number of tracks and plugins?

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mojew

mojew

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whats everyone's max number of tracks and plugins that they can have going before playback is unbearable?

i ask because i think i should be able to get more out of my system then i'm getting.

i've got an athlon 2000+
256 mb ram
sblive

i can get about 18 tracks going with an average of 3-4 plugins per track before i have to start archiving tracks if i need to record more.

is something in my system a bottleneck? ram? soundcard?
 
I'm not sure, but what kinds of plugins are you running on the tracks?

You're running 55 to 60 + plugins on around 18 tracks?

Most of the time I'll only use a single reverb, placed on a aux bus, reverb is pretty CPU heavy, If you have 10 reverbs going at once you would certainly be straining the CPU at that point(addng the other effects in there)

I usually setup my auxes like this

AUX 1 Reverb
AUX 2 chorus
Aux 3 delay

Doing it this way saves a LOT of CPU use, the only time I'll put these effects on an individual track is ONLY if the track in question requires a different setting on the effect to sound right, such as, if the lead guitar or lead vocal NEEDS a different delay, or reverb.

More RAM is almost never a bad thing..

Have you tried increasing the I/O buffer size? I think Sonar's default size is 64, I have mine set to 256 right now, and 512 works well too, it's under options/audio/advanced, first try 128. then try 256, ect. each time you change it, or change the number of buffers, run the wave profiler again, when using a lot of CPU for effects you have to turn up the latency as well.
 
mojew said:
is something in my system a bottleneck? ram? soundcard?
Click to expand...
The number of effects you are running is in theory unlimited. The most limiting factor is your CPU. Nothing eats raw CPU-power like effects (and DX-instruments for that matter).

And higher latency will give you more CPU-cycles left to other purposes. Try to rise the latency under Options -> Audio -> "The Latency Slider".

:)
 
well... since i have an sblive, all my drums are all recorded into one track. so what i do to be able to better mix the drums is i use aux 1 to isolate the snare from the mix and boost it and put reverb on it.

then i use aux 2 to do a similar thing with the kick drum

aux 3 or 4 i usually use for delay or other special effects

i have my rhythm section (drums bass guitar keys) going through my A virtual main. then i have horns in B, and vocals in C

i put reverb on the B and C main outs

actually, i guess i don't even have that many plugins. there are like 3 or 4 in aux 1 and 2. 1 in 3 and 4

then i have compression eq and reverb on the guitars

compression and reverb on the keys

compression on the drums

compression on the horns

the only thing thats really plugin heavy are the vocal tracks where i use like 5 plugins including the waves c4, antares mic modeler (i know its just a glorified eq, but hey, it works pretty well!) and antares autotune.

so that would be about 20 on vox
4 on horns
about 6 on guitars
1 on bass
2 on keys
and maybe 8 on auxes

so thats 31 by my count.

thats not too bad is it?
 
No, that's not bad. I usually keep my latency low, so I need to be picky about the effects I use. I generally have the Waves Audiotrack on every track, and one reverb in aux one and another reverb in aux 2.

And it's not about the effect-count. Different effects has different CPU-usage. You'll find that out if you try to plug in 31 Waves Reverbs in your project... ;)
 
well, i used to use the waves compressors... but now i just use the cakewalk fxcompressors because they dont eat as much cpu.

and i'm only using 2 waves reverbs... so it should be so crazy.

i'm thinking it may just be that i need more ram for more tracks. is there any logic to that?

also, would a better soundcard (like a semi pro card like the delta 1010... hopefully daddy warbucks is splitting the cost with me for my birthday) give me any more flexibility? (other than being able to record drums in separate tracks, which would just increase my track count anyways... haha!)
 
The track-count doesen't matter as much as the effect-count. You can easily run 200 audiotracks on your system (you might need more RAM9, but there's no way you can have 3 effects on each track. ;)

And a better soundcard would benefit efficiency first, meaning you can have lower latency. But remember that low latency demands more CPU-power.
 
but i thought the whole thing is that having a good soundcard takes away the burden of all that form the cpu? no?
 
mojew said:
but i thought the whole thing is that having a good soundcard takes away the burden of all that form the cpu? no?
Click to expand...
Then you need a DSP-card (Digital Signal Processing) which can run the effects on it's own board. Check out Creamware Pulsar if you want something like that (it's expensive!).

A better soundcard results in better AD/DA-converters (the Live! suck!), and better efficiensy (like I told you, meaning lower latency and better CPU-usage).
 
yeah. well, it just seems like i should be able to get more from my system.

haha also, i've been super happy with the quality i'm getting from my sblive.... so i'm hoping the 1010 will blow me away!
 
mojew said:
haha also, i've been super happy with the quality i'm getting from my sblive.... so i'm hoping the 1010 will blow me away!
Click to expand...
I don't think you have a reason to complain. It's sounds good with 31 plugins... ;)
 
Yeah, man... I'm devoted SB Live! user for MIDI works, but when it comes to mixing an audio tracks with tons of plugins, anything from M-Audio (Delta series) will blow SB Live! away.

Either in Track View, or Console View... :D


I will suggest also more RAM. And eventhough speed of HDD fairly not related to numbers of plugins, it IS related to numbers of audio tracks run simultaneously. Get some faster HDD ( 7200RPM ) for bunch of audio tracks.

;)
Jaymz
 
yeah. although my hd is 7200 rpm with <9 ms seek... it is pretty old and a new one would probably do me some good. i guess maybe i'll sink my next paycheck into that.
 
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