Cakewalk and CPU

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gustavo Vieira
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Gustavo Vieira

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Hi !!

I am having a boring problem.

In CakeWalk Pro Audio 9 or Home Studio 2002, under XP or Windows 2000, my CPU, for a simple midi playing, is being fully used (not less than 100%). As for audio playing / recording, the same overhead happens.

I already tried to find a solution for this problem in many places but had no success.

My system (Windows XP – Professional Edition) is running on a Pentium III 450 MHz (Intel i440BX chipset Asus motherboard), 128 MB RAM (SDRAM - PC100), 22 GB IBM HD and SoundBlaster Live 5.1 with the latest drivers released.

Cubase VST 32, for example, runs nice on it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Gustavo Vieira (Brasil).
 
I have the same situation with Sonar or Guitar Tracks. I have a P4 1.6gig system with Windows XP. This bothered me too, I read some threads about other people experienceing this, I came to the conclusion that Cakewalk must "reserve" all of the CPU cycles. Sonar's CPU indicator will only show 2 or 3 % being used, while my systems meter always shows 100% when playing or recording as little as 1 track. Also I have temperature monitoring which goes much higher when using Cakewalk so I put in a case fan. I don't think there is anything you can do about it...
 
my system does not do this.

1.2ghz athlon | 640mb sdram | scsi raid0 | frontier designs wavecenter

especially for midi. it barely registers a blip in the sonar cpu monitor nor the system monitor.
 
Get the ram,I've got 512 under XP and it runs bee-yoo-tee-full-eee!
 
i got 256mb of pc800 on my 1.6gig P4, and everything runs bee-yoo-te-ful :)
-DAN
 
Definetly more RAM - I know its not as cheap down there as it is in here in the US, but it would help greatly.

Uau! Tres brasileiros por aqui
 
Before you run out and spend money on memory, can you clarify the issue? What CPU meter are you talking about? There are at least two: the one you see in Sonar at the bottom right, and the one you can pull up with the Windows task manager (when you hit control/alt/delete). On my computer, the Sonar meter reads anywhere from 3% to 40% depending on what plugins I am using. But, the taks manager meter ALWAYS reads 100% when Sonar is running. I don't think this is a problem, at least it hasn't caused me any trouble. I think Major Tom's conclusion is correct.

I think some (maybe all?) of the guys who said they are running at some small percent of CPU cycles are talking about the SONAR meter, not the TASK MANAGER meter.
 
Hi, Neirbo !

The cpu meter I am talking about is the one in Task Manager.

Into the Sonar meter, it never goes beyond 10% ... But again, in the Task Manager, the reading is never below 99 % ...

Okay, after some extra settings here and a bare new XP installation (without ACPI support), things related to performance have improved, and latency is under control on Sonar. (At least it seems to be running nice now.)

Now I have other reports atesting the same as Major Tom, so I am more relaxed about it.

Thanks !

Olha os brazucas aqui !!! Yes, nós temos Cakewalk !!!
 
Mine is a little different

Ok, I have about 320MB of Ram and I use Pro Audio 9. My processor is ok and I have enough space on my hardrive.... why do my projects always "dropout"? I only had like 64MB at first, then I upgraded my memory because someone told me that I needed to in order to keep my projects from crashing. And, sometimes Cakewalk will even restart my computer on its own. Whats up with that? Somebody help!!!!

Thankx!
 
What OS are you using?

You need defrag your disk frequently, in order to keep it faster and more reliable to use when recording audio. That may help preventing the dropouts.

Also check for other programs running at the same time you record anything. Applications like Anti Virus or file sharing programs can slow down your HD.

Loading large sound font banks in a system with a Live 5.1 sound card can crash your system. I read about that but I don't know why. Any hints?
 
i'm running task manager, and playing back a sonar file (looped) which is using midi and the roland sound canvas dxi, while typing this and running an apache web server service at the same time.

even before i brought IE back up and started the apache service the meters on the task manager were at 100%, so you are right that is just the way cakwalk works. obviously, the 100% is not a true statement.

i wonder if it is a cakewalk issue or a directx issue. cubase uses
VST/Asio not DirectX/WDM right???

i dont have an external sound canvas attached to my laptop, so i'm going to run a test on my desktop with just MIDI and not audio connected to Frontier Design's WaveCenter card Midi out and see if the meters still read 100%.

cakewalk's MFX is not tied to microsoft's DirectX or DXi API's so a pure midi Cakewalk file running to an external sound canvas with no DXi should confirm whether this is a cakewalk issue (their C++ code) or a MFC DirectX issue (Microsoft's DirectX or COM code).
 
based on my albeit limited research, it appears that Cakewalk is the culprit.

Raydio:
you've got IRQ issues. something is using the same interrupt as your sound card and they are trampling on each other. to resolve the dropouts and such, i had to disable ACPI and have my motherboard set up the IRQ for each of my peripherals instead of having WinBlows plug-n-don't-play do it.

there was a thread on this BBS regarding how to separate your peripherals.

the alternative is to go into Control-->System and figure out what shares the IRQ with your soundcard and disable it during the time that you are working. i didn't want to be bothered to do that.
 
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