New CPU Needed? XP2700+ cant handle the pace?! Ideas?

[SeanyK]

Ello, here is my system spec;

AMD Athlon XP2700+ Thoroughbred
512MB Kingston HyperX DDR400 PC3200 RAM
MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR Motherboard
1X120GB S-ATA Seagate Hard Drive (System Drive)
1X80GB S-ATA Hitachi Hard Drive (Audio Drive)
Windows XP
Cubase SL2.2 Registered w/all updates.
I wont go into VSTi's & Reason etc, as its not *too* relevant in this particular problem...

Anyway; to the problem!

My CPU Meter is over halfway in most of the tracks I am currently working on, and often will kick up and hit the red causing an annoying crackle.

Is the XP2700+ running out of steam?

An example of a basic track is about 7 VSTi's (not neccasary different VSTi's, perhaps sometimes 3 or 4 different instances of the same VSTi).
And about 4 audio files, nothing amazing.

I have reverb, sometimes delay added on to most of the channels also.

Does it sound right that my comp cant handle it?
I will upgrade if need be, was going to add more RAM to make it 1GB but that wont do anything to the CPU level bar will it?

Nothing running in the background either.

Ideas folks? This ones got me

[jouni]

Latency and used playback rate has an impact too.. so what you're using ?

You didn't tell your soundcard either, but I suppose you're running atleast ASIO.

[SeanyK]

Sorry about that mate I did forget to add the soundcard lol, its a

E-MU 1820m, cost me £350, so hoped it could handle it all lol.

I run latency at 5ms.

Audio Priority : High
Preload Amount : 2 Seconds

Lower latency is ticked.

Release asio driver in background is not ticked.

Playback rate I dont know how I find that out?

Or would it just be 44.1KHZ?

[whyterabbyt]

Yeah, seconded. What souncard, what latency settings, what sample rate...

If you've got your latency real low your system can choke trying to throw it at the soundcard fast enough...

[SeanyK]

Sorry about that mate I did forget to add the soundcard lol, its a

E-MU 1820m, cost me £350, so hoped it could handle it all lol.

I run latency at 5ms.

Audio Priority : High
Preload Amount : 2 Seconds

Lower latency is ticked.

Release asio driver in background is not ticked.

Playback rate I dont know how I find that out?

Or would it just be 44.1KHZ?

I make Trance music so the timing needs to be very tight, if I increase the latency I can notice the timing being slightly off thats the problem
Would more RAM help? Etc

[Badazz]

Hello Detect2....1st of all-You may want to check with an EMu rep because they have had BIG problems with their software matching up to the soundcard hardware--Good stuff/Just hasn't been working well for them...
The latency which was mentioned earlier can be a major issue also

2nd...Did you check the specs in Cubase to make sure you are running the recommended speed and memory??
I've seen this a lot so this may help you...I just had to upgrade to and I know from experience you don't need a $10000 CPU to get going...Good Luck and hope this helps

[SeanyK]

Hi

The specs I have are much much higher than what Cubase recommends etc, ok maybe 512MB Ram is the only holding point, as I think most audio people use at least 1GB...But even then 256MB is minimum requirement.

I have the latest E-mu drivers, and on a latency setting of 20ms, there isnt any crackles, but the music is not in time

[dusted william]

I don't understand how the music is not in time with a 20ms delay.


that should just slow down everything by 20ms.

am I getting something wrong here??

dw

[DevonB]

I don't understand how the music is not in time with a 20ms delay.


that should just slow down everything by 20ms.

am I getting something wrong here??

dw

Trying to play along real time will give you the problem, not the playback alone. 12ms and higher ruins my day when trying to play along on a keyboard realtime. If you aren't using a keyboard to record realtime, like putting in patterns into a pattern sequencer, then kick your latency all the way up to save your CPU.

Devon

[C00kie]

Is it any easier on the CPU with the raised latency?

Personally I suspect the reverbs to soak up your resources. Try the same tune without all the reverbs. Which specific reverb VST do you use most?

If leaving out the reverbs makes a huge difference to CPU load you might reconcider the usage of reverb. That is, you could get away with only 1 or maybe 4 reverb instances and share them among the instruments. Use "send" buses to feed them with a submix of a couple of tracks.

[DevonB]

Oh, and ram is not going to help your CPU load, not enough for you to go 'Wow!' at least. A new CPU will though.

Devon

[Omnivox]

Sorry about that mate I did forget to add the soundcard lol, its a

E-MU 1820m, cost me £350, so hoped it could handle it all lol.

I run latency at 5ms.

Audio Priority : High
Preload Amount : 2 Seconds

Lower latency is ticked.

Release asio driver in background is not ticked.

Playback rate I dont know how I find that out?

Or would it just be 44.1KHZ?

I make Trance music so the timing needs to be very tight, if I increase the latency I can notice the timing being slightly off thats the problem
Would more RAM help? Etc

why do you think timing has to be very tight for trance? i make goa trance with emu1212m, and i constantly use 50 ms latency and it's fine with me. a friend of mine makes progressive trance and techno with a sb pci128 card, running at about 200 ms latency, and there are a lot of synths and audio tracks in his arrangements. so, just increase the latency. latency is an issue only when playing live, and i doubt you need to play your keyboard live all the time. what do you mean by 'music is not in time'?
about the playback rate, it depends which program you're using. if it's cubase sx, press shift+s (project setup) and there you will see your playback rate. you can also see your playback rate in the mixer window of your card.

[hlmst]

thats why they put the "Freeze" function in cubase...And as far as fpu performance goes, u wont find much faster cpu's than the 2166mhz athlon.

[Armadillo]

Is the XP2700+ running out of steam?

An example of a basic track is about 7 VSTi's (not neccasary different VSTi's, perhaps sometimes 3 or 4 different instances of the same VSTi).
And about 4 audio files, nothing amazing.

I have reverb, sometimes delay added on to most of the channels also.

Does it sound right that my comp cant handle it?

I only have an XP2000 and I can get about 13 VSTi's running. Of course, some are worse than others. If I run Z3ta and Reaktor I might just get 3, but you need to bounce down or use freeze, or use some less CPU heavy VSTi's.
Also, how many reverbs are you using. They normally eat CPU like mad.

[joakimlinden]

It might just be your motherboard that is a bottleneck.

I don't know how nForce chipsets perform in the professional audio realm. I've read many times that VIA chipsets should be avoided if working with pro soundcards. Intel chipsets seems the most stable.

The problem seems to be that some chipset manufacturers cut corners to make the computer respond more to things like AGP - as games are a big part of the PC industry. This sometimes leads to audio being pushed aside in the priorities that the chips make when shuffeling data between the components inside the computer - causing glitches, cracks and possibly even high CPU load.

Try to find posts at forums (using google) for your motherboard and soundcards.


Good luck!