3 ghz maxing out?

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foreverain4

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ok, got a new puter a while back. specs below.

P4 3.0 ghz HT technology
80 gig 7200 rpm SATA OS drive
160 gig 7200 rpm SATA audio drive
UAD-1 DSP card
MOTU 2408 mkIII card
running sony vegas 4

i am running around 26 tracks. almost every track has a waves Rchannel. have 2 verbs running. 1 delay, and some uad-1 plugs. there is no way my cpu should be maxed out. i get stuttering like crazy! same as my old 1 ghz when the cpu was at 100%. that is why i upgraded. with hyperthreading enabled, the processor shows around 53%. one virtual processor is pegged, the other has basically no load. with HT disabled, the processor is at 100%. am i missing something here? i was getting equal performance with my old 1 ghz machine. i have gone through the whole irq thing. everything is separate. changed my pci latency settings as well as buffer settings on my card. still no improvement the stutter is still there. i am sure it has something to do with the processor being pegged. if i mute a few tracks, the stuttering stops. also, if i have all tracks on and bypass all plugins, the stuttering stops. any suggestions to improve performance?
 
foreverain4 said:
ok, got a new puter a while back. specs below.

P4 3.0 ghz HT technology
80 gig 7200 rpm SATA OS drive
160 gig 7200 rpm SATA audio drive
UAD-1 DSP card
MOTU 2408 mkIII card
running sony vegas 4

i am running around 26 tracks. almost every track has a waves Rchannel. have 2 verbs running. 1 delay, and some uad-1 plugs. there is no way my cpu should be maxed out. i get stuttering like crazy! same as my old 1 ghz when the cpu was at 100%. that is why i upgraded. with hyperthreading enabled, the processor shows around 53%. one virtual processor is pegged, the other has basically no load. with HT disabled, the processor is at 100%. am i missing something here? i was getting equal performance with my old 1 ghz machine. i have gone through the whole irq thing. everything is separate. changed my pci latency settings as well as buffer settings on my card. still no improvement the stutter is still there. i am sure it has something to do with the processor being pegged. if i mute a few tracks, the stuttering stops. also, if i have all tracks on and bypass all plugins, the stuttering stops. any suggestions to improve performance?
Click to expand...

I would imagine Waves Rchannel to be a processor pig from hell. Try using only plug-ins you need. If you need EQ on a channel, add only EQ. If you need compression, add only compression.

Unless, of course, you really need all those, in which case... time to invest in better/updated audio software. If one virtual CPU is pegged and the other is mostly idle, it means your audio software's threading model utterly sucks. :D
 
shut off "page filing" for the audio hard drives.


On your windows "system" virtual memory settings in the control panel.

How much ram?
 
LRosario said:
shut off "page filing" for the audio hard drives.


On your windows "system" virtual memory settings in the control panel.

How much ram?
Click to expand...


got 1 gig of ram. i tried shutting it off before. didnt do anything.



as far as the Rchannel, i only turn on the modules that i need. i dont turn on the comp or gate unless i even need them. is it still a resource hog, even if the whole thing is not turned on?

still, with 3 ghz, i thought i was finished worrying about cpu headroom. this sucks!
 
foreverain4 said:
got 1 gig of ram. i tried shutting it off before. didnt do anything.



as far as the Rchannel, i only turn on the modules that i need. i dont turn on the comp or gate unless i even need them. is it still a resource hog, even if the whole thing is not turned on?

still, with 3 ghz, i thought i was finished worrying about cpu headroom. this sucks!
Click to expand...
Is there not a cpu display meter in Vegas? You could try enabling one track, put the RChannel on it and see how much the CPU useage goes up and down as you enable/disable the different modules. That should give you an idea.
 
no cpu meter, i just use the windows meter. will try that. thanks for the help. i should have just bought a nice mic pre instead of a new computer. :(
 
foreverain4 said:
got 1 gig of ram. i tried shutting it off before. didnt do anything.



as far as the Rchannel, i only turn on the modules that i need. i dont turn on the comp or gate unless i even need them. is it still a resource hog, even if the whole thing is not turned on?

still, with 3 ghz, i thought i was finished worrying about cpu headroom. this sucks!
Click to expand...

man...thats odd to me.


You got hyper threading on?
 
foreverain4 said:
as far as the Rchannel, i only turn on the modules that i need. i dont turn on the comp or gate unless i even need them. is it still a resource hog, even if the whole thing is not turned on?
Click to expand...

Do you have room on the UAD-1? Maybe use its channel strip instead?
 
foreverain4 said:
as far as the Rchannel, i only turn on the modules that i need. i dont turn on the comp or gate unless i even need them. is it still a resource hog, even if the whole thing is not turned on?
Click to expand...
In Vegas, plugins that don't seem to be running are still actually active. There's an option to disable this feature, but I believe it introduces a "pop" whenever the plugin kicks back on and starts processing audio again.
 
foreverain4 said:
have tried it both on, and off. as described above.
Click to expand...


yeah...couldn't tell you what else it is. I haven't personally worked with vegas before. But I think the other fellas are on the track to helping you out.
 
do you really need all that stuff on every channel? how about bussing channels that have the same setup and then adding the effects to the buss...and also, it may be time to invest in some outboard gear.
 
distortedrumble said:
do you really need all that stuff on every channel? how about bussing channels that have the same setup and then adding the effects to the buss...and also, it may be time to invest in some outboard gear.
Click to expand...


i dont "need" it on every channel. i just set it as my default plugin. it loads when i create a new track. it has gate/exp, compressor, eq all in ONE plugin. i might add, this was running fine on my 1 ghz machine with 20-24 tracks. what i am thinking, even though i do not have the individual modules turned "on", they are probably really on.... i will experiment tonight...
 
still do not understand why my processor is choking at 50%.
 
foreverain4 said:
still do not understand why my processor is choking at 50%.
Click to expand...

It isn't. It's at 100%. Hyperthreading is a cool idea, and in some cases, it works, but it isn't equivalent to doubling the CPU speed in most cases.

The idea of SMT (the non-marketing name for hyperthreading is Symmetric Multi-Threading) is simple. An app that has multiple threads can be sped up by executing multiple threads concurrently on separate "virtual CPUs". Because CPU registers are shared between threads, this works pretty well.

In an ideal audio editing app, every audio plug-in (or nearly so) would run in a separate thread. This would mean that those threads could be independently scheduled on the virtual processors. In such a scenario, both virtual CPUs would be used near their maximum capacity, as there would always be something that needed to be done.

The problem occurs when you have an application that is not heavily multithreaded. If an audio app runs every plug-in in a single effects thread, that second virtual CPU can't ever actually run any significant amount of code, as almost all of the processing is being done on a single thread and there aren't any other threads to occupy the other virtual CPU.
 
Does vegas even appreciate HT? If no, it may be worth trying to disable it in the BIOS.
 
dgatwood said:
The problem occurs when you have an application that is not heavily multithreaded. If an audio app runs every plug-in in a single effects thread, that second virtual CPU can't ever actually run any significant amount of code, as almost all of the processing is being done on a single thread and there aren't any other threads to occupy the other virtual CPU.
Click to expand...



this makes sense. last night i removed a bunch of the Rchannels i was using. and replaced them with equivelent UAD 1 plugs and other waves. the 2 "virtual processors" began to equal out, instead of one not being used and the other one hitting the ceiling. could it be that the Rchannels were creating a large single thread, given they are all the same plugin?
 
punkin said:
Does vegas even appreciate HT? If no, it may be worth trying to disable it in the BIOS.
Click to expand...
OF course it does.
Vegas was designed as a video-based program. You can actually tell Vegas how many threads you want to be used.
 
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