Recording high res

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Brian_Soto

New member
Hi everyone . Right now I started to make more quality music inside my budget. Bought a motu m4. Have a ton of plugins and stuff in ableton. Record my cab with mics and direct line. Etc... Also want to record at least 48khz. The thing is that my PC left behind and the processor and GPU are struggling heavy. Simply I can't record at this rate or have huge amount of lag. Yesterday I bought a new ram to remplace my 16 gb Corsair with a new 64 gb Corsair. Also will change my ssd with a fast m.2 That I bought for my laptop but never use. The question it. What processor I need? I have a cheapo Ryzen 5 gen 2 processor and my Mobo go up to gen 3.
 

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You must be running a lot of plug-ins. Some are more efficient than others. If you're using lots of virtual instruments, that could be causing the problem. The fact that you are using 15 of the 16GB of memory suggests that is part of the problem. Using over 50% of 6 cores at 3.6GHz is a lot. I doubt that the hard drive change will make a lot of difference, as the monitor says that hard drive utilization is only 5%.

Can your MB handle a Ryzen 7 3700X? They use the same socket and have the same thermal and power requirements. The R7-3700x is roughly 40% faster than the R5 2600. It also has more cores and threads ( 8/16 vs 6/12), An OEM version without cooler would run you about $125 or so. You should be able to use the same cooler as your R5 2600.

FWIW, I run Reaper at 88kHz on a Core I5-4570 w/ 12GB ram which is roughly equal to your Ryzen 5. I don't use a lot of virtual instruments (usually just MTPDK), and mostly stock Reaper plugins, except for using IR reverb and it never stresses the system. Most of my work only has about 15 or 20 tracks max, though.
 
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I agree with Talisman. You must be running A LOT of plug-ins. Using lots of memory isn't an issue though. Memory not used is memory wasted. That is what it is there for.

An m.2 will not save you here. Nor will increasing RAM, from 16GB.

You need more CPU horsepower if plug-in's are the issue. Or your implementation of plug-in's is not very efficient. Why do you want to record at 48KHz? Not that that will impact performance much, just curious.

And by 'lag', you mean latency while trying to record / overdub? That could be a setting in your software. I'm not familiar with Abelton at all, but I'd assume it uses some type
of low latency, ASIO driver?
 
I'm trying to record my songs in high res. I was looking for the highest motu m4 sample rate and less lag but is impossible. CPU gets peaks in ableton. Still not in hwmonitor but is high. Yep I'm using ableton 11 with lastest asio. All I got is CPU peaking all over the place. Of course if I up the buffer size and down sample rate is usable unless you want to record guitar or bass in high res. I mean with big sample rate. I get acceptable lag in 6ms to near 10ms. More than that is a pain to hear the lag of the recording when you try to play the instrument. I see that waves cla plugins and kontakt plugins are heavy on resources. But I left the bass recording last when already have 25+ tracks and CPU can't handle anymore.
 
As it should be. Don't get too hung up on computer measurements CPU Memory usage etc. Just record it and go from there.
Work backwards if there is an issue. HWmonitor is a great tool, I use it often, but not something I would ever use trying to benchmark a DAW.
Not that I ever would.
 
TalismanRich said:
You must be running a lot of plug-ins. Some are more efficient than others. If you're using lots of virtual instruments, that could be causing the problem. The fact that you are using 15 of the 16GB of memory suggests that is part of the problem. Using over 50% of 6 cores at 3.6GHz is a lot. I doubt that the hard drive change will make a lot of difference, as the monitor says that hard drive utilization is only 5%.

Can your MB handle a Ryzen 7 3700X? They use the same socket and have the same thermal and power requirements. The R7-3700x is roughly 40% faster than the R5 2600. It also has more cores and threads ( 8/16 vs 6/12), An OEM version without cooler would run you about $125 or so. You should be able to use the same cooler as your R5 2600.

FWIW, I run Reaper at 88kHz on a Core I5-4570 w/ 12GB ram which is roughly equal to your Ryzen 5. I don't use a lot of virtual instruments (usually just MTPDK), and mostly stock Reaper plugins, except for using IR reverb and it never stresses the system. Most of my work only has about 15 or 20 tracks max, though.
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Thanks, I found the r7-3700x at good price. $115 don't hurt a try and as you say is the same socket and gen 3 is supported by Mobo. I will try with this upgrade also the others because I already bought them. I will let you know what happens. Still will do a test recording bass in a blank project .
 
Forgive me, but when I read high res, I expected it would be 96, or 192KHz - 48K is bog standard digital, and pretty normal, so I'm really wondering where your issues are? I think people might be right when they are asking about plugins - and you don't say you are actually using loads of these? Have you tried your laptop as a comparision, with the same files and instrument sources? My main machine is now fairly elderly in processor terms and I simply have no latency problems, have never even changed buffer sizes or other tweaks? I just creat tracks, bring in VSTis and it works. The only real delay is the initial loading time of big sample packages, but once they are in and working - latency is just, well, normal. Maybe you have some kind of computer, rather than music software bottleneck?

When you say lag, you mean an audible delay in things happening, so your timings are all wrong and your mics produce real delays before you hear them - so a clap in the room is a real clap,clap? You are running the latest MOTU drivers? You're sure theyre actually in use and the DAW hasn't secretly swapped them for windows versions? Cubase occasionally switches to ASIO4all drivers when I do something silly, and next boot they are there again?

So - what plugins have you got permanently running, like as in templates, are you, like we are thinking, running bags of them almost automatically, or are you adding them as required?

44.1 to 48 is hardly noticeable in real terms. I've loads of old projects in 44.1 and to be honest, audio wise, I rarely actually notice until something really bright just sounds a little less bright and I notice. With my ears, 96 I cannot hear the difference.
 
I am with Rob and Rich, this is either trying to run N sqrd plugins (badly) or there is some fundamental bottle neck in the computer's system. I don't 'do' the stuff Rob and Co do but my old HP I3 4core 8G ram lappy would run the Samplitude Pro X 3 demo, about 20 tracks with a fair few plugs and VSTis. It sucked about 50% of CPU resource.

SSDs are great, they boot and load vastly quicker than spinners and are dead silent and cool but once 'run' they will not speed up a DAW. If OP is running Win 10 he really should have an SSD system drive anyway (might just be the problem?)

Run Latencymon. Could be a memory fault so test that.

Yes, 48kHz is basic. From my understanding there are some benefits in certain circumstances in running at 96kHz, lot of high level HF is one but the PC obviously has to work harder and the files are bigger. Yer pays yer money?

Dave.
 
This might seem like humblebragging, but I have happily recorded 16 tracks live using a pair of daisy-chained Firepods going into a little notebook: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz, 2GB ram on a 120Gb harddrive, and using WIndows XP. This was in 2015. And before that I was not having issues recording on even more primitive machines with Windows 98. Admittedly VST use was not massive in those days, but also, since about 2010 I've been using Reaper which has a very low CPU footprint. Any contemporary machine should be able to handle just about any audio thing you can throw at it without faltering.
 
gecko zzed said:
This might seem like humblebragging, but I have happily recorded 16 tracks live using a pair of daisy-chained Firepods going into a little notebook: Intel core 2 duo 2.4GHz, 2GB ram on a 120Gb harddrive, and using WIndows XP. This was in 2015. And before that I was not having issues recording on even more primitive machines with Windows 98. Admittedly VST use was not massive in those days, but also, since about 2010 I've been using Reaper which has a very low CPU footprint. Any contemporary machine should be able to handle just about any audio thing you can throw at it without faltering.
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I agree, unless there is a systematic problem with the computer or possibly the Windows installation, any machine capable of running W10 should run many many tracks at 48kHz. The only caveat might be if you are trying to score Avatar lll.

I still have a W7 AMD Black 3G 6 core on an Asus MOBO desktop that was never fazed at anything I threw at it. (6G ram)

Dave.
 
I had to upgrade my computer after upgrading to Ableton 11. I like the DAW, but it is a resource pig. I think with the overhead of PUSH, MPE and who knows what else the software is rather hard on lower end CPUs.

The freeze track function is your friend. You should be using that as often as you can. That will help you a lot.

I have a Ryzen 9, 42GB and, very important, I keep the interface plugged into the USB attached to the MB. But I can now run my interface with a very low buffer setting, block size of around 64 to 32.

If you are deep into Ableton, then you will probably need to beef up the CPU. The 9 doesn't break a sweat and I load it up. Probably like you, but I no longer have issues. Not sure you need a 9, but I think what you have should work if you use the freeze track function.
 
Really I want to record at 96khz (the top of motu m4) I open a new project. up sample rate to 96hHz, buffer size 128 samples give me nice 5.52ms latency in ableton 11. at new project without anything I have 3% cpu and memory at 6.6gb usage from 16gb top
recording a guitar with mic in the cab and a drums sample (2 tracks) almost no make any changes in the 3 to 4% cpu load.
 
Yea, because there is little processing going on. When you record something with heavy processing, synths, reverb, etc. You might have to freeze the tracks. Also, below the mixer in the channels, there is a function showing load per channel. That might help you find what is heavy processing.
 
At current project I working I'm really in the mix process but I want to record again the bass and another line of guitar. Right now 30 tracks with most of them flatten I'm getting more than 100% peaks and average of 46%. Memory at 12gb usage. Using from 3 plugins to 8 plugins per track. Really like 2 tracks have 8 plugins. Mostly waves plugins, arturia and ableton.
 

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Btw the computer is still with the same components. This tests are without new upgrades. New upgrades are on the way.
 
Brian_Soto said:
At current project I working I'm really in the mix process but I want to record again the bass and another line of guitar. Right now 30 tracks with most of them flatten I'm getting more than 100% peaks and average of 46%. Memory at 12gb usage. Using from 3 plugins to 8 plugins per track. Really like 2 tracks have 8 plugins. Mostly waves plugins, arturia and ableton.
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30 tracks with 3 to 8 plug-ins per track? THAT could well be an issue. If you're talking about 100+ instances that need to be addressed, that's not an efficient setup. Can you combine plug-ins? Something like "don't use 30 reverbs, do a send and use one instance of the reverb".

If you're maxing out memory with a relatively short song, there's something of a problem. I have done 8 tracks with 4 hours for each track (live performance), and that filled up most of a 16GB SD card. I had NO issue with mixing it down, adding reverbs IRs to the vocals, compressors, limiters and EQ on tracks. My system only has 12GB so it has to be swapping out to the SSD.

BTW, you do realize that a latency of 5ms is equivalent to standing 5 ft from your amp. I've heard people say that 10ms latency screws them up. PURE HOGWASH! I would guess that 90+% of the time on stage guitarists stand 8 to 10 ft from the amp. I've stood farther away and it NEVER felt like it was lagging. People get bent out of shape about a number without understanding what it really represents. It's like significant digits in math, if you can only measure to 0.1cm, then there's no sense in writing down 2 decimal points.
 
I found my answer in this video.

So is a ableton latency problem when is in AUTO monitoring.
That's why I was hearing a tremendous lag no matter the overall latency
 
Up until fairly recently I was recording 16 tracks at 96kHz/24bits on a 2005 vintage Acer laptop with a single core Duron processor using Reaper. It was perfectly happy, even when using an instance of Uhe's Satin on each track for Dolby decoding.

I could do 16 tracks at 48kHz/16 bits on a 233MHz Pentium 2 with Cool Edit Pro - although I couldn't add any processing on that if I wanted it to work reliably.
 
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