How does Ableton load audio?

eldowns

New member
I build and run Ableton sessions for live bands. I was recently working with a band whose session would skip randomly (and then catch itself back up) throughout the set. I noticed that their audio folder was about 16GB, but was only using about 3GB, so I deleted all unused files and the session stopped skipping.

I'm now working with a band who have a billion stems that I'm bouncing down into groups. I currently have two session files: 1 "Master" for all the raw stems and 1 "Live" set. I currently open all the stems in the "Master" session, check levels, decide what's needed, etc., then bounce down the groups into new stems. I then load those stems into the "Live" set. I do this hoping to reduce the load that the "Live" set carries based on my experience with the previous band. My concern, now, is that although the "Live" set only has consolidated stems, it shares an audio folder with the "Master" set and may not actually be any lighter.

So, finally, my flurry of questions: How does Ableton handle files? Does it load all files in the audio folder or does it only load what is being used in that particular session file? Is what I experienced with the first band I mentioned a fluke or would reducing the amount of audio files (regardless of whether or not they're used) improve playback performance?

Thanks in advance.
 
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