How much does freeze save - cpu?

wildcon · Post by **wildcon** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 7:44 am

Hi,

I've noticed that when you you the freeze function the actual VSTis and effects seem to remain turned 'on' even through the track is effectively now audio.

Is it more efficient to bounce down and turn off the original?

Also is there any way of changing the colour of the tracks (not the actual clip or waveform) as this would be very beneficial in grouping the bounced tracks or even midi and audio.

Thanks

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:33 am

totally saves a ton of CPU. It renders a temporary audio file. Makes Live and intensive vstis manageable on older computers like mine, not every one is running octocores !

Unfortunately you cannot change the freeze track colour, it's always light blue.

wildcon · Post by **wildcon** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 6:12 pm

Hi,

Thanks for the response

I realise that the wav file is created, but the VST still seems to be switched on in the original midi track, which I presume is still using cpu?

Jusr wondered if it is more effective to bounce down to a seperate track and then switch the VST off on the original.

I actually meant, is it possible to generally change the track colours generally - for instance having a group drum mix track a different colour to be easily able to seperate it out. This sis something that can be done in Cubase and id really helpful.

Thanks

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 7:41 pm

No, watch your Task Manager or Apple CPU meter. If the vsti was still active there would be a lot of extra drain. Try unfreezing and compare. Also watch Live's meter, which measures the audio load. This was using one instance of an intensive patch from Arturia's Jupiter 8V plugin.

Unfrozen

Live meter 34%, Task Manager CPU meter 44% with spiking and a peak up at about 15% above this level.

FROZEN

Live meter 1%. Task Manager CPU meter 16% and notice the way lower average CPU use with virtually no spikes.

BTW - When frozen, it would not let me display the VSTi GUI.

As you can see, Freeze Tracks works

My PC - Dell Inspiron 9100, 3.2 Ghz P4, 2 GB DDR, audio interface Alesis IO14 set to 256 samples (14ms) latency for audio and plugin buffer.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:01 pm

Currently, you can only select the colour for each audio or MIDI clip, done with a drop down box in the clip envelope, so unlike Cubase, the whole background does not go to the same colour, only the top part of the track as shown here, The background remains grey (or whatever the skin default is).

suburbanbather · Post by **suburbanbather** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:37 pm

Rave wrote:Sorry to go off topic. Leedsquietman, how did you make those midi notes slightly out to give it swing? Did you do it manually or is there a little plugin to do it?

He probably had the midi note resolution at a finer setting like 1/32 or higher previously. Or it could be because the midi editor is zoomed out so much. Plus, you can turn quantize off and manually move notes around freely.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:37 pm

in this instance it was played in manually

there is a little bit of a natural swing in the track as it is a laid back reggae-type groove.

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:53 pm

I think that I turned velocity response off on my MIDI keyboard just for this track as I wanted to make a punchy bassline. I do believe I had the record quantize set to 1/32. This track is one from a while back, so a bit hazy ...

wildcon · Post by **wildcon** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 10:14 pm

Ah - okay that's convinced me

Thanks for the time to explain.

Cheers