What performance can we hope for?
When I first got into digital recording 6 months ago (after decades of lovely analogue!)I’d basically expected to be able to record 50-track meisterwerks as long as a)I could write them and b) my P.C. was “fast” enough. I currently find that I can’t run more than about 6 (with a few basic effects) - which is a real bummer.
2 questions really:
1)With my 1.5mhz pentium 4 running xp pro and a media-c soundcard, should I be able to play say, 12 tracks simultaneously without seizing up my system? (I’ve noticed that my CPU is running in the red at about 85% a lot of the time, whereas the demo track “On a Roll” sticks at about 35% with a comparable number of tracks)
2) If someone did want absolutely no processing issues with even, say, 20 tracks, should they look at a new processor, a new motherboard, bigger Ram, super video card, or what? Is the mathematical processing power critical?
I know very little about PCs - I just want a system that lets me run 20 tracks without seizing. Surely there’s a way?
I’m sure others will chime in too but here’s my experience so far…
My DAW is an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ that runs about 2 ghz I think? During this phase of AMD’s marketing it was a bit unclear what the 3200 REALLY meant. It has a gigabyte of PC3200 DDR RAM, two Western Digital 80GB hard drives. One for XP Pro and audio applications, and one for audio files only. I record and playback to/from that separate “audio” hard disk. I applied the OS tweaks from http://www.musicxp.net and that’s about it.
With pre .NET n-Track V4, I could record and playback about 24 tracks of audio at 24 bits and 44.1 khz. I probably used an “average” amount of FX. A compressor here and there, reverb or two on Aux busses etc… I used n’s built-in EQ quite a lot. I also used the Kaerjhaus Classic series plugins a bit. Specially the Classic Limiter. 20-24 tracks with a soundcard latency setting of 20ms worked pretty well.
After getting frustrated with problems encountered during the post .NET V4 and the V5 disaster, I sort of bailed on n-Track out of frustration. I won’t say how well my alternate choice performed because somebody here will SMACK me!
However, all that to say this; despite my experiences, others have had great success with n-Track during V4 and V5. So YOUR mileage may (and probably will) vary. I suggest the basic setup I mentioned above, two reasonably fast hard disks are a must IMO. Stuff one or two gigs of RAM in your PC and see what happens. The demos are free. Just load up or record a bunch of tracks and see how hard you can push it. A Pentium 1.4 is a bit on the slow side these days but I would think that with the right setup and configuration you could do a dozen or more tracks. There is always the “Freeze” function to freeze FX and bypass them to free up CPU horsepower.
Also, V6 Beta is now out and seems to be somewhat more CPU friendly. Grab it, torture it, tell the developer (Flavio) how it goes. I’m sure he would like the feedback.
Good luck!
D
PS Also remember to pop in here with questions. There are a lot of helpful, knowledgeable chaps hanging around here.
PPS The DAW PC I described is also dedicated to DAW use. No network crapola, no “stuff” that is not necessary for audio/MIDI work. That is an important point I forgot to mention…
the first thing i would do is to download this application - it is a PROPER CPU USE METER called CPUmom - and its free -
unlike most CPU use meters this one shows all CPU use including that which is used by Windows - shows when windows cuts you off while it looks after itself etc -
http://www.den4b.com/downloads.php?project=CPUMon
set it to autostart and always on top -
when installed open N then add i track, then add an effect and see how much horse power the effect is using - then change the effect you will be suprised how CPU hungry effects are -
try using different audio drivers - CPUmon will show the least CPU intensive (most effective) one to use -
Dr J
You should be getting a whole lot more than 6, unless you are running some impulse reverbs or really hungry VSTi synths or something.
Hi Just out of interest download n-track ver 2.3 from this page and see if it makes any difference.
http://ntrack.com/__old_download.shtm
I used to get more than 40 tracks with a p3 800 using just a single drive.
I’ll detail how if you want but it involves dedicating your computer to just audio work.
Nick