In a statement by Ableton's Gerhard on the Live user forum, Live's developer says Live 3 won't bring significant audio performance improvements, and furthermore, Velocity Engine optimization (which would benefit Mac G4 and G5 users) would require a complete rewrite of the underlying audio engine that won't occur in this upgrade. Gerhard's full statement:

Dear users,

unfortunately, Live 3 will not bring a significant audio performance gain. By audio performance, we mean the number of tracks / effects you can run simultaneously without maxing out the CPU.

As was said before, a significant improvement of the audio performance requires a major redesign of the audio engine's architecture. This redesign is a prerequisite for platform specific optimizations like Altivec and SSE and, in fact, is a lot more work than the actual Altivec / SSE tweaks.

With a heavy heart we decided not to embark on the audio engine redesign for Live 3, for one reason: you would not have seen a Live 3 upgrade this year. We instead decided for a timely Live 3 that opens up exciting new creative possibilities. I hope that, once you see Live 3 in action, you will agree this was the right decision.

As so many Live users say an audio performance boost is the most urgent improvement they want to see, we now do what we never do: we commit to address this issue with the next major release.

As we have learned not to raise expectations we might not live up to, here is a big DISCLAIMER: we do not know at this point how big a gain we can achieve. We will not be able to improve the performance of VST plug ins. The performance gain is likely to vary per Live Effect. We do not know when the next major release will happen.

We are hoping this commitment will, in spite of the disclaimer, secure your belief and support for ableton.

Have a lot of fun with Live 3-- real soon!

Gerhard / ableton

PK: You can read users' reactions in the forum via the link below. Live 3's envelope controls are an essential feature, so I think Ableton made the right call. Live's performance is still extremely disappointing on the Mac, though. Fortunately, Live 3 includes a new Consolidate feature that acts like a "freeze" function, so once we have the Live 3 upgrade, easing CPU load will be a lot easier. I look forward to Live's continued development and a new audio engine in a future version of Live.

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