[deng]

Not my experience. I've had stutters with Ableton Live on a 4 core machine with 2 cores still idling around. Ableton cannot multi-thread a single track (at least in Version 9), and if you're using a single-threaded VST that does not matter anyway.

[jdietrich]

If a single instance of a VST can use 100% of a thread, you're using a woefully underpowered processor or a ludicrously inefficient plugin. Many composers regularly work on projects with hundreds of tracks and thousands of plugin instances. Projects of that scale used to require multiple computers and a bunch of DSP accelerator cards, but they're now entirely feasible on one high-end workstation.

[deng]

It's not hard to find VSTs which will easily max out an i7, especially if they run on Max/MSP. Also, stuff from u-he, like Diva. If you run several instances on high-quality you'll usually need to start freezing tracks.

[shmageggy]

> Ableton cannot multi-thread a single track (at least in Version 9)

This is still the case in 10, and one of the reasons I have been seriously looking at Bitwig (Linux support being the other).

[omnimus]

Is situation in bitwig better?

[shmageggy]

When I tested them out with identical sessions, I was able to get higher track/VST counts without dropouts in Bitwig.