New Tower vst performance 10% cpu usage 100% I NEED HELP!!!

J

justadrummer

New member
Had a laptop 1.4ghz 2g ram firewire firepods & ext hard drive with no problems

Bought a pentium4 2ghz 2g ram tower with a firewire card and i have two guitar tracks and on bass line that is making my cpu usage peak out.
But my VST performance level is minimal.
I have checked everything i can think of from Device manager, latency
registry fixes, i only have 23 processes running in task mgr.
Im missing one little setting somewhere and can't find it.
Thanks in advance for any ideas. Both firepods are synced and working fine.
I had an external hard drive on the same firewire card but i disconnected it
to see if it helped but had no change.
window xp sp3. ive done the hotfixes for sp3 and 1394 problems.
Its a fresh install with a clean hard drive. Only 12 programs in the "ALL PROGRAMS" column
 
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I have the SAME exact problem my friend. And what my issue is is that I have constant dropouts when I'm recording. And I record full band, guitar, bass, keys, and drums. And It's always dropping out and when I play the playback I hear any annoying buzz wherever it dropped out at. As if cubase lagged or something.

I also have cpu almost maxed out 100% sometimes. But I'm running a Dell Studio 17 laptop with 2.1 ghz cpu and 4 gb of ram. And running on the notorious Vista on 64 bit which is probably the basis of my problem. But it is mysterious that you are having such issues.

It may very well be that your cpu may not be up to par with the software or that you don't have enough ram. Maybe another stick of 2gb of ram will help ease it a bit. Also, disable any firewalls, antivirus, spyware, or any protection program that you are using if you haven't already. Exit any background programs, AIM, windows sidebar, itunes, limewire, windows media player, anything you don't need for recording. Also try play playing with your buffer settings. It might also be that you have a bad quality firewire card, try checking online and look up some reviews on your card. Try going back to using your laptop and see what you did on there. Differences in space, computer specs, programs running. Tasks running. Try evaluating every single variable you can think of that could reduce the issue. I have done so and can only come to the conclusion that Vista is just not the OS to use for recording.
 
Windows XP, SP3 shouldn't be the problem.
I'd be guessing it's your CPU.
Did it come attached and can you check the paste?
 
If you could could you tell us all that is in your processes in task manager? And maybe a screenshot or info on the cpu performance?

You could try this, when you run cubase, bring up task manager. And under processes right click on cubase. And if there is an option that says "set priority" on it hover your mouse over that and switch priority to realtime. This could possibly help to focus your cpu's main usage over to cubase. And if you can try reducing the priority to secondhand backgroud programs that you think you need but don't really really need.
 
Wow!
Hey, Ninja Drummer.
That's pretty cool.
I'm going down to check my studio PC now.
Any more tips like that one? :drunk:
 
Not really no, I just discovered it when I was rechecking my windows task manager and managed to find it whilest trying to find a solution to my problem.
 
Well I just checked mine. I had it set on "High" from within Mixcraft so I changed it to "Real Time". No difference that I can see. Also, now that Mixcraft has a performance meter visible at all times, I see little variation between Mixcraft and System usage. Maybe 2% here and there. So I'm good.
I'm still thinking, maybe justadrummer got a bum CPU or poorly installed one.
 
i was thinking "bum CPU" i reinstalled Win XP SP2 with a fresh format on the hard drive. Everythings seems to be ok now.
I have gone over every setting in every forum to get this thig up and running .
i figured a fresh re format was a good start.
In the processes i have like 21 running with Cubase & Firepods up.
I still have high CPU Usage (47%) in Task Mgr with all 16 inputs armed.
Playing one stereo .wav file a guy sent me and the two guiter trakcs i recorde to it.
Seems High.
From Jim Lad "Did it come attached and can you check the paste?"
i don't know what you mean by this.


I've been at this for like 2.5 years and have cubase and both pods running
on the laptop flawlessly. i need the laptop more for work and i though a dedicated studio tower would be a snap. Man I hope it stays working.
Thanks for all your help guys!
 
Stumped Again

Started acting up again. CPU USAGE at 100% Trying to record only 8 tracks with no VST or eq's activated. i even took out my PCI video card and thought for a day that that was the problem. BUM CPU i can't believe that. Any sugesstions?
 
cpu usage at 100% again
12 tracks and i shut down all vst and its still up there.
new cpu, new 2nd hard drive to record to,
I'm missing a setting somewhere.
Everything plays and records fine so far but i've only got a few tracks.
 
By soundcard do you mean interface (FIREPOD) then yes
im using a Texas Instrument Firewire card that is just plug and play i thought.
I disconnected my PCIe video card to see if there was a conflict there but still
having cpu usage maxing out with only 22 processes running.
Priority for CUbase is set to "High", Latency in the firepod control panel is 40ms.
I don't know where to check buffer settings. Cubase Essential4.
 
If it's presonus I had major problems with a fire studio until I installed one of their recommended firewire cards. It seams they don't play well with a lot of firewire chipsets.
 
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