Sudden CPU spikes but no reason.

[Gregory Wells-King]

Hi Everyone,

I'm working through a simillar issue, I have a new laptop Dell XPS M1530 2.0ghz Dual Core 2 (3mb cache) 3GB Ram, 320gb Hard drive.

I've set it up with the usual optimizations for audio use in hardware preferences, diabled speed steping in BIOS set the Hard drive to fast and got the CPU usage down to a minimum with other tricks (No Worries) however, I can't explain why in one or two of my sets, I get a sudden spike of cpu usage, which cuts out audio for a scond or two.

I've looked at all the tracks, frozen and flatened some, turned of devices when not in use, set my Behringer FCA 202 Asio sound card to medium latecny (for a minute) and everything else, but it's still there, the track bounces allong quite nice at 33% or bellow most of the time, just this one place around the halfway point, it spikes up to 100%, I even systemically removed one track at a time, untill I had like 6 tracks, and even clean space within the track with no input, and I still did it.

I'm confused. other than audio and midi data, what can cause such a spike, I also ran task manager to see if there was anything I was missing, but there's no change, just this odd spike around Bar 86 in the track?

Icidently, apart from the loading time of my work being reduced, and a general better quality of audio on my nachine, I can't really note any performance benefit from the 2.0ghz dual core 2 processor, and lots of ram. I intend to balance out the ram with 4gb instead of 3gb for performance, but non the less, didn't get a massive leap forward. Odd.


Any thoughts

[Gregory Wells-King]

Solved.

Took me a fair few day's, but I found out the offending item.

This may help other members out so I will post this over on any simillar threads I can see.

This is what I found.

I looked down the list of my tracks in Arrangement view as I have many times before, and looked at all the ones with live devices in them, as I have before...

As usual with any track, when I'm starting a track, I go for broke, and just use stuff fairly liberally until I notice the cpu meter is getting a bit too high, and I start to optimize how my set is, and tidy the whole thing up, the usual freeze this, flaten that and sends for things like drum racks.

I've tried everything on this particular track, as I said it's been runing fine just this one place around halfway through the track, it peaks above 100% and I found that a crossing point where the automation 'Device On' envelope for 'Camelspace' just wasn't short enough and was adding 'Weight' despite not having any audio to process.

And that was it, just shortend the envelope a bit, here and there and it did the trick. just goes to show you the importance of being accurate about unused devices and turning them of when not needed, something I do do, but now will pay much more relevance on.

I also noticed while doing this, the On/Off cpu spike issue that occurs from time to time, would be interesting to see what the guy's at Camelaudio can tell me about my experience with Camelspace, Yer never know.

As I said, it has taken me a few day's of stubenness to look again and again at the set, but eventually I found the nag, good luck with your own, 'Needle in the haystack'...

[Short Scope Boy]

Solved.

Took me a fair few day's, but I found out the offending item.

This may help other members out so I will post this over on any simillar threads I can see.

This is what I found.

I looked down the list of my tracks in Arrangement view as I have many times before, and looked at all the ones with live devices in them, as I have before...

As usual with any track, when I'm starting a track, I go for broke, and just use stuff fairly liberally until I notice the cpu meter is getting a bit too high, and I start to optimize how my set is, and tidy the whole thing up, the usual freeze this, flaten that and sends for things like drum racks.

I've tried everything on this particular track, as I said it's been runing fine just this one place around halfway through the track, it peaks above 100% and I found that a crossing point where the automation 'Device On' envelope for 'Camelspace' just wasn't short enough and was adding 'Weight' despite not having any audio to process.

And that was it, just shortend the envelope a bit, here and there and it did the trick. just goes to show you the importance of being accurate about unused devices and turning them of when not needed, something I do do, but now will pay much more relevance on.

I also noticed while doing this, the On/Off cpu spike issue that occurs from time to time, would be interesting to see what the guy's at Camelaudio can tell me about my experience with Camelspace, Yer never know.





As I said, it has taken me a few day's of stubenness to look again and again at the set, but eventually I found the nag, good luck with your own, 'Needle in the haystack'...

Glad for you buddy can be a real bitch that kinda thing