I just did a session tonight where i had to fill in for an engineer who cancelled...dumbass! lol
Anyhue...24 tracks..only like 6 or 7 RTAS plugins and the system was bogged down like crazy! Now, I didnt get a chance to really see what their extension sets were like but I know they have 700+ MB of memory and I know a G4(I think 400 or 500 processor) should be able to handle that much plugin useage. My question is what do most people here get for RTAS useage on 24 tracks before their system starts giving you that lovely error "you should increase processor useage..etc etc"?
Also...on a PC it's important to order the RAM with larger chunks first then smaller proceeding..does this follow for Macs as well?
Opus
Comments
Well...I came in as a late engineer to the session so the plugin
Well...I came in as a late engineer to the session so the plugins that I saw that were being used were...Bomb Factory LA4 emulation plugin(I think..didnt get too good a look..) I bypassed them just to get the recording to happen!! I set the Hardware buffer to 256 for recording so latency wouldnt be too bad but tried it at 512 and 1024 as well...I noticed a MaxxBass from Waves as well..yes, waves definately take up power..Cpu useage was at 85%..I'll lower it a bit and see if that helps too..I'm going back tonight to do mixing and so forth!!
but here's the thing...my PC which I run Nuendo on which is a PIII 650 runs better than that G4 I was working on....not to start a flame war but man..I'm really hating Macs more and more these days!!! :D
Opus
Opus, I have used both a G4 and pc for digi. On the G4 w
Opus,
I have used both a G4 and pc for digi.
On the G4 with 24 tracks i got the same
performance you're experiencing.
I now use a 1.3ghz Athlon (PC) and get
about 30plug-ins(all either waves or
bombfactory) plus two different aux inputs
with at least 4 sends to each input.
I too am no longer impressed with the mac's
performance....especially the price
comparison...but hey...
i don't want to start a platform war or
nothing! :)
Also i have found RAM to be no-where near
as important to performance as cpu speed.
Unless you're dealing with error-checking
RAM etc.
The pc is running on just 256 megs of RAM
Just my thoughts....
(¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·Silver·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯)
When you bypass a plugin, you are still holding the CPU power in
When you bypass a plugin, you are still holding the CPU power in reserve. The BF plugins in particular are notorious for heavy CPU usage. I could only get 2 or 3 (I forget - they were only the demo versions) LA4s running on my G4/400 before it choked up (with a full 24-track session). It's one of the reasons I never bought any of the BF plugins.
You have to actually DISABLE (not just bypass) a plugin in order to re-gain the CPU power back. This was a complaint in 5.0.1 and Digi gave us the disable option in 5.1.
As far as sheer number of plugins, the PC version of PTLE FAR surpasses the Mac version. I've seen comparisons between Athlon 1.5Ghz and Mac G4/867Mhz where the Athlon will get 2-3 times as many plugins.
If Digi and their third-party development partners ever begin to utilize dual processors or Altivec on a Mac, then that should level the playing field.
When you run PTLE on a Mac G4, it's essentially like running it on a G3.
BTW, I'm a Mac user for PTLE.
Which RTASplug-inswere you using? Also what was the Hardware Bu
Which RTASplug-inswere you using? Also what was the Hardware Buffer setting at and the CPU usage at? plug-inslike Waves Renaissance and Bomb Factory use a lot of resources. And a CPU usage around 40% is practically unusable.
I have a G4/466 and an AMIII/PT LE and I can usually get 8-10 EQ/Compressors with a CPU around 65% (Waves and McDSP)
Hope that helps.
mg