SX3 - Improving Performance?

[Christoffah]

Just wondered if anyone knew any tricks/ways to imrpove Cubase SX3's performance. I have a 12 track project (5 tracks in use for as good as the whole song, the others just vocals/backing vocals/vocal experimenting etc).

When playing the song in Cubase it often freezes briefly then jumps forward 2 or 3 seconds, mutes tracks at random and attempts to play them... allsorts. Eventually I have to manually rewind many times until it will play the section I need to hear.

It's very unmotivating and I have a 7 track CD I need to finish mixing - but this issue is putting me off a lot.

I have 512mb RAM and usually don't have any other windows open, when using Cubase. Most of the tracks have a combined total of hundreds and hundreds of cuts using the 'split' too (moving around and getting everything precise). So there are overlapping bits, splits everywhere, and whatnot - not sure if this is causing the problem.

If anyone can advise me with any possible ideas I'd be more than greatful.

Many thanks in advance.

[Christoffah]

Haha, to listen to the section perfectly I'm having to create mixdowns and open them, it's getting frustrating

any ideas at all? Could it be, colours, using autoscroll, effects such as compression being applied in real-time (just realised, that could well be it, couldn't it??)

[Christoffah]

Yes, 12 tracks each with their own compression, reverb and EQ settings drawn out in real-time will clearly push my computer to the limits. Guess I just disable it all for the time being.

Hope this will help someone else, sorry for wasting your time!!

[Phildo]

Have a look here: www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php. Ignore what it says about disabling "System Restore", though - for the meagre amount of processor power it consumes, it's far too usful. Saved my ass a couple of times.

I'm running on a 1.8GHz laptop with 512 meg of RAM, and regularly run upwards of thirty audio tracks (most with plugins inserted) plus VSTIs and VST FX including a convolution reverb or two without my machine getting anywhere near falling over.

Have you checked your latency settings? I'm running at maximum latency (2046 samples, I think) on my i/f - a Tascam FW1082. Means things run pretty smoothly.

Also, do you "freeze" any VSTi tracks, as this can have a pretty considerable effect on processor headroom - especially if you're using something like "The Grand" or "BFD" or whatever...

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Yup, track freezing is great for freeing up resources.

[bduffy]

Christoffah, what is your setup? That sounds like a bad soundcard conflict or something. I get weird performance with my EMU1212m when the CPU gets near the ceiling.

It could be your CPU consumption is too high, as you said. Try cranking the ASIO buffer size also.

[travelin travis]

Good advice here so far. Christoffah, are you running a dedicated drive for audio? I would think the answer lies within your system performance settings and latency settings for your sound device. I'm running a 1.4 ghz amd, 768 ram, 2 80 gb 7200 rpm drives and my system holds up fine with 12 tracks, a dozen plugins, and at a latency of 6ms (256mb buffer at 44.1k hz).

Questions can get missed around here sometimes so if at first you don't get a response, it's always good to give your thread a a bump or two to bring it back to the top for another chance.

Btw, I agree with Phildo about leaving system restore on. I left it on by accident after my last format and did'nt notice any performance problems while running Cubase. Since then, I've used it a few times and it definately comes in handy.

[bigj]

Keeping up with the thread

I don't know if this is similar to what Chris is suffering right now... but i noticed this problem with not pops, but crakling sounds every10-15 secs ... then i started noticing the sound on the windows media player... or whenever i was listening to audio...

I have a m-Audio firewire solo in a athlon 1.8 ghz 512mb. I just reformatted this damn thing and it was working all fine up to 2 days ago... i have the latest drivers for the AI and using nuendo.

I would go to myspace and listen to my music there and it does it tooo... so it's a system wide problem im having... messed with the buffers... even went step by step all the way up... messed with the direct monitoring... changed my firewire from pci slot thinking on the reformat that it may be sharing irq or something... nada.

anybody has any tips or ideas????

Thanks

[travelin travis]

Originally Posted by bigj

Keeping up with the thread

I don't know if this is similar to what Chris is suffering right now... but i noticed this problem with not pops, but crakling sounds every10-15 secs ... then i started noticing the sound on the windows media player... or whenever i was listening to audio...

I have a m-Audio firewire solo in a athlon 1.8 ghz 512mb. I just reformatted this damn thing and it was working all fine up to 2 days ago... i have the latest drivers for the AI and using nuendo.

I would go to myspace and listen to my music there and it does it tooo... so it's a system wide problem im having... messed with the buffers... even went step by step all the way up... messed with the direct monitoring... changed my firewire from pci slot thinking on the reformat that it may be sharing irq or something... nada.

anybody has any tips or ideas????

Thanks

What hardware and software do you have running on your system? What's running in the background?

[Agent47]

Extra tip:

Muting an audio track will not free up resources. Cubase streams all audio tracks from the hard disk regardless of whether they're muted or not, so they can play instantly when unmuted.

Like people say, freezing or bouncing stuff is probably the best way to go about.

[bigj]

Originally Posted by TravisinFlorida

What hardware and software do you have running on your system? What's running in the background?

Well im pretty good at that process stuff... i just leave around 18 processes running on the task manager...

Like i said... i re formatted the HD and install XP again... I actually was recording for a while and 2 days ago it started... my first thought was... i catched something... ran adaware, spybot and the included software from verizon... took care of some minimal stuff that came up. No viruses or nothing... then i checked for new drivers... but i got the latest for the firewire Solo...

I started messing with the buffer size, nada. Im a defrag the HD cuz since i reformatted i have installed all my stuff by bunches and haven't done that yet...

Like i said b4 this happens when i play any audio in any software or player... even the messenger's audio when you recieve a new message has pops and crackles ... it's kinda funny, but its not! lol

Thanks ... ill let you know what happens after defrag

[legionserial]

Do you have you wave volume higher than your master volume on the computer? It may not make any difference, but my housemate was having the same problem with his pc. Everything crackling. I had a look at his mixer (just the standard windows one in this case) and his master volume was down pretty low, with his wave all the way up. When he turned the wave down and the volume up the crackling disappeared.

Likewise whenever I'd watch DVD's with wave higher than master, the audio would keep auto limiting itself.

This is probably no help at all...in which case I will retreat back into my corner

[bigj]

Thanks guys but for my problem i found what i was missing...

The thing is i didn't realize i still had the Chipset/Motherboard drivers from the original CD and that i didn't include this in the search of new drivers and stuff... so i just downloaded my Nforce drivers and viola... presto... fixed... thanks you guys.. thought i tell bout the solution to my problem just in case somebody runs throu the same symptoms to check that also!