ram vs cpu for plugins?

[Jagermonster]

My current pc is 2.4ghz with 1gb of ram. When I get a drum track built with ezdrummer, guitar track with Ampitube and bass with Amplitube my system starts acting up. When plugins are bypassed it runs fine. Ok, here's my question. If I bump my ram up to 4gb will that allow me to run multiple plugins smoothly or is there another problem?

 

[antispatula]

sounds like you a have a dual core CPU, which should be fine for what you are doing. Get more ram. It will help. I used to use a comp with 1 gig for recording, and it got freezy pretty easily.

 

[Chili]

Yeah, couldn't imagine running all those plugs with 1 gig of ram. It really comes down to how many tracks you've got going and how many are using plugs. I recommend bumping up to at least 2 gig.

The other bottle neck could be your hard drive. The more tracks you're running, the more your drive will affect performance. It's always recommended to use a separate physical drive for your streaming audio. Your O/S and DAW on one drive, your audio files on another.

 

[rfahey86]

Did you try freezing your tracks? This will help your cpu usage immensely. As long as it sounds the way you want it and won't be changing it too often try it. I have 4gb of ram but I often freeze my amp sim tracks so that they aren't a burden on my cpu. If I need to adjust a plugin I just unfreeze them, change it, and freeze them again.

 

[moresound]

Did you try freezing your tracks? This will help your cpu usage immensely. As long as it sounds the way you want it and won't be changing it too often try it. I have 4gb of ram but I often freeze my amp sim tracks so that they aren't a burden on my cpu. If I need to adjust a plugin I just unfreeze them, change it, and freeze them again.

The terms "Freezing and unfreeze" are you referring to arming and unarming when it comes to opening and closing of tracks and plugs or is it a separate function?

 

[Chili]

The terms "Freezing and unfreeze" are you referring to arming and unarming when it comes to opening and closing of tracks and plugs or is it a separate function?

Freezing a track will render a new wav file for that track with all the plug processing incorporated so you can turn the plugs off with that track and free up system resources.

 

[rfahey86]

I know in sonar it gives you the option if you right click the track. I believe you can freeze your syths as well.

 

[Jagermonster]

Thanks everyone! Looks like RAM is my issue. I've been using acid pro, does it have the capability to "freeze" tracks?

 

[moresound]

Freezing a track will render a new wav file for that track with all the plug processing incorporated so you can turn the plugs off with that track and free up system resources.

Oh, OK. I see.

 

[TimOBrien]

1gb of ram is barely enough to run Windoze and run the recording application.

What you want is to get enough ram to keep the OS from kicking into paging to disk
(remember that there are a LOT of other services that run sucking ram and cpu)

2gb is comfortable and you'll want as much as you can run if you're using samples.

 

[I Got Riffs]

The freezing thing seems pretty cool. I was just playing around with it and it reminds me of working with 4-track tapes and having to bounce to free up more tracks. I don't know why I didn't think of it on my own. I've seen demo's of it before and I guess I didn't like the idea of giving up non-destructive editing even if only temporarily. But its pretty quick to make an adjustment and mix it down again.

The more tracks you're running, the more your drive will affect performance. It's always recommended to use a separate physical drive for your streaming audio. Your O/S and DAW on one drive, your audio files on another.

The problem remains that even while I'm not working with audio tracks or plugs that have sample libraries, my system still barely handles one thick synth pad. Freezing is no help if I can't even play the synth alone. I have a dual CPU@2GHz and 3G ram. I know I can just stick another ram card in there, but can I do the same with the processor without removing the motherboard? Is it just a chip?

 

[Chili]

Ya know, your sample rate is going to have a huge impact on performance too. If you're running at 88.2khz or 96khz, you might want to give serious consideration to going to 44.1khz or 48khz.

 

[Jagermonster]

Is XP home ok for my OS? I've heard that Vista is a memory hog... I have both xp home basic and vista home premium. Which should I run on my DAW? I plan on replacing my motherboard with a Gigabytes ga-m68m-s2p(fried my old one) and adding 4gb of ram with a AMD Athlon 64 cpu. I think it is only a single core? I may try to get another HD also if I can afford it.

 

[rfahey86]

Is XP home ok for my OS? I've heard that Vista is a memory hog... I have both xp home basic and vista home premium. Which should I run on my DAW? I plan on replacing my motherboard with a Gigabytes ga-m68m-s2p(fried my old one) and adding 4gb of ram with a AMD Athlon 64 cpu. I think it is only a single core? I may try to get another HD also if I can afford it.

Xp is the better choice IMO. But 4 gigs of ram is pretty much usless with XP. It is only designed to run on 2 gigs. You could edit the boot.ini file and enable PAE mode to make it run on about 3gb. With PAE mode enabled it will use around 4gb if the program allows it.

My computer only has 4gb of Ram and a AMD Phenom X3 processor and it works flawless with XP.

 

[ProjectHellCow]

1gb of ram is barely enough to run Windoze and run the recording application.

What you want is to get enough ram to keep the OS from kicking into paging to disk
(remember that there are a LOT of other services that run sucking ram and cpu)

2gb is comfortable and you'll want as much as you can run if you're using samples.

You can also disable a lot of the background services if this pc is being used just for recording. You would be amazed how many you don't need

 

[moresound]

You can also disable a lot of the background services if this pc is being used just for recording. You would be amazed how many you don't need

Hey I saw your video not to long ago, where does hellcow reside?

 

[rfahey86]

Also disconnect from the internet when you are recording this will also help the computer run a little bit faster.

 

[moresound]

Our recording computer has never seen the internet but twice, for updates and that's all.

 

[Bitter Dawn]

I don't think there is much I can add to this other than confirming that 1gb is under par for any thing these days, 2gb seems to just barely cut it. I found EZD w/DFH to be relatively decent on memory, it's EastWest's DFH 2 that was a huge pig on ram.

I'm going to assume that every one is using a non built in sound card because, any thing else would just be madness. Aside from more ram and disabling any non used programs (especially ones that idle in the user tray), that having a PCI-E video card will also improve performance though, I think even most pre-built PCs have these now a days.

As for VISTA, I use to run it with 2gb and just my DAW and plug-ins with out having any performance issues whatsoever, granted the PCs sole purpose was just for recording and, it was one of those nasty pre-builds from Wal-Mart (wasn't mine, I normally hate pre-builds).

 

[ProjectHellCow]

Hey I saw your video not to long ago, where does hellcow reside?

We're located in a hidden secret layer in the state of CT. We whore ourselves all over the internet though; you can find us on www.ProjectHellCow.com, as well as facebook, myspace, and twitter!

Which video have you seen, and what do you think?