Hi!
I’m using AbleSet with my cover band and it’s been working great. The only thing is, we now have more than 60 songs in one project, and even though it hasn’t crashed so far, I’m a bit worried it might at some point.
I’ve tried using the Multi File Project feature, but it doesn’t quite work for me since some of our songs have transitions between them, and I can’t handle those properly that way.
Is there any plan or way in the future to have multiple songs within a single project and still have AbleSet recognize them using the Multi File Project system?
Also, what would you recommend for managing large song lists or setlists like this?
There was actually some discussion about this a while ago, exploring the idea of combining multi-file and regular projects.
In my experience, I’ve got projects with over 100 songs, and they run perfectly fine. Most of the hiccups users experience with large sessions usually aren’t caused by AbleSet itself, but rather by how files are handled in Ableton — things like mixing audio files with different sample rates, or not saving the analysis files. In those cases, Ableton takes longer to render the waveforms for display, which can make it feel like the session is lagging.
Another common cause is when users run too many heavy plugins with a very low buffer size in Live, which can easily overload the CPU.
Keeping a reasonable buffer size (if you’re on Apple Silicon , it’s best to start at 256 , or 128 if your Mac can handle it, so it doesn’t switch to the e-cores), and freezing tracks when possible helps a lot with performance.
It’s also recommended not to keep the entire session fully zoomed out.
As long as those things are checked and your computer is reasonably powerful, you shouldn’t run into any issues at all.
If you want to use transitions between songs and still prefer working with Multi File Projects, one workaround could be to treat the songs with transitions as a single song and the individual songs as sections within it. It’s not a perfect solution, but it works if you need transitions while still benefiting from the Multi File setup. Otherwise, keeping everything in a single project is totally fine.