha,

Of course I've posted the same mail in the Ableton forum. The thing is that I use Reaper and Ableton, so I was hoping to find people who do the same and can give me some answers. No too crazy isn't it :-) ?

EvilDragon · 07-01-2010, 06:34 AM

The answer is easy - Reaper's audio engine is a lot more CPU optimized than Ableton's, obviously.

mixnar · 07-01-2010, 08:04 AM

That could be the case, but did you check it? I mean, are there other users who are having the same results, or experience different ones? I would like to know!

M

EricM · 07-01-2010, 08:09 AM

I'll do a similar test when I get a bit of time and report back, but I'm
betting Reaper is gonna eat Ableton

mixnar · 07-01-2010, 08:09 AM

Thanks!

nebulae · 07-01-2010, 08:29 AM

I've been a Live user since v4.0. I can absolutely confirm the OP's assertion. I tell anyone starting out in Live that if you go on stage, prepare a Liveset that never exceeds 50-60%CPU because Live becomes unpredictable. I believe the reason for this is that Live has to have a big cache and constantly guess as to what you are about to do at any given moment. That's how it has such a smooth gapless engine. The tradeoff is that at higher CPU settings, it can't keep up.

This is why I've switched to Reaper for production, and I keep Live for playing Live. I do miss a lot of functions, like the groove engine and loop warping. But other than that, Reaper is way smoother.

You'll also find this to be true of the graphics engine. Load up Live with a lot of clips, and it slows to a crawl, whereas Reaper keeps flying.

mixnar · 07-01-2010, 10:11 AM

Ok, thanks for your information, that makes things a bit clearer. Anyone else any experience?

jamieskeen · 07-01-2010, 10:20 AM

For what it is worth I get better performance with reaper than sonar 8.5. And this using the same project and plugins.

mixnar · 07-03-2010, 02:50 AM

Hm, so it ís propably an Ableton thing. EricM, did you already do some tests? Anyone else?
Thanks!

M.