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Hi,

Everytime when I run more than 5 instruments in Live 6 with my Macbook, it delay and display 100% usage of the CPU power. So frustrated!
Is Macbook powerful enough for recording. Will adding more ram helps? Thanks!

This is my gear
1) new MacBook with 2GHz Core 2 duo, 1GB 887 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 80G hard drive
2) Live 6
3) M-audio firewire solo

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gdoubleyou Thu, 09/06/2007 - 15:40

the Macbook is powerful enough, with the right software.

Even though Live 6 supports dual cores, it contains no specific OSX optimization. I use it with audio only.

More optimized apps like Logic and Digital Performer can use 30%-40% more instances of effects and virtual instruments.

It could be worse you could be a cubase user, the virtual effects and instrument performance is even worse.

Also you will get better performance if you are not using the internal drive for recording, also max out your RAM.

OSX will allways use part of your system disk for virtual memory, when you open live more virtual memory is required, open any plug more virtual memory, plus when you attempt to playback tracks, then record to the same drive.....

OSX will allways have priority and will delay other apps from accessing the drive until it can handle it's business. Also as the system drive fills up performance will suffer, never allow free disk space to get below 10GB.

I have a core duo mini, and have done sessions of 32+ tracks with audio clips in live with no problems.

I use Live like a sketch pad, the ReWire it to Logic.

I have done a orchestral session of sixty+ tracks, virtual instruments only, without having to freeze tracks uing Logic Pro.

So invest in more RAM and an external 7200rpm firewire drive for audio only.

8)

anonymous Thu, 09/06/2007 - 20:19

gdoubleyou,

I used to use Reason 2.0 rewire with Sonar 4.0 on a PC. I switch to Mac because people keep saying it is better. I rely a lot on virtual instruments for orchestral sessions, piano, synth sounds. If I get logic express, should I get reason 3.0 on my Mac. Or do you recommand another program?

If I mainly use virtual intruments, will geting a firewire hard drive be benifitual?

Thanks!

gdoubleyou Fri, 09/07/2007 - 14:00

You should be able to upgrade Reason to version that will work on a MacIntel.

I upgraded to Logic Pro recently from Express, Express also contains the Garage Band Instruments plus afew logic only instruments.

When I was considering Reason I compared the instrument sounds to ones in Express and they sounded thin when I A/B them, but reason does have other features that are worth the purchase.

the Garage Band instruments are based on the instruments that are bundled with Logic Pro, with simplified controls.

They are quite programable and any patch you make will translate to a logic pro instrument.

Express also has the EXSP sample player, the EXS instrument editor only exists in the pro version.

Redmatica makes the Keymap app, a standalone EXS instrument editor, and there are also several sample libraries available.

An external drive will allow OSX uninteruppted access to the system drive.

8)

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