How do you lessen the CPU usage?

[jerberson12]

basically using CPU too much will end up to dropout. But how do you optimize the CPU? Do I need to overlock the CPU? upgrade memory?

[Bulls Hit]

Wind up your front side bus and nudge up the Vcore voltage. Keep an eye on your cpu temp, make sure you don't cook it

[James Argo]

Here is some good info:

Should you overclock?


Jaymz

[Bulls Hit]

Originally Posted by James Argo

Here is some good info:

Should you overclock?


Jaymz

Something tells me the guy who wrote that is not one of life's greatest risk takers

[Jeyan]

Over clocking is not a big deal, nice softwares are available to test your processors maximum limits and you can over clock just one step less than that. I am running a 2.8 P4 overclocks to 3.0 easily and I can go further but stopped here to be safe. Memory is essential too, to reduce drop outs provide more memory and give a little more buffer for your software to work with. If nothing works, well time to upgrade the processor

[spankenstein]

How many tracks/effect are you guys using?!

Last year I went form a PII 600 to a 2.4GHz P4. While a big difference with he type of stuff I do (8 to 20 track live bands) the bigest boost was a couple more effects and mixdown was quicker.

I did go from PA9 to Sonar as well but my CPU meter is rarely high at all maybe 15 - 20% when I'm mixing.

[Jeyan]

Generally I'll be atleast using 12-16 stereo tracks and around 10-15 effects in it. I am running P4 overclocked to 3.0, 1G dual channel memory and 10000rpm SATA Drives, so far I didnt have any problem.

[jerberson12]

I ask this question just to make sure if my Sonar 3 runs in my PC the normal way.

Got P4 2.8 Ghz, 768 RAM and 256 Samples. Got total of 7 audio tracks running 22 effects and 1 Dxi (Battery). Its a 1 minute song and CPU usage between 50-60%. Do you think thats enough?, ONly the Midi activity is running in my system tray.

because
I heard somebody with AMD 1.6Ghz 1 gig of RAM at 128 Samples. Using Sonar 3 with 22 Audio tracks, 10 midi, and effects half of the audio tracks plus 1 Dxi running. WOW 22 audio tracks with only 1.6 ghz plus more???? I think this is Moskus system I Guess, Moskus I know you're in there...

[kbaccki]

50-60% on 2.8Ghz sounds like a little much, but it really depends on the load from particular effects and VSTi/DXi. Could you list out which effects you're using? Also, if you run Battery by itself (say in its own project), how much CPU does it take? Certain instrument plugins can really soak the CPU because of the way they implement filters and whatnot.

In general, besides getting more juice out of your CPU, there are two areas to look at tuning:

1.) strip the OS down to bare essentials -- I mean turn off everything that is not absolutely necessary -- do the usual OS tweaks (there are a few checklists) and also check out blackviper. When I boot XP I have a total of 12 background processes running (not including taskmgr.exe, System, and System Idle entries) consuming just under 60MB, and I've been running all kinds of audio software without a glitch over the last few years. I'll post my list of enabled XP services if you're interested.

2.) tune SONAR itself -- simple things that you don't think about can cause excessive CPU spikes:

=> E.g., is it better to use small disk buffers or large? In general larger buffers are better -- but what happens if you use a 2MB disk buffer per track? Well, every 15 seconds you get a flury of activity from the app trying to bring in the next huge chunk of data. I've found that a buffer large enough to handle one second of audio per track keeps the CPU moving along at an even clip.

=> The other thing I found is that the console view is expensive (I use Studio, so I don't even have the per channel EQ which I've heard may be a hog as well). It seems to have something to do with the meters on the console view. For a simple 6 track audio project, by closing the console view I can save 8-10% CPU (as reported in taskmgr -- the SONAR CPU meter does not report that). I've also found that "slowing down" the meter response can save around 5% CPU. The setting is "MeterFrameSizeMS" in AUD.INI. default is 40ms, I use 100ms. This can make meter response chunky when using high settings, so many might like to keep it at 40. 100 works pretty well for me -- it doesn't "fool the eye" but it's not annoying either. The other thing I found interesting is that enabling meters in track view introduces only 5% overhead compared to the 15% when running console view with 40ms meters. If you're counting cycles, this might be of interest, though some of this could also be system dependent (i.e., video cards, etc.).

- Keith

[moskus]

www.musicxp.net

[moskus]

Originally Posted by kbaccki

For a simple 6 track audio project, by closing the console view I can save 8-10% CPU

That might true, but you should never, ever close the Console View....

[Qwerty]

Originally Posted by moskus

That might true, but you should never, ever close the Console View....

Keep taking the medication, the men in white suits will be here shortly.

Q.

TRACK VIEW FOREVER!

[MichaelM]

I've noticed a similar thing with the track view in Sonar 2.2. If you have a lot of tracks and everything going when I play back in the track view, and the waveforms zoomed in a bit, then when the playhead gets to the edge of the screen and the computer has to redraw the waveforms, I get more dropouts. When I'm running Sonar on the edge of dropping out, it definately helps to zoom the waveforms right out so there's no redrawing.

BTW - my computer is quickly becoming out of date.. Only XP2000 + 512mb DDR333? RAM...

[moskus]

Originally Posted by Qwerty

Keep taking the medication, the men in white suits will be here shortly. TRACK VIEW FOREVER!

It's not my fault you don't know a mixer from a dash board...

[Qwerty]

Originally Posted by moskus

It's not my fault you don't know a mixer from a dash board...

Hah! Good one.... but you see, I'm just not beholden to an outdated visual metaphor.

Track view gives me all of the same level, routing, FX information as the Console view but I also get to see the waveforms as they line up on the beat markers.

In console view, all I get is some propeller-head's cool and funky impression of what a mixer looks like. (Check out Reason's interface - press tab - now that's cool "hardware" graphics....)

Track view defines a new paradigm => I can use my ears AND my eyes to feel the music.

Console view only lets you use your ears....... [cough]Dinosaur[/cough]

But if it makes you feel like a really Kool Mixer Dude, go ahead, and I'll send you an old Kraftwerk t-shirt and a cap to wear backwards.....

Q.

But you'll have to take your own belt off......

[moskus]

Well... I can use the Track View for mixing. It's just that it's so much faster and easier with the Console View. I don't need to resize the tracks to get the control I want, it's right there (on my second monitor).


And if you have a control surface, it's one of the coolest things ever: Watch the faders move up and down on the monitor as I do the same "in real life".

[Qwerty]

Originally Posted by moskus

it's right there (on my second monitor).

No That's for plugins or piano roll....

Originally Posted by moskus

And if you have a control surface, it's one of the coolest things ever: Watch the faders move up and down on the monitor as I do the same "in real life".

That's what I use the Oxygen-8 for most of the time Works in Track View too...

Whatever makes beautiful music!

Q.