cpu usage and mixing

[Melsi]

i was wondering if anyone could tell me how i could improve my situation.

I have a dell dimension 8400 computer with 3.00ghz processor and 512ram 80gig hard drive with an ESI waveterminal soundcard.

and when im in sonar and im mixing my projects using mostly waves products my cpu goes over the roof!
also when im producing in fruity and i load a few plugins i get loads of cracking so i have to move my latency right up and that gives everything such a slow response!

do i just need to upgrade my ram? if so what would be suitable?

Thanks in advance!

[Melsi]

sorry just to let people i know, i jus found out that cpu its takes up effects - reverbs etc... and ram takes up vsti plugins, but i have 3.00ghz cpu which i thought was pretty high? so why is my cpu overloading when i add lots of waves plugins?

I don't know what the ESI terminal soundcard is...

What plugins are you using of Waves and how many, on how many tracks?

This won't have much to do with RAM unless some of the effects you're running are MIDI VSTi's (Virtual Instruments). If they're just effects like reverb, compressors, etc., then it will be your CPU.

[ez_willis]

Start with this article from Ethan Winer's site.

[K.P.]

you pretty much sums up the DAW workings. more specific info on track/plugin counts is needed

also, you could do with more RAM.

[Freudian Slip]

Originally Posted by Melsi

sorry just to let people i know, i jus found out that cpu its takes up effects - reverbs etc... and ram takes up vsti plugins, but i have 3.00ghz cpu which i thought was pretty high? so why is my cpu overloading when i add lots of waves plugins?

What 3.0 processor do you have? p4, celeron?

Some waves plugs really suck up processor power. C4 is really bad and there are a few others as well.

I'm really wondering about that chip though. Like to hear what KP is asking too.

F.S.

[Melsi]

its a pentium 4, and im using about 10 different vocal tracks each track has compression,eq,gate and reverb maybe antares mic modeller and autotune, and my cpu usage is just crazy!

[ecktronic]

Reverb will take up alot of your cpu since it is taking thousands of tiny samples of the wave like a delay does.

I would suggest using reverb busses to send tracks to so you dont need as many reverb plug ins.

Eck

[K.P.]

Originally Posted by ecktronic

Reverb will take up alot of your cpu since it is taking thousands of tiny samples of the wave like a delay does.

I would suggest using reverb busses to send tracks to so you dont need as many reverb plug ins.

Eck

yep, learn to utilize Reverb Busses. for starters, set up a Short Rm, Med Room, Hall...

you can also buss common tracks like rhythm guitars, backing vox... and treat them as a unit.

treat as much as possible as a unit.

[ecktronic]

Originally Posted by K.P.

you can also buss common tracks like rhythm guitars, backing vox... and treat them as a unit.

treat as much as possible as a unit.

Yeah, good advice. Becuase I use 2 tracks for each guitar part I usually send those tracks to a channel so I only need half the amount of effects. And when you have like 20 guitar tracks this can save alot of cpu.

Eck

[SouthSIDE Glen]

You have more than enough CPU and RAM to run your projects. The problem is "sloppy" track management (I don't mean that in a perjorative way.)

What you need to do is "lock" or "freeze" or "pre-render" (whichever it's called in Sonar) the tracks that you are not currently working on. and leave only those tracks that you're currently working on to real-time processing.

If you need to go back and modify previously locked tracks, no problem; you can just "unlock" them and they revert to their unrendered, real-time conditon.

Use this feature and on a 3GHz CPU with a half-gig memory you can run and work on more tracks than you'll even need in one project without hvaing to spend a penny on hardware upgrades or having to spend hours chasing a bunch of esoteric driver and memory resource settings.

G.

[Freudian Slip]

Ya it's a freeze in sonar and it's un freezable just like SouthSIDE Glen said.

Like others said P4 you should not have an issue if you change the way you are doing things in either of the ways described, you could also create a sub and place your verb on that and run your vocals threw there and loose all those seperate instances of verb. It's a lot less work too than setting up all those plugs.


F.S.

[ecktronic]

Freezing is the shizny.
CAn be annoying when moving a number of tracks if you forget some tracks you are trying to move are frozen. Can mess up a whole session!

Also can take a while to render a number of tracks.
I usually freeze the kick and snare tracks once I am happy with them. That freeze (pardon the pun) up alot of cpu for me to work with.
I find my cpu gets slow and jerky after around 30-40 tracks with at least 2 plug ins on each. (usually RComp and REQ).

Eck

[Freudian Slip]

Originally Posted by ecktronic

That freeze (pardon the pun) up alot of cpu for me to work with.

Eck

*shakes his head*


F.S.

[Melsi]

ok thanks for the tips guys, so what about in fruity loops when i have lots of different plugins-instruments open and it gets all crackly? how can i solve this?

[haarisa]

Try to seee what your latency is at. That happens only when I have too much VST instruments running. Try to render some to wave [particularly Legacy Cell as that takes up TONS of RAM and cycles]. Hope that helps. If not, turn up the latency to 512 ms.

[ecktronic]

Originally Posted by Freudian Slip

*shakes his head*


F.S.

I know.

Eck

[IronFlippy]

Regarding busses: If you bus the reverb, it'll give the whole song more of an effect of being in the same room since you're using the same exact settings for each track.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by IronFlippy

Regarding busses: If you bus the reverb, it'll give the whole song more of an effect of being in the same room since you're using the same exact settings for each track.

Agreed, it can add a nice "glue" to the mix.

I'd like to add a caveat to that, though; be careful of verbing the mix buss if you already have verb happening on any of your individual tracks. Stacking verb like that can build up to a lot of mud real quickly if not done carefully. Just a hint of verb on the buss may be all that's needed in such cases - if that.

But then again, that then goes against the jist of this thread; verbing the tracks *and* the buss is adding more CPU load, not removing it .

G.

I've used GlaceVerb for that "glue" effect.

I just set a small room size, small decay, and turn the dry to 100%, wet to 0%. Turn up the wet gain until I can hear it, and then turn it back down a little.

Very subtle but it does have a nice effect.