How To Get Ableton Live 11 To Work
Optimize your DAW so you can produce more music
I wrote this post because I went through hell recently with Abelton’s upgrade to Live 11. With the lockdown for COVID and mental health challenges, I needed hardware and software that was reliable and would allow me to focus on creating music. Here is the experience and a step by step guide to give you what you need to get Ableton working for you rather than you losing your sanity!
1. Upgrade Time
I had been using Live 10 Suite (not cheap at $749) for about 6 months and saw that Ableton was releasing Live 11. I was pumped. Lots of new plugins, packs and tools to further me as an electronic music producer and curious human being. I downloaded it a few days after launch and immediately had issues.
Instead of the program just opening after downloading it, I kept getting this prompt:
When I clicked “Yes”, it would try and get me to download Ableton again. I finally played around with Windows 10 and my laptop and somehow managed to get rid of that message. Then, I got another error message when I tried to open Live 11:
None of these issues had occurred when I downloaded Live 10 so I was stumped. I must have reinstalled Ableton Live 11 about 5 times and was still getting the error message. I tweeted Ableton, emailed them and got nowhere. They like to send you cut & pasted links instead of actually diagnosing the issue and then giving you a clear solution. They were zero help.
German companies are renowned for their efficient approach to business. Not this one.
I ended up going on tech forums and after a lot of reading found the solution. I had to download this file that Ableton had failed to include in their software!
Luckily there was a site that allowed me to download this for free and I added it to the Ableton program data folder. Then it loaded! I literally stood up, shouted “I am invincible!” like that tech dude in Goldeneye and had cracked it. Well not quite.
Live 11 crashed almost immediately giving me this error message:
What would be great is if Ableton’s software was stable so it didn’t just crash but paused and allowed you to troubleshoot while still on the program. What they do is reset all of your preferences rather than transfer them from Live 10 to Live 11 so of course, they choose the default as MME/Direct X.
This causes latency and crackling when the CPU is getting crushed. You need to change the Driver Type to “ASIO” and then select Audio Device as “Realtek ASIO”.
Once I had changed the Preferences and used ASIO as my sound driver, I was in business.
I tried to return to production the next day and noticed a lot of bugs and design changes that should not have been made. “Why were these things not addressed during the beta testing phase?” I kept asking myself.
Crashes continued as the CPU (central processing unit) meter kept going way over 100% and I realized that it was now the laptop was just not powerful enough. Ableton told me I had a 9GB RAM spike on one project (not many instruments, optimized, tracks frozen and nothing to impact the CPU) which was a huge surprise.
But Abelton, or “CPU Killer” as I was now referring to it as, was coded in a way where this would happen. And each CPU spike was crashing the program in and some cases the whole operating system on my computer. I needed a new computer after only 5 months of getting a new one.
2. Computer Upgrade
When I went on Ableton’s website to download Live 11, it said it was only 2.2GB but as I was downloading it, I was getting “hard drive memory low” messages. I then realized that the stated 2.2GB was way off. It was actually around 10GB so had to delete as many files and samples I didn’t need to create space for it. This was with a brand new laptop that I had been told by EDM producers & blogs was a good option for a 1st computer — an HP Envy 360x with 256GB memory and 8GB of RAM. In the producer’s words, “no less than 256GB of memory and no less than 4GB or RAM” so this should have worked.
I still don’t know exactly how I did it but I managed to get a refund for my $850 laptop and buy a new Dell XPS 8040 — a tower with 16GB RAM and an i7 core processor. This was only $250 more and gave me way more power (doing the He-Man “I have the power” line!).
I got some help from Justin Miller and another twitter connection and added in 16GB to give a total of 32GB of RAM. It felt a little like I was inviting Ableton to come and get it. My PC was set to Battle Mode and was ready to take on whatever Ableton could throw at it!
It is a little fiddly and of course Dell doesn’t give you any instructions but once you have taken out a few screws and have the side open, locate the memory stick slots and carefully push them in, then lock those slots.
I made this quick video which is basic but shows where the RAM needs to go:
3. External Hard Drive
I also added an SSD external hard drive (Samsung T5) for about $300 so that I could add the libraries and samples on there but keep the program and plugins on the internal computer drive.
This would make it much faster when I used Ableton. The unit is small and light and connects to the USB drive of the PC.
It doesn’t boost the RAM but it is a dedicated, fast drive for when heavy files needed to be loaded into a project. You can also double this up as a tool for live performances.
4. Mystery Project
After about 3 weeks of doing next to no production and being within a hair of asking Ableton for a full refund, I had managed to get most of my projects loading. All of them except one. This was a mystery because I had used forums to find solutions to the other issues but I just couldn’t get this one to launch.
Ableton did reply that they managed to open this file on their end but guess what…gave no actual solution and didn’t suggest doing a video call and screen share so they could quickly show you how to fix this.
So I started to think about a workaround. Every time I tried to open the project, it crashed. I couldn’t get in. So I went into the file that was on the hard drive and tried to open parts from there. CRASH.
I then launched a new project on Live 11 and went into the Projects section in the browser window. I noticed I could do the same as on the hard drive and clicked on the project to open. CRASH.
I then suddenly thought that if there were several tracks on the project, there must be a plugin that was not compatible. So I slowly, one by one, clicked and dragged a track into the new project. First track worked. I repeated for the second track. It worked. Each time I did this move, I saved the new project. I got really far and then a familiar occurrence: CRASH.
I went back in and realized that it was not a 3rd party plugin (which is what Ableton frequently blames for crashes on their FAQ sections) but instead a sample. It was so weird. The sample had worked on Live 10 and I had done nothing to change it. So I double checked.
I tried to drag it into the project and it crashed again. So I had to delete the file. I have no idea why it caused the crash but I now know how to workaround a crash and find the guilty party!
5. KRASH
The whole ordeal with Live 11 and about 100+ crashes had a positive end. I wrote a song called KRASH! Listen to it here:
Bandcamp
Spotify
Youtube
Apple Music
If you enjoyed this, please check out my music here:
LUCKYKAT: solo.to/luckykat
😺
