Engaging plugins while recording

T

texasfl0od

New member
Good afternoon to you all!! I have been recording with multiple plugins engaged on all drum tracks, bass guitar and guitars- I have recently had some difficulty with the computer resources reading high and the computer freezing!! I completely removed all of the plugins that I normally have engaged in my "basic tracks template" and it was clear sailing, I am wondering if any/ most of you record with plugins engaged or not when recording?
 
Never when recording, only on replay. That said, I have done it for very specific reasons occasionally - what DAW are you using? Maybe it's just one that is causing things like buffer emptying while it processes - on playback it's annoying bit terminal on record.
 
Thank you for your reply!! I use Cubase and I have been recording digitally for years but recently have had some difficulty, I realize that certain plugins really eat resources and I normally only engage them to get the settings for mixing and then when exporting!! This is good information and so it would seem that I am going to be recording with just the DAW equalization engaged !!
 
I record all tracks dry with all plugins being engaged pre-fader so I can hear them for effect. Although they're not printing to the tracks, they can still interfere with the smooth operation during recording. They don't even need to tax your CPU usage to do this.

I've got one plugin that's doing this to me and my CPU usage never goes above 5-6%. Having this one plugin on 5-6 tracks is just more than it can handle on it's own, so it stalls and stutters.
 
I have yet to add any plugins when recording. On certain instances, I will engage a compressor that is in the audio interface, but that takes 0 resources from the computer. It runs on a DSP chip in the interface itself.
 
In my usual studio situation, I have access to hardware compressors that are usually patched in. I tend to use them for very conservative compression in situations where I pretty much know I'm going to need even more compression. And since I'm recording through a mixer, I can apply the channel eq, which I usually do. But for all of those effects, there are bypass buttons in case I don't want them active. And none of it requires any CPU resources. If I had to record with no eq and compression, I would have no problem doing it.
 
I don't know if Cubase has this feature, but Reaper can "freeze" a track by rendering all FX and turning them off to save resources. This doesn't destroy your original track and you can "thaw" it later for mixing or changing the FX, etc...
 
rob aylestone said:
but he's putting his plugins pre-record, so you can't freeze something you've not yet recorded.
Click to expand...
Considering that multiple tracks were mentioned in the original post, drums, bass & guitars, it doesn't sound like all are being recorded at the same time. My suggestion is that if your resources are slowing your computer down, to freeze the tracks not currently being recorded still stands. Also, while it is good to turn your "amp sim" on while recording through it, you might want to change the internal plugin settings lower while recording if you can and then set them to max before rendering, as you'd only be adding latency or resources while recording otherwise.
 
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