trouble when loading plugins in cubase sx

[drummersteve]

as the amount of plugins builds up, my audio begins to slow down/starts clicking and popping. especially when i use a plugin which has a lot of visual activity. now, i thought this might be the problem but i need some backing up...
at the moment ive got 2 hard drives. one is about 4gig and the other 80 gig. i have the os, cubase, all plugins and all audio i am reading on the 80gig hard drive. because so much is being read from this hard drive i thought maybe this was the problem. it hasd been suggested by this forum already that i have os and cubase on one HD and all recording/reading audio on another to eliminate clicks and pops on recording, would this also solve my problem if i saved all my plugins to the same HD as the OS and cubase? sorry if this is a bit vague...
btw, i am planning on putting os, cubase + plugins (there isnt many extra plgins i have installed which dont come with cubase) on the 4gig HD, saving the 80gig for all the audio. is 4gig big enough for all of the software? thanks


steve

 

[NYMorningstar]

Not sure why you posted this here but ya, you should have a dedicated drive for the software. Is 4g enuff? Probably not but drives are cheap these days. This may not solve your problem with the clicks. I'm guessing that because you have a 4g harddrive you probably have a slow processor and too little ram which may be your problem. Could even be your video card causing the problem.

 

[drummersteve]

yeh i realised after posting it was a bit of a stupid place to post. i hav a gig of ram and 2.4gig processor..i shouldnt think that is the problem. i reecently got a new videocard for 2 monitors so i doubt its that. the 4gig is in my machine but its currently not being used for anything, im using the 80gig for everything. i may buy a new hard drive soon tho. what size do you reccomend i get for OS, software (which will be cubase, and other programs aswell for general computer use) and plugins? thanks

Steve

 

[Rokket]

yeh i realised after posting it was a bit of a stupid place to post. i hav a gig of ram and 2.4gig processor..i shouldnt think that is the problem. i reecently got a new videocard for 2 monitors so i doubt its that. the 4gig is in my machine but its currently not being used for anything, im using the 80gig for everything. i may buy a new hard drive soon tho. what size do you reccomend i get for OS, software (which will be cubase, and other programs aswell for general computer use) and plugins? thanks

Steve

I am getting a 120GB harddrive to add to my 60GB. I am going to load the OS (XP home) on there, but remove all the bells and whistles. The only thing on there will be my recording software (probably leaning toward ntrack. I have Vegas right now....) and my audio tracks. That's it...

 

[xstatic]

Technically 4 gigs is enough for most "system" drives. The real question here should be whether or not a 4 gig drive is fast and efficient enough. My bet is that a 4 gig drive is so old that it could possibly be or at least become the bottleneck in your system.

 

[drummersteve]

yeh im guessing it is quite old. whats the speed which works best? obviously the faster the better, but whats the minimum. my 80gig is 7600RPM, i think thats what somebody said was the "required" speed, is it not? if not what is?

 

[xstatic]

The most important spec on a hard drive is one that is not usually discussed or even easily visible on a hard drive box. Sustained throughput is the most important factor. The higher the sustained throughput the better. The next most important will be the interface speed. Is it ata66 or ata 133? Sata is currently at 150. Other than that make sure a drive is at least ATA 100 or higher. Next would be a tie (in my opinion) between an 8 meg cache or at least a 7200 RPM drive. I am not sure which would yield better results for audio if you could only have one. Nowadys almost all new drives are 7200 RPM, and most do have an 8 meg cache or larger even. The least important spec seems to be the one a lot of people look at. That would be the seek time. Seek time is pretty important for an OS drive, but not nearly as important for an audio storage drive, unless of course it is pretty fragmented which there is no excuse for.

 

[drummersteve]

the important specs you mentioned above, whihc would be for the OS/software drive and which would be for the audio hard drive? i know what to look out for then when buying one for my OS and software. what would you say the minimum specs are for a OS/software drive? thanks again.

Steve

 

[altiris]

any current hard drive would meat the requirements for the OS drive. But if you want one for OS and programs then any 60 gig drive would do just fine. From experience I would stay away from the maxtor brand. Im a PC tech at a school district with over 800 computers and the PCs with maxtor drives had higher failure rates. They are cheaper though.SATA 150 would do good for the storage.Where you set up Cubase to store the files is also your work area. When you are recording a lot of tracks with vst's there is a lot of disk usage. It does not matter how much memory one has. The program will still need to use a portion of the HD for virtual memory of paging files or what ever Cubase calls it.Thats another thing Check your Cubase buffers and mack sure they're not set to small. The larger the buffer the larger the latancy. The smaller the buffer the smaller the latancy but can cause the pops and noises. If you get an SATA make sure your motherboard supports it or you'll have to buy an SATA adaptor card.