Ableton automation lanes and CPU management

mrskylight
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Ableton automation lanes and CPU management

Post by mrskylight »

Hello! I was wondering if someone could help me.

The setup that I'm running on Ableton has roughly 200 channels. I'm using 100% automation lanes to control them because I like the smooth fading and control that this allows.

However, once I get to around 50 channels, the CPU on my 2020 MacBook pro overloads. PLEASE TELL ME THERE IS A WORKAROUND FOR THIS!

I already bounced the entire song track to an mp3 but honestly that didn't change much.

Thoughts:
1: is there a way to make automation lanes more granular? If I'm fading a light in, there's no need for it to go through 255 different states of brightness. I could do this manually if I have to, but I was wondering if there was a setting in Ableton perhaps.

2: I saw on one of the forums that the developers said DMXis works best when on a return track or the master track. The problem with that is you can't scroll through the automation lanes for some reason on return or master tracks, so you are limited to as many automation lanes as fit on the screen and that's not going to work. Does loading the VST on a return or master track change the CPU load?

3: Is there a difference in CPU between using DMXis as a effect versus an instrument?

4: would breaking up into multiple tracks with a few automation lanes on each help CPU load?
Dave Brown [admin]
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Re: Ableton automation lanes and CPU management

Post by Dave Brown [admin] »

First question, are you running the latest 1.7.2 release of DMXIS?
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coryjbergquist
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Re: Ableton automation lanes and CPU management

Post by coryjbergquist »

I had a similar issue when trying to use automation lanes with my DMXis and Ableton. Whenever I automated more than 25 or so channels at once, my CPU would take a massive hit.

I started with several tracks that had one DMXis plugin each (not ideal, but I did this when I was initially programming the lights so I could have better control and organization), I saw a spike in CPU usage, so I transferred all of the automation lanes to one "master" plugin (I put it in a regular MIDI track) and deleted all of the other ones so I could run everything off of one plugin. Unfortunately this didn't help my CPU usage.

You may have come across this already, but after a bit of reading, I found that it's a lot less CPU heavy to do complex patterns by using the DMXis preset manager's banks and presets. I did a test by making a preset that rapidly faded in and out of RBG channels for 16 lights all at the same time, controlling 50+ channels at once, and saw that my CPU usage was next to nothing.

You can control launching your presets with midi signals, and switch between presets really fast with minimal CPU usage. So I'm in the process of reworking my show using all presets and banks which I think will be better and much less messy in the long run anyway (once I figure out some technical issues I'm having).

Unfortunately this doesn't really solve your exact issue, but you can still make decent fades and choose how long they last with the presets, sometimes you just have to get a little creative, and it solves the CPU issue which I think is worth the trouble.
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Re: Ableton automation lanes and CPU management

Post by Dave Brown [admin] »

A new DMXIS 1.7.3 beta is now available from www.dmxis.com/download. This release resolves the high CPU loads seen when automating multiple DMXIS plug-in faders within Ableton Live.

Note the important beta disclaimer on the download page, and backup your show data first for safety!
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mapa729
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Re: Ableton automation lanes and CPU management

Post by mapa729 »

Hey Dave- thanks for addressing this! However I'm not seeing the 1.7.3 version available on the downloads page? Only 1.7.2.

I tried downloading the OSX version of 1.7.2 but it doesn't seem to udpate the plugin in question, which is what I use to run my live shows via ableton. Can you advise?

Thank you! _Matt
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Re: Ableton automation lanes and CPU management

Post by Dave Brown [admin] »

The latest version is now 1.7.4, grab that from the downloads page.
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