Performance -external Hard Drive Options

[Eddie5bellies]

Hi there

Apologies if this topic has already been covered (I had a quick search but couldn't see it). Basically I'm having issues with latency and CPU when using ablton 5.2 on my Mac G5. As soon as I start building up a track with a few VSt's running I hit problems.

I have a lot of music/sample cd's/refills store on my machine and was considering buying an external hard drive as I'm sure I've heard it can improve the system performance -storing your samples and music externally.

Can anyone comment on this or indeed confirm it ?

thanks very much

[lepetitmartien]

Hello

First, are the audio files on the system drive? If yes, it'll help. Mind that you can have 2 drives in the G5, not to mention the hacks to add more (though more expensive than the second drive or a firewire external)

Second, is the issue related to sample/loop reading or you're hitting the wall with the CPU ? If so, the drive won't help much.

There's plenty to read in the hard drives sub forum on external drives and files, in case.

[mortalengines]

I noticed from 5.2.2 that it really did not take much to get it stuttering. The work around is to freeze your VST's as soon as you are happy with them. I found this to be kind of difficult to work around as well when I wanted to make minor tweaks to then un freeze and re freeze tracks. After a while I got to the point where I would just render a VST to disc as an audio track and live with it (you can always go back to a previous version or "turn off" the midi/VST track in your live set and go back and change things later too). If you upgrade to Live 6 though, you can do some pretty decent editing with frozen tracks. This has greatly improved my workflow. Also you really need to run your loops and audio tracks from a separate drive....www.pacificproaudio.com has some really inexpensive FW drives that are already optimized for the kind of work you are doing. You can run Ableton from your system drive and then just save your ALS flles to the FW drive (works really easy if you "save self contained"). Good Luck!


www.myspace.com/mortal_engines