I'm running Samletank 2 XL inside Sonar 4 PE. I have a Carillon computer with a P4 2.8,with 1 gig of ram, with an 800 mhtz front side buss, and two 7200 RPM hard drives.
I'm working on my first big project with sampletank. The project has a four audio output instance of Sampletank 2 XL, one FM7 instance(frozen), three audio tracks, (two with guitar and one with some loops). All the audio tracks are frozen, too. Everything is frozen, except Sampletank. The Combination I made for Sampletank has several multi voice combinations, one for drums, with two voices on Channel 1, one for a pad voice with three instruments on Channel 2, Electric piano, with two instruments on channel 3, and bass, with two instruments on channel 4. The total memory for all the samples is 124 meg. I'm getting some performance issues, which are most certainly CPU related.
With the project loaded, as described, my CPU usage reads 23% idle. When I play the project, the CPU veries between 54% and 75%. Sometimes it will stop playing.
I have several questions. Does this seem like a "normal" behavior for a system like mine, or are there some tweaks I should do to improve performance? Could more RAM help me? Do I need to get a faster CPU?
I've been thinking that since Sonar 4 has freeze, I may be better off loading one instance for each instrument (Combination) that I'm going to use. Using Sampletank with more audio outs seems to overtax my system, and I can't freeze an individual instrument, without freezing ALL of the Sampletank tracks.
Single instance advantages
1 Combinations can be loaded for each instrument
2 Ability to freeze each instance
Comments welcome!
Sampletank, multi output vs single instance with freeze
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harmony gardens harmony gardens https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=12815
- KVRian
- 830 posts since 19 Feb, 2004 from Richland Center, Wisconsin
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- KVRian
- 1302 posts since 9 Oct, 2003 from California
Hard to say.
While more RAM is always nice, at a combined 124 megs of samples with 1 gig onboard, I don't think that's the problem.
I regularly run 8 stereo outputs with ST2 in Cubase with additonal VSTi such as RMIV and RMX and audio tracks on a 2.8 gig Pentium IV with 1 gig RAM without freezing so my GUESS would be that some tweaking is in order. I am not familiar with version 4 of Sonar - I have only used 3.1.1 and so I don't know if there is an increase of CPU requiremnts with it.
The first thing I would do is try to increase my buffer size. Early in projects I can get away with 128 buffers but as instruments and tracks grow in a project, I usually have to shift to 512. The other areas I would look at are sufficient "paging" in windows (with min and max set as the same) as well as your hyperthreading setting in your bios. I know others have different opinions but I had nothing but trouble using hyperthreading with Sonar and VSTi in general and ST in particular.
Of course you can also try your suggestion of multiple instances of ST. Additonal instances carry some additional RAM overhead (about 50 megs if my memory
serves me well) but with 1 gig you should be fine.
Hope some of this helps. Good luck
Dan
While more RAM is always nice, at a combined 124 megs of samples with 1 gig onboard, I don't think that's the problem.
I regularly run 8 stereo outputs with ST2 in Cubase with additonal VSTi such as RMIV and RMX and audio tracks on a 2.8 gig Pentium IV with 1 gig RAM without freezing so my GUESS would be that some tweaking is in order. I am not familiar with version 4 of Sonar - I have only used 3.1.1 and so I don't know if there is an increase of CPU requiremnts with it.
The first thing I would do is try to increase my buffer size. Early in projects I can get away with 128 buffers but as instruments and tracks grow in a project, I usually have to shift to 512. The other areas I would look at are sufficient "paging" in windows (with min and max set as the same) as well as your hyperthreading setting in your bios. I know others have different opinions but I had nothing but trouble using hyperthreading with Sonar and VSTi in general and ST in particular.
Of course you can also try your suggestion of multiple instances of ST. Additonal instances carry some additional RAM overhead (about 50 megs if my memory
serves me well) but with 1 gig you should be fine.Hope some of this helps. Good luck
Dan
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harmony gardens harmony gardens https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=12815
- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 830 posts since 19 Feb, 2004 from Richland Center, Wisconsin
Thanks for your reply, Dan! I went through all the tweaks on this page. http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php
My paging was indeed set to different values. After matching the input and output to 2000, and boosting the buffers to 512, I have acheived a great performance boost. The same project is now floating from 23% to 45%, HUGE difference! Thanks again!
Dale
My paging was indeed set to different values. After matching the input and output to 2000, and boosting the buffers to 512, I have acheived a great performance boost. The same project is now floating from 23% to 45%, HUGE difference! Thanks again!
Dale