Will I have any trouble with this song in the future?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ollie99
  • Start date Start date
ollie99

ollie99

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Hi, basically I was just wondering if my project in reaper will start to become very slow or even crash if I continue to add tracks at the rate I am now. All the tracks are audio and I have 21 tracks at the moment and I reckon by the end of the song it could be over 50. The song is 12 minutes long...eek!
This is the exact laptop I have so you can find any specifications you want to know there. I have had it for 1 and a half years.

thanks :)
 
There's only a finite amount of memory your DAW can utilize, only so much data that can be access from your hard drives at once, etc. So yes, eventually it'll get nuts. On really big projects (length and track wise) I try to mix down my sections as I go...this can be a risky endeavor but so far has served me pretty well in conserving memory with my somewhat aging DAW.
 
Or get an external hard drive to run the audio. Then you could record 100+ audio tracks with no bottleneck. :)
 
wait so roughly how many tracks do you think it'll be able to take, or can you not really tell?
and could you explain how you could actually use an eternal hard drive like that jimmy?
 
ollie99 said:
wait so roughly how many tracks do you think it'll be able to take, or can you not really tell?
and could you explain how you could actually use an eternal hard drive like that jimmy?
Click to expand...

I was mistaken. I didn't know using an external harddrive offered near unlimited file accessibility.
 
It does not - you're going to be limited by your RAM and the disk seek and bus transfer speeds. There will always be finite bandwidth; all the external hard drive does is offload the storage to another device allowing for more storage space and also offloading some of the disk controller accesses to whatever is controlling the external hard drive (typically the usb controller).
 
What the heck are you recording to 50 tracks? And how the heck will you mix that? I think you might be having trouble with that song NOW ... ;)
 
RustyAxe said:
What the heck are you recording to 50 tracks? And how the heck will you mix that? I think you might be having trouble with that song NOW ... ;)
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Lots of guitars and shit :) I'll post it on here when I'm done
 
RustyAxe said:
What the heck are you recording to 50 tracks? And how the heck will you mix that? I think you might be having trouble with that song NOW ... ;)
Click to expand...
I have a couple of songs that are 50+ tracks -- they're over 7 minutes long, written and performed in discrete sections, are orchestrated with over 20 instruments and feature vocal leads and chorus. I used Audition 3.0 for these on a 64-bit 2.6 GHz quad core PC with 8 gig of RAM. All audio is 96 Khz, 32-bit, uncompressed. I've found the problem isn't memory, but overloading the CPU, particularly because many tracks have individual EQ and effects. However, the worst that happens is I get some crackle during playback, but when it's all mixed down and exported to a single stereo mix it's fine.
 
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