Brand new hardware but 95% CPU load in a normal project

[anselmoso]

Hi guys,

I just bought me a new hardware setup some days ago. The only "weakness in my system" could be the sound card.
Here's my hardware:

CPU AMD Winchester 64 3000+
ASUS A8V-Mainboard with Dual-Channel-Support
1GIG PC3200 DDR-RAM Samsung
80Gig Samsung Harddrive IDE-UDMA133
Soundblaster Live 1024
KXAsio Drivers latest stable release
Windows XP Home with all updates installed - brand new install from this weekend.


Before that, I had an AMD XP 2000+ and only 512MB Ram and I had the same processor load!

The project I'm working on has around 17 audio tracks, on each audio track 2-3 insert effects and the whole project has 2 send effects, one audio track mostly uses one of these sends.
The insert effects are EQ, Compressor and sometimes a customized reverb for that audio track, mostly 5 audio tracks have their own reverb as insert effect. The send effects are just 2 reverb effects.
All effects are from the "Kjharheus Classic Collection" (or how is it spelled again:-) - so they should be gracious on CPU usage, at least that's what Kjharheus is telling on their homepage.

Before my update the CPU load was at 95% in EnergyXT and after the update it's still at 95% !!!!
The audio playback "stutters" and the mouse-pointer "stutters" as well when I play back the project. In Cubase SE I have a CPU load around 80-85% with the same project / setup of Audio Tracks. I also looked up the hard-disk load in Cubase and it doesn't deflect at all, so I guess the hard drive also can't be the reason for this behaviour.

Am I using the wrong plugins? Are the "Khjarheus" Plugins too much for my CPU? Or is the main cause for this high CPU load my Asio Driver, the KXAsio driver?
I tried different settings, lower and higher latencies....nothing changed. I also tried ASIO4All - same behaviour.

I don't want to buy a new soundcard and still get the same disappointing results, that's why I depend on you guys to help me find the cause for this.

My favourite choice right now would be the "M-Audio Audiophile USB", because it has a seperate headphone output. I need that headphone output for recording, because I always record with headphones in my "singing cabin".

Thanks in advance,
Ben

[FaX]

Hi guys,

I just bought me a new hardware setup some days ago. The only "weakness in my system" could be the sound card.
Here's my hardware:

CPU AMD Winchester 64 3000+
ASUS A8V-Mainboard with Dual-Channel-Support
1GIG PC3200 DDR-RAM Samsung
80Gig Samsung Harddrive IDE-UDMA133
Soundblaster Live 1024
KXAsio Drivers latest stable release
Windows XP Home with all updates installed - brand new install from this weekend.


Before that, I had an AMD XP 2000+ and only 512MB Ram and I had the same processor load!

The project I'm working on has around 17 audio tracks, on each audio track 2-3 insert effects and the whole project has 2 send effects, one audio track mostly uses one of these sends.
The insert effects are EQ, Compressor and sometimes a customized reverb for that audio track, mostly 5 audio tracks have their own reverb as insert effect. The send effects are just 2 reverb effects.
All effects are from the "Kjharheus Classic Collection" (or how is it spelled again:-) - so they should be gracious on CPU usage, at least that's what Kjharheus is telling on their homepage.

Before my update the CPU load was at 95% in EnergyXT and after the update it's still at 95% !!!!
The audio playback "stutters" and the mouse-pointer "stutters" as well when I play back the project. In Cubase SE I have a CPU load around 80-85% with the same project / setup of Audio Tracks. I also looked up the hard-disk load in Cubase and it doesn't deflect at all, so I guess the hard drive also can't be the reason for this behaviour.

Am I using the wrong plugins? Are the "Khjarheus" Plugins too much for my CPU? Or is the main cause for this high CPU load my Asio Driver, the KXAsio driver?
I tried different settings, lower and higher latencies....nothing changed. I also tried ASIO4All - same behaviour.

I don't want to buy a new soundcard and still get the same disappointing results, that's why I depend on you guys to help me find the cause for this.

My favourite choice right now would be the "M-Audio Audiophile USB", because it has a seperate headphone output. I need that headphone output for recording, because I always record with headphones in my "singing cabin".

Thanks in advance,
Ben

I would say a) the audio card is pretty crap but not the culprit.

REVERB is one of the most CPU intensive effects and using 7 of them in one track seems absolutely stupid IMHO ........

[anselmoso]

I would say a) the audio card is pretty crap but not the culprit.

REVERB is one of the most CPU intensive effects and using 7 of them in one track seems absolutely stupid IMHO ........

well, the song has many different vocals, that's why I have different reverbs on the main and background vocals.
the main-vocal has one send-reverb, as well have the second vocal and the background vocals. there's also a "special background" vocal which has its own reverb as insert.
but the drums and guitars and other instruments are also audio tracks and they have different reverbs as well, it just doesn't sound that good when you put the same reverb on your drums, your guitars, your piano, the bass and so on.

hopefully now you can understand, why i have 5-7 reverbs in my project.
anyway - shouldn't my system be capable of handling that?

[Alan]

I agree about the reverb,however,I'd also avoid USB and FireWire interfaces if your looking for lower CPU load v/s latencey.You might also want to "freeze" the reverb in your insert tracks if your host has freeze.

[C00kie]

My favourite choice right now would be the "M-Audio Audiophile USB", because it has a seperate headphone output. I need that headphone output for recording, because I always record with headphones in my "singing cabin".

There are other ways to get a headphone signal. USB is not the way for you, since USB devices use more CPU than simular PCI cards.

Maybe the CPU is busy waiting for the harddisk. 17 simultaneous audio tracks is a lot to swap around!

Try solo'ing each track, to find out which one uses the most CPU. And try to calculate weather the total load is to be expected (5% + 5% + 5% = 25% means you have a problem.) You need to exclude the send busses.

[anselmoso]

Hi Alan and C00kie,

thanks for the tips about USB. I just can't find any PCI interface in my price range (50-150 Euro) which has enough outputs and isn't from a "crappy firm". The "M-Audio-Audiophile 2496" for example has only 2 analog outputs, which are used by my active monitor boxes and then there is none left for my headphones.

As I wrote before, I checked the hard-drive-load in Cubase, but nothing to see here. From the "VST Activity" window I can't see why the hard-drive should be the problem.

I will try soloing each track and finding the "worst" one.
Yeah, freezing is nice and good, but It just takes so long to freeze one track, man.....
I didn't try FXFreeze, yet, but the freeze function in the hosts I tried (Tracktion1, EnergyXT) just takes too long to work productively. I mean, I freeze one track. But after some minutes, I change something in the other audio track and so I have to unfreeze all the frozen ones that I can adapt them to each other again.
That's why I upgraded my hardware - so I could work totally free in my sequencer.

[original flipper]

HI

The place to start would be to loose the fx and see what difference that makes - if it's negligable then that aint the problem - on the other hand you might me pushing ther cpu too hard with intensive plug-ins.

Flipper.

[anselmoso]

HI

The place to start would be to loose the fx and see what difference that makes - if it's negligable then that aint the problem - on the other hand you might me pushing ther cpu too hard with intensive plug-ins.

Flipper.

When i deactivate at least 3 audio tracks with 3 inserts, the CPU load goes back significantly.
So the VSTs seem to take all my CPU power. Do I have to change my way of thinking about using reverbs or are there other reverb plugins, which are even less CPU consuming then the "Khjaerheus" ones?

[pw]

I just can't find any PCI interface in my price range (50-150 Euro) which has enough outputs and isn't from a "crappy firm". The "M-Audio-Audiophile 2496" for example has only 2 analog outputs, which are used by my active monitor boxes and then there is none left for my headphones.

You can buy some cable from your local electrical store, or get them to make one for you, with multiple inputs going to a stereo out in the soundcard. I have heaps of cables like this for plugging in mutliple headphones to one stereo out. If you get one made, you could even get a volume slider put in the cable for headphones, to adjust volume accordingly in your vocal booth.

[verstaerker]

check if u have the latest chipset-drivers for your mainboard
installed - i had this problem too

[Paul_FX]

Could be a problem with your graphics card. I notice you dont have one listed in your specs, and i assume your using the onboard graphics drivers.. I had a similar problem until i got a good AGP card. Problem with onbaord is that they often share the pci bus, and especially using a SBLive this might cause issues..

[-janne]

I just can't find any PCI interface in my price range (50-150 Euro) which has enough outputs and isn't from a "crappy firm". The "M-Audio-Audiophile 2496" for example has only 2 analog outputs, which are used by my active monitor boxes and then there is none left for my headphones.

You can buy some cable from your local electrical store, or get them to make one for you, with multiple inputs going to a stereo out in the soundcard. I have heaps of cables like this for plugging in mutliple headphones to one stereo out. If you get one made, you could even get a volume slider put in the cable for headphones, to adjust volume accordingly in your vocal booth.

I am outputting audiophile 2496 to cheap behringer mixer (~50€). From there the signal goes to monitors and headphones. Mixer's headphone output has its own level knob. The only downside is that mixer's main level knob affects also to headphone level, so I can't totally mute monitors (without switching them off) when i listen with headphones.

For your CPU problem: I would suggest that you check your IRQ requests (control panel/system/hardware/device manager/view resources by type). At least the soundcard and hard drive should have their own IRQs. If they are sharing IRQs with other devices, you can place your cards in PCI slots differently, so that they get own IRQs. There should be a table of IRQ sharing slots in your mainboard manual.

I don't know if that helps, or what does it matter in real life. But maybe it's worth trying if freezing reverbs isn't enough...

-janne

[JackDark]

"The problem happens when the CPU (precisely: the floating point unit (FPU) inside of it) detects extremely small numbers and wishes to process them with the same precision as usual. Then it switches into 'denormal' mode which is another way of representing small floating point numbers with the available bit range.
Converting between the two states takes a lot of time for the FPU and thus might cause heavy load jumps. Currently, the Pentium 4 processor seems highly addicted to denormalisation. It turned out that its threshold is actually very much higher than of former Pentium types.
Plugins that used to work fine with older CPUs might slow down the entire system when used with a P4.
But other FPUs might as well suffer from denormalisation issues.

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.p ... &subItem=6

Also, a better soundcard driver for the Live series (great low latency):

http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1

[kritikon]

So the VSTs seem to take all my CPU power. Do I have to change my way of thinking about using reverbs or are there other reverb plugins, which are even less CPU consuming then the "Khjaerheus" ones?

It'd certainly help...there really is no reason you need that many reverbs - you're not going to get anything remotely realistic in terms of reverb if you have 7 different rooms all playing at once.

And if you insist on having so many reverbs, what's all that crap about freezing taking so long...so - you'd rather dig your feet in and have audio dropouts because you're pushing your CPU too hard than render to audio? That's just silly. So, you're happy having audio dropouts? If you continue to work the way you do, then you will continue to have problems, simple as that. I don't even use freeze, I simply render to audio the old way, and it does NOT take much time. Put it in perspective...you might take several weeks to make a track - but you begrudge a few minutes rendering, and are happy to put up with an unusable system because of it
I can see why people want midi tracks running live, but you said you use guitars too...well they're already rendered to audio, so it will NOT kill you to render with some reverb on too - you'll still have the dry version, so you can go back if you get it wrong.

As an aside, I also find it odd that you're prepared to spend on a 64bit flashy CPU, but buy a crap soundcard. It's like buying an audiophile top notch HiFi then using computer speakers on it. Your soundcard is possibly the most crucial part...especially if you're recording external instruments - you have no choice but to go through your soundcard's converters for that, and you probably picked the worst one on the market

Then you flog your computer to death - computer DAWs are like any other hardware ever made - if you abuse them, they don't like it. It records to audio for a purpose - so use it.

[Roman Empire]

I have a theory about why this is happening for you:

I know that Cubase, depending on the soundcard, starts stuttering at a far lower CPU consumption level than 100 %.
Now, consider that your project on the old Athlon 2000 would need actually 210 % of that power you had back then in order to play it without stuttering. Then your new setup will still be stuttering, because it still does not give you all the power that you need.
Cubase sometimes wont show more than maybe 90 % load, although you´re taking all up all system ressources - maybe because it puts the performance meter on such low priority that it doesn´t track your load anymore in that situation.
When it comes to finding out what it is needing so much cpu power, this should be a piece of cake by, like you said, disabling/enabling things until you find the problem.
I completely understand that you wanna use that many reverbs and don´t want to do freezing and bouncing.
When you find the source of your issue, try to see if it can be replaced by something less CPU intensive that produces an almost similar result but maybe with a lower quality, and then when you know you´re all done, use the plugin that craves so much of your computer and save it to wav for final mastering.