cpu usage oddities

[mojew]

i've got about 16 tracks all with about 4 real time effects on each one going in most songs of my current project. this is by far the biggest undertaking i've done so far on my system, and i'm running into problems. when tracks are playing, cpu usage is around 82% and everything runs smoothly... but when audio isn't playing, its usually around 97% or higher and even giving me the cpu warning thing.

i've got a pretty fast system...

asus a7v8x mb
athlon xp 2000+
256 mb ram
geforce ddr
sblive value
an nic card that i disable whenever i'm doing audio stuff.


i guess the only shortcoming (other than the sblive.. obviously) would be the ram. if i got another 256 mb would this fix my problem? or is there an even less expensive software solution to my problem?

[jrosenstein]

with that system, you shouldn't be anywhere near that high when you're not actively doing any big processing job. there has got to be something running in the background that's eating up cycles.

you didn't install SETI, did you?

[mojew]

no. i've got absolutely nothing installed other than sonar and plugins... i don't even use that computer for internet...

[jrosenstein]

what OS do you have? if you have XP, go into the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and figure out what process is taking up your CPU

[Porter]

Hey mojew,

Have you tried optimizing you XP?

MusicXP.net

I have 2 installs of my OS at home... when I'm in Sonar in my 'every day' install the CPU usage jumps up and down... even when I'm doing nothing. On my other install I've optimized it and it very rarely has any CPU usage.

Porter

[mojew]

would switching to ntfs help? and would i have to format my harddrive to switch to ntfs?

[Porter]

Originally posted by jrosenstein
what OS do you have?

I assumed you had XP, which OS do you have?

As for Fat32 vs NTFS, I remember reading a post, it might have been over in the computers forum. It said that there was very little difference between the two when it comes to recording. HDD wise, the things you have to look at is if it is a 7200RPM drive (verses 5400RPM) and the seek time... get the least possible, ie 8.5ms, and a fast transfer rate.

Porter

[mojew]

hmmm i think i have a slower harddrive... but it seems like this is a wierd problem that could be more software related.

like... my cpu usage is higher when not playing than when playing... isn't that wierd?

[mojew]

and yeah... xp. i'm gonna look up the stats on my harddrive.

[mojew]

its 7200 and <9ms seek time... should be okay...

[jrosenstein]

press ctrl-alt-delete to go to the Task Manager, go to the Processes tab, and tell us the names of any processes that are using more than 10% of your CPU (besides for "System Idle Process")

[mojew]

the only process using any cpu is sonar and its using 99%. task manager uses 1%

something fishy is going on.

[jrosenstein]

smells like the fishes

[Porter]

From what I've gathered Sonar takes up as much of the CPU that it can... in this situation it is 99%... it then uses as much or as little of it's allocation when playing back music...

I dont' know weather this is a bug or the design.. I'm guessing it is the design because instead of the application 'looking' for processor it already has it put asside... like a swap file, but with processor instead.

Have you looked at the site I listed above... http://www.musicxp.net

Porter

[mojew]

yeah. thats a great site. in fact i already had done most of the tuning tips and just now went through my services. everything seems okay... but my cpu is going nuts!

maybe i should just upgrade to sonar 2.0

[moskus]

Mojew, are you using Input Monitoring?

That could explain why CPU-usage when Idle is higher than when playing.

I'm also interessted in what soundcard you have.
And does the problem disappear if you rise the latency?

[mojew]

nope. not using input monitoring. i see how that would make cpu usage higher... but it seems like its using waaaaay more cpu than it should be.

[mojew]

i've got a soundblaster live. i'm just gonna go check if increasing the latency solves anything.

[moskus]

And still: What soundcard do you have?

It could be that there's just something wrong with the installation. Install again, and download the Sonar 1 updates from Cakewalk. Perhaps this was an issue before and then got fixed. I think the last update for Sonar 1 was 1.3.1...

[mojew]

i've got a soundblaster live. increasing the latency seems to make it peak around 90% cpu usage when idle. i just don't see why it would be so high when idle. makes no sense.

[moskus]

The audio-engine is still running, so all effects is still using CPU power. That's normal... It's just strange that it uses more when idle. I say (if you haven't allready) download the updates and install them.

And maybe you should upgrade the SB Live-drivers, or downgrade to the Microsoft SB-Live (yes, the Microsoft-driver is better than Creatives. And if you're not happy with those, get the kX-project drivers).

[mojew]

i'll try drivers, and if it still sucks i'll either get the updates tomorrow, or possibly even buy sonar 2. i should get it eventually anyways... no better time than now.

[moskus]

The first thing to do is to install the updates. They fix alot of issues...

[mojew]

okay... the updates didn't seem to fix anything... so i'm guessing its a hardware problem... i went back to the microsoft drivers... still bad.... any ideas?

[mojew]

i'm trying kx drivers right now and sonar won't even output audio now... it plays, but nothing. and same cpu problems anyways...