CPU "spikes"

[Phildo]

...so I'm working on a LP for a friend, and we've got some pretty good work done on a few of the songs.

One of them was eluding us, though, until last night, when we finally started nailing it.

So I've got some instrumental parts down - it's in need of arrangement, but the ideas and sounds are pretty damn good. Not over-complex, and not using a huge amount of processor-intensive plug-ins or inordinate amounts of audio tracks.

But I'm getting huge amounts of glitching in the early - quieter - part of the song, and all that's going on is a drum machine plug-in and a couple of audio tracks. Seems a bit odd that there's no trouble when it's running along at full pelt.

As far as VSTis go, I'm just running B4, a couple of instances of Plugsound Free, and a couple of drum machines.

Couple of effects, including one instance of SIR 1010 as a send effect, one instance of Drumagog for a shitkicking bass-drum sound and a couple of others - nothing major.

Anybody else experienced this? I regularly run songs witrh much more plug-in power being used with no problems.

[Phildo]

...should also say that I've got the buffer/latency settings on my Tascam FW1082 set to max, so that shouldn't have anything to do with it.

[TelePaul]

Lets talk RAM.

[noisewreck]

What reverb VST fx are you using? I have a feeling you're runing against the denormal issue, and at the beginning you don't have anything routed to the reverb. Once you go full blast, there are some tracks that send to the reverb, thus pushing it's level out of the denormal range, thus the CPU utilization goes down.

[ecktronic]

This could be simple, although maybe not!
What are you using at the start of the song (where it glitches) that you arent using at the part of the song that it doesnt glitch.
Could be a certain drum machine maybe.

Eck

[BRIEFCASEMANX]

untick the "lower latency" box when you're not tracking?