My reverbs are killing my CPU....

steffeeH

steffeeH

New member
For a long time I've had issues with too heavy CPU usage in my projects. I've done everything I can to lighten the pressure, and a lot has improved, but there's still a lot of issues.
And just now I realised that my reverb plugins are causing a lot of heavy CPU usage (not kidding, switching on/off a single unit makes a major difference).
I mostly use the Smart Electronix Ambience, but even the FL Studio stock reverbs causes a lot of extra CPU usage.

Where do I go from here? Are there any CPU-light reverb units that sound as dense and good as Ambience?

I could freeze the reverb of a sound by itself, but that's a lot of extra work as I don't use normal parallel routing for my reverbs.
Oh and no I can't use reverb sends, it simply doesn't work for these tracks (plus then I'd still have CPU issues from only 1 reverb instance added).
 
Yeah I had CPU issues too, it was gradual as I added more and more plugins.
I was forced to get a new laptop this year when my display went wonky and the i5 processor works better than the Quadcore and I don't get as much CPU spiking, but I do get dropouts but only after applying a lot more plugins than before.
As far as a good low CPU reverb? I went from Pantheon to Lexicon's full package - those are the only reverbs I've used to date. Pantheon was pretty easy on the CPU. The Full Pkg is a resource hog.
 
Thanks for your input :)

Funny thing is that I already have a decent laptop with i7 quadcore 3 ghz processor, yet I have this problem.
I'm gonna save up for a badboy 2000 dollar homebuilt desktop, but that will probably happen next year.
 
Check on how you are using reverb plug ins.

If you are loading one as an effect on each track, that will eat up CPU quickly. But if you load it onto a separate track, then create sends to that track, you only need to load one instance.
 
Yea, what gecko said. Depending on how you are using the reverb. For example, if I am using reverb to put everything into the same room, I create on reverb send, make it 100% send dry to master and then send some amount (like a sub-mix) to the reverb. When I have the reverb track mixed, then I adjust the amount against all of the dry tracks to get the right amount.

The reverb mix doesn't have to be as accurate as your master mix, just so everything can be heard. Then I add the other reverb to tracks as a effect if required. Doing this usually I only need 1-2 reverb plug in instances. If it is on the track, I can freeze it if required and keep the send live.

Others may hgave a better way, but that is how I manage reverb as it is usually a CPU killer.
 
gecko zzed said:
Check on how you are using reverb plug ins.

If you are loading one as an effect on each track, that will eat up CPU quickly. But if you load it onto a separate track, then create sends to that track, you only need to load one instance.
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That's what I was going to say, but then I read this:
steffeeH said:
Oh and no I can't use reverb sends, it simply doesn't work for these tracks (plus then I'd still have CPU issues from only 1 reverb instance added).
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I don't get why he can't use sends, but since he says they don't work, I'm not going argue. Doesn't make sense to me, but whatever.
 
RAMI said:
I don't get why he can't use sends, but since he says they don't work, I'm not going argue. Doesn't make sense to me, but whatever.
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I missed the bit about the OP saying he couldn't use sends. I'm not sure why he can't, but it is such a basic and important function that if the software can't do it, then I would seriously look at something that can. Working without sends is like trying to run with a brick tied to your ankle.
 
gecko zzed said:
I missed the bit about the OP saying he couldn't use sends. I'm not sure why he can't, but it is such a basic and important function that if the software can't do it, then I would seriously look at something that can. Working without sends is like trying to run with a brick tied to your ankle.
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He didn't say the software couldn't do it, he said that it didn't work for these tracks. I took that to mean that he couldn't get the right balance with the sends or each track has it's own completely different verb.
 
Something doesn't quite add up here. An i7, even one running at 3 GHz, should be more than capable of dealing with several reverb instances.

Did I read correctly that you're using FL Studio as your DAW? Have you tried other DAWs to see if they're better suited for the type of projects that you're creating?

Just running 1 instance of a reverb shouldn't even make an i7 break a sweat. There must be something else at play here. Either it's a terribly optimized reverb VST, or maybe it's a 32-bit VST running in bridged mode and therefore taking up more CPU resources than necessary. Or there might be background processes contributing to the problem.

Care to elaborate about your hardware and software setup, and this project that's causing you issues?
 
The question is what other processing is going on? Every system has its limits ... bounce/print etc. all tracks and import them back into the project, then freeze all the previous tracks that have all the active plugins on them. Then work with JUST your reverbs. If you HAVE to do this kind of thing, you have to ...
 
PlatinumAudio said:
The question is what other processing is going on? Every system has its limits ... bounce/print etc. all tracks and import them back into the project, then freeze all the previous tracks that have all the active plugins on them. Then work with JUST your reverbs. If you HAVE to do this kind of thing, you have to ...
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Freezing is really bouncing (per track), just with less steps.
 
Yeah you could just freeze them all. It's just my own workflow, I guess. When I reach a point in the mix where I need to walk away and come back after a break, I bounce the mix as is into a 2 track which I import back in.

Then when I come back with fresh ears, I compare the most recent mixdown with the previous one and the first one. See what direction I'm taking and re-evaluate where I want to go from there.

I also do a multi-track mix-down at a few stages during a project. For example, after the production stage, I save the project as "Project_Production_Complete, then again at the end of the editing stage, Project_Edit_Complete or whatever. There will be saves in between, but at the beginning of each major change of activity, I export the multi-track into a new sub folder, re-import it back into the project and hide all the tracks from the previous stage. Just a me thing. :)
 
PlatinumAudio said:
Yeah you could just freeze them all. It's just my own workflow, I guess. When I reach a point in the mix where I need to walk away and come back after a break, I bounce the mix as is into a 2 track which I import back in.

Then when I come back with fresh ears, I compare the most recent mixdown with the previous one and the first one. See what direction I'm taking and re-evaluate where I want to go from there.

I also do a multi-track mix-down at a few stages during a project. For example, after the production stage, I save the project as "Project_Production_Complete, then again at the end of the editing stage, Project_Edit_Complete or whatever. There will be saves in between, but at the beginning of each major change of activity, I export the multi-track into a new sub folder, re-import it back into the project and hide all the tracks from the previous stage. Just a me thing. :)
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Oh my that sounds like a total bunch of wasted time... Sorry, just my opinion.
 
jimmys69 said:
Oh my that sounds like a total bunch of wasted time... Sorry, just my opinion.
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I guess if I just froze tracks from production through to mixdown, I'd have that much stuff to organise ... If I am JUST mixing, then I'd never really need to re-import the multi-track. It's mostly something I do between production and mixing; like where I have a bunch of VSTis and all of the Drum multi tracks still active. I'd rather bounce the whole mix in multi, get out of production mode, and put my mixing hat on like I'm a new person. Also saves resources.
 
As for the sends, I do use 2 reverb sends simply for room ambience to glue the sounds together (a mono and a stereo one). But now I'm talking about artistic reverbs, with a lot of controls that needs to be set for the particular sound.

The scenario that I earlier mentioned with 1 reverb instance making a difference was in a real song project, not an empty DAW project. Here I had a lot of polyphony going on with a lot of MIDI info, but it was still running very smooth on maximum buffer size, but when I added a reverb unit the underruns just exploded (from a constant 70 % DAW CPU usage to 100 % with a lot of peaking).
The only program I was running except my DAW was Spotify for song references, but it was in a passive mode with no music played and no buffering.

I can freeze the reverb audio, but it's a lot of extra work because of my plugin order when I do serial processing, and my advanced settings in a routing plugin called Patcher, where I do parallel reverb processing.
Freezing the raw/dry audio however is not the case at this stage, as I'm still building the track theme in a short loop (I would be able to do it if the track length was done, with a lot of the actual note scores finished in the affected sounds).
 
In the early days of DAW's the reverbs used to max out he CPU all the time, what I did was whenever I had the reverb as I liked it I would render a copy of the track with the reverb on it so that the CPU was not processing reverb all the time, then keep the original muted off in case I wanted to change the reverb again later. I must say that my current computer which is not that super fast manages all but extreme reverbs most of the time.

Alan.
 
What's your hardware buffer size set to?

I mean, like everyone else is saying, it's nuts to me that you're having CPU issues with even one instance of reverb on. I've got an i7 2.8Ghz in my MacBook Pro that I use for mixing tracks, and I can load a couple instances of Slate's FGX mastering processor on there with a 64 sample buffer size, and it still doesn't even hit 30% (Note that FGX is notorious for being processor heavy -- it's the most processor intesive plug-in I own).

I have no clue how you're hitting 100% with just a few reverb plug-ins, but my first solution would be to ask if you've tried raising the buffer size.
 
MrWrenchey said:
What's your hardware buffer size set to?

I mean, like everyone else is saying, it's nuts to me that you're having CPU issues with even one instance of reverb on. I've got an i7 2.8Ghz in my MacBook Pro that I use for mixing tracks, and I can load a couple instances of Slate's FGX mastering processor on there with a 64 sample buffer size, and it still doesn't even hit 30% (Note that FGX is notorious for being processor heavy -- it's the most processor intesive plug-in I own).

I have no clue how you're hitting 100% with just a few reverb plug-ins, but my first solution would be to ask if you've tried raising the buffer size.
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Yep . . . I too have an i7 2.8 CPU, and despite whatever I throw at it, it is happy to chug along just nicely. I can't help feeling that the OP has some other stuff going on that's chewing up his CPU.
 
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