CPU hitting 60%, sound clicking, 24 hrs B4 gig, HELP!!!

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 11:21 pm

I haven't been able to max out the G5 CPU yet. I suppose if I piled on some high-quality reverbs or soft synths, that would do it.

I've gotta keep the Powerbook lean & mean, though.

Roll on Macintel Powerbooks... no more Pee Cee envy!

robtronik · Post by **robtronik** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 12:53 am

not sure why, but I can't get the dropouts to occur while here at home when hitting 52% or above.

WEIRD. But out in the club situation, it has happened three times. Hm.

How do I turn off dashboard? Its not available as a visible application to quit.

Thanks,

rob.

koranek · Post by **koranek** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 1:47 am

The obvious things to check are your buffer settings. Complex warping and PDC are going to push the CPU more than you might expect. Try bumping your buffers way up and see if that decreases the problem.

I recently tried comparing Live 4 vs. Live 5 and it looks like on my mac Live 5 is only about 2% slower than Live 4.

telekom · Post by **telekom** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 11:26 am

Hi Folks,
Couls also be due to different settings in your OSX system prefs. Try checking what you've got for Energy Saver. For audio you should have your performance settings to highest. If you've got it set to say "preserve battery life" it might be truning off the hard disk when it's not required to spin, so it means there could be times when it's spinning back up to speed rather than feeding you audio...

Just a thought, speshly if you get different performance at home and in the club. Keep the thing cool too, if the fans are being turned off by energy saver the whole thing will be hotter than it wants to be. If you need cooling, you could get one of these...

http://www.dvforge.com/ibreeze.shtml

HTH

robtronik · Post by **robtronik** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 4:37 pm

Good advice, for sure. But I definitely did all that (as the energy saver and preferences are well known parameters for getting the most CPU bang).

The cooling thing is an interesting one though. That is something that is definitely different than what I have going on in my house vs. a club environment....

rob.

koranek · Post by **koranek** » Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:25 pm

I wonder if it could be something odd like a AC power problem (marginal voltage levels) or a ground problem, This sounds like something you'd hear on Car Talk on NPR. "My car starts fine except when I'm in my parking lot at work...Oh and it makes this weird noise for about five minutes, but only on Wednesdays."

paolo topaz · Post by **paolo topaz** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:44 am

Cheers Telecom,

I changed my energy saver seting from custom to high performance and now with four audio channels with three band eq and auto filter in each th CPU is only hitting 26%

Tidy job!

thanks for all the tips.

On the subject of heat and vibration my G4 powerbook was put through four hours of high levels of vibration coming from the PA, can this affect performance?

Heat in small club rooms too, any problems there?

Paolo

www.paolotopaz.com

subterFUSE · Post by **subterFUSE** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:59 am

The ambient temperature inside a club will never be close to the high temps that exist inside computer gear.... so I wouldn't worry about it. Just make sure your computer's vents are not obstructed.

mike holiday · Post by **mike holiday** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:02 am

better bring some wax just incase

ebencarlson · Post by **ebencarlson** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:47 am

On my Mac I changed the input settings preferences from "Aggregate Device" to just my Tascam FW-1884 and that gave me a large CPU savings. I also just installed CPU Accelerator 2.10--a shareware program. It seems to give some advantage but may also be the reason I just crashed. Try the first one first, and the second if you have time to mess around.

Best..

robtronik · Post by **robtronik** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 2:59 am

well, I figured out my problem. And to me, this is AMAZING.

Basically, I had all my tracks and samples being warped under complex for best sound. It easily ate up 75-90% of my CPU with 8 tracks playing at the same time (session view), a T-Racks Master plugin on the master channel, 8 instances (one for each channel) of Supatrigga (but only two or three actually on), and one track with a simple delay on it. No question it choked when I pumped the BPM up to 160 BPM, lots of audio cracking.

Okay. That wasn't totally cool. BUT, then I turned off all Complex Warping and made it Beats (or Repitch). My total CPU usage dropped to less than 30% (averaged around 25%) and I turned on all supatriggas and all effects (delay) on each channel.

ONLY 25 - 30% CPU Usage.

NOW THAT IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. Sweet.

That makes me feel much better. Obviously Complex Mode can add a LOT of CPU overhead. I didn't realize it would do that much. It sounds better of course. But this is probably good for single or dual track stuff or studio work. But for Live playback repitch or beats mode is fine (ESPECIALLY if you see those kinds of CPU reductions).

awesome. I feel so much better now. I was seriously thinking about whether I should have gotten an Intel based laptop ... Not now.

rob.

quandry · Post by **quandry** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 12:36 pm

great news. yeah, word is that complex warping and pdc can hit the processor hard. when in doubt, turn these off.

smart1123 · Post by **smart1123** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 4:23 pm

Yep in the manual it says that complex warp is a 10X cpu hit over other kinds of warping... choose wisely when you warp

rasputin · Post by **rasputin** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:33 pm

smart1123 wrote:Yep in the manual it says that complex warp is a 10X cpu hit over other kinds of warping... choose wisely when you warp

Sounds like the perfect candidate for freeze!

CPU hitting 60%, sound clicking, 24 hrs B4 gig, HELP!!!

Mac CPU stuff