using real-time effects

[dobro]

Okay, I got into using real-time effects tonight for the whole session. First time. (Don't ask...)

The problem's obviously CPU usage. If I lock tracks, it frees up the machine, but if I save the tracks with the lock on, then the session takes forever to load when I open it again.

So, how do *you* use real-time effects? Do you unlock locked tracks just before you save and close, or do you put up with slow loading time?

[Change of POETS]

I don't use them.

Unfortunately, CPU's can't readily handle the large task to process real-time effects at this point. Unless you move into the realm of dual processor's... and even then, I don't know how efficient it would be.

I can run real time effects on a handful of tracks, but any more than that, and it begins to bog. Mind you, I'm running a 3.2 Pentium 4 with over a Gig of Ram and a 733 FSB. My PC isn't slow by any means.

[Strryder]

This is definetely a CEP/AA issue, I had the same problems when trying to use CEP2.1 for multitracking, I can easily get 40 or so plugins working in real-time using Sonar 2.2XL (24 tracks or so), of course this is using mostly the barebones cakewalk plugs, and most of them were EQ's.

I have since switched to using SAWStudio, in SAWStudio each channel strip of the virtual mixer has a 5 band parametric EQ, and noise gate/compressor, as a test I ran 24 solid tracks at 24/44.1 using 24 compressors, and 24 5 band EQ's, along with a master reverb on aux 1, a delay on aux 2, a chorus on aux 3, and a flanger on aux 4, plus 4 individual delays on seperate tracks, this is on an H/P Pavilion laptop, 1.8 ghz AMD AthlonXP with 1 gb ram and the stock "slow" hard drive.

[dobro]

Ozpeter, *you* use real-time effects, right?

[chrisharris]

I use the crap out of them, lol. Mostly for compression and reverb and I guess track EQ sorta' counts. Before I got a faster machine, I used to lock tracks, but there's an option in there somewhere, dobro, to "save copies of locked tracks" or something like that...you check a box, and it saves the locked tracks in a new folder inside your session folder, so that opening a session with locked tracks is very fast. The downside, obviously, is that it uses 2x as much harddrive space.

[ozpeter]

Options > Settings > Multitrack is where the setting is that ChrisHarris is referring to. To which ChrisHarris is referring. Whatever.

If your machine hasn't got enough grunt to process all the effects you want, you can

lock tracks (and save the locks at mentioned above)
mix down to a new track, mute the original and bypass the effects
use buses for tracks having the same processing
choose effects which don't require so much grunt (eg avoid "Full Reverb")
buy a better PC....

[dobro]

Thank you, gentlemen. When I return from a brief vacation I shall endeavor to apply your expertise in a way calculated to bring joy to the user (me).