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BushmasterM4 30 August 2008

I use Tracktion 3 as my DAW and I love the layout and feel of it. Well I recorded 24 tracks today and with only 8 plugins I started to get the stutters. I running Windows XP Pro (32Bit), with an AMD X2-4800 cpu (dual core) and 4 gigs of memory. My hard drives are all 7200rpm WD. And all inessential processes are removed from Windows. With Tracktion 2 (the previous version of my DAW), I had a tune with 30 tracks and several plugins on each track and it didnt break a sweat. That was on a single core AMD-3800 with 2 gigs. This is the first time with Tracktion 3 Ive had over say 16 Tracks. So, I may go back to Tracktion 2 for big projects or I may jump ship. So tell me what you use as a DAW, and what you PC specs are, and a rough track/vst count for that Daw/PC. Ive read Cubase is very cpu friendly, but I would rather hear it from actual users. Pro Tools is out of the question. Thanks. Oh yea I run a 6ms latency and record at 24bit 44100. Changing to a higher latency has no effect.

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anonymous Sat, 08/30/2008 - 22:32

I have Cubase LE, 2.2 intel core2, 4 gigs, 8800GT 512, All 7200 rpm HD's and dual monitors. I have yet to see it shudder. I think I have 20 tracks with God only knows how many plug ins running on one of my sessions. Hope this helps.

Oh, I thought I would add that I haven't shut down many services and that I usually mix with a browser open and Media player paused in the background so I can go back and get a reference at anytime because it helps my mix.

Codemonkey Sun, 08/31/2008 - 17:45

Somewhere I did read that T3 munches resources. No idea where though.

I haven't had more than 6 tracks with 9 plugins total.
I also have a PC that craps out recording via ASIO after 5 mins on 1024 buffer size, and my "gaming rig" has motherboard troubles that actually prevent me browsing some websites + playing music at the same time.

"Yes, it runs Crysis. No, you can't run firefox+foobar at once or the music skips. Yes, really, it runs Crysis. Look, I'll load it up and show you..."

BushmasterM4 Sun, 08/31/2008 - 22:21

Ok, I think what I am experiancing is a hard drive problem. My cpu meter in Tracktion does not go over a 1/3 with all those tracks. But I see a exclamation point in the meter and the stuttering happens. So I thaught that was a cpu issue. But in the manual, I read that the mark in the cpu meter shows the program is having problems getting tracks from the drive. A cpu problem will max the bar and turn it red So I need to run some speed tests on the drive and also increase the cache size in Tracktion. Will try this tomorrow. One of the biggest things is the cache size. The default Tracktion 3 uses is small. Looks like an easy fix. Tweak the drive and cache size and see what happens.

anonymous Sun, 08/31/2008 - 23:14

EricUndead wrote: Dfrag!

True that!

I was getting audio dropouts from Sonar. It said it was HDD size issues but I have 12gig free...
Because I'm recording to the OS drive I was walking a fine line, which got crossed before I filled it up.

Keeping my drive tidy means I don't need to spend on an external just yet.

RichS Mon, 09/01/2008 - 07:52

12 gigs in not really a lot of space. There are several temp and scratch files (for copy/paste and undo's) that don't figure in that free space total.

The most important (and obvious) point is that your "work files" should be on a different drive than your operating system and applications/plug-ins. Since the CPU is not stressed, the stuttering is most likely a result of trying to access too much information from different areas on one drive... it just has to "wait its turn" -- even if it's a fast drive.

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