FX Maximums

songsj wrote on 2/17/2006, 3:03 AM

Can anybody tell me if there is a maximum no. of FX's you can use per track. and/or a maximum no of individual fx's you can use on a project

example: Any combination of 8 FX's maximum per track ?
example : No more than 10 compressors used on any combination of tracks?

I'm talking the stock Sony plugins here, or am I only limited by the amount of processing power my computer has.
ie: Just keep adding them as needed until you have a problem?

Comments

bgc wrote on 2/17/2006, 10:34 AM

There may be some internal maximum but I've never hit it and I use LOTS of FX.

Your real limit is going to be the processing power of your computer. You can keep adding any kind of FX until your computer runs out of processing power.

(As a test I just tried to add 26 track FX in Vegas and it didn't even blink.)

pwppch wrote on 2/17/2006, 10:52 AM

32 per FX chain.

Of course, just because you can, doesn't mean you should<g>

Peter

PipelineAudio wrote on 2/17/2006, 1:07 PM

JEEZ!!!

only 32 cant we have 33?

Anytime you think 32 might be a problem add this reverb to your chain

http://www.smartelectronix.com/refer.php?url=~magnus/files/ambience-demo-win-vst-2003-10-25.zip

If you can get 32 of those going let me know

songsj wrote on 2/17/2006, 3:17 PM

Thanks for the info, I'm running a P4 3.0 630HT processor, I am finding that reverbs, including Sony are giving me a audio stutter problem on playback, All was well with ambience until I added the 5th one, I was adding reverb to my live toms a track at a time. Sooo
I inserted a FX buss and assigned the toms to it and I'm good to go.
I am a tad concerned howevwer I thought a P4 3.o with a gig of ram would handel this better. It could be me as I have been assigning all of my FX's to the tracks instead of FX busses when possible. If you total up 20 tracks of music with an average of 4 fx's to each thats a total of 80 inserts. Should I be using the fx busses whenever possible to avoid so many inserts?

PipelineAudio wrote on 2/17/2006, 3:44 PM

well, it was kind of a joke and a dare, that ambience eats CPU like popcorn!

Here is the results of some tests I did on my old P4 regarding CPU munchage

Ive been trying some reverb plugs to see who is the most munchy. I am running Vegas 6 on a P4 2.4ghz, so that is the frame of reference. Remember these numbers will be different on a different system, but they should keep their relative differences, barring and special instruction sets a plug may be coded with (read, mostly geek talk from #music-dsp and not actually practiced in the real world, except for VERY few)

The Convolution reverbs were tested using my TC M5000 goldfoil impulse, available free at www.noisevault.com

Focusrite saffire reverb: 10% VST. Kind of cpu hungry, ok-ish sound, needs some updating to work better with certain hosts, sketchy in Vegas

Princeton Digital 2016: 10% VST. Not too adjustable, sounds decent.

Dsound DX: 7% DX, pretty cool for guitar stuff especially!

Dsound VST: 8 % VST, if you can use the DX version, do it, same as above

PSP easyverb DX: 15% DX. or VST, VERY good sounding reverb. Very believeable. Code is written pretty sketchy and likely to crash Vegas as well as other hosts. Seems to be a VST in a DX wrapper. Pretty CPU intensive

Spinaudio Roomverb: 10% DX. Ask Sonusman on this one. GUI is a little screwy, but with some time, you can dial in what you want. Very adjustable, lots of parameters here. End result is a pretty kickass sound, includes a gate, but the gate appears to trigger from the wrong source

Sonitus Reverb: 5% DX. What can I say, this reverb is capable with some tweaking of very good room types. Low CPU use, very well written code, very stable. Overall probably the best bet

Timeworks 4080L: 7% DX, I remember the days when this guy and TC native were pretty much the only 3rd party dx reverbs. Probably did over a hundred albums with these. Decent reverb, low cpu use. A little over the top

Wavearts Masterverb: 5% DX, ringy, pingy piece of crap. Good for slammy tingy stuff. Low CPU use, good code.

Waves Rverb: 9% DX. Yuck. Decent results can be made with this, the gate sucks, the parameters are few and kinda iffy. Pretty munchy. Well written code

Waves Trueverb: 6% DX. AWFUL! Im sure someone can find a use for this reverb, but not me. Very mushy, muddy crap. 1% more CPU use than better reverbs. Well written code

Modulated Reverb: 13% VST. Interesting, free, and interfaceless. Sketchy code and munchy

Lexicon Pantheon: 6% DX. Low CPU use, well written code, pretty good sounding, not very adjustable, but if you have a source that fits its great

TC Native 5% VST only now. Ahhh the good old days This thing is OK-ish, not too adjustable. There are some sources it works GREAT on. Low CPU use. And alone among the VST reverbs, code is written VERY well and survives a dx wrapper just fine

Wizoo 15% VST. A lot of hype on this POS. Sounds like cloudy turkey turds. Awful, terrible, horrible. Eats CPU for no reason

Magnus' Ambience VST: 22% Stop the presses, this is the REAL DEAL. Free! Except for the typical dumbass Buck Rodgers GUI that the #musicdsp guys stick on everything, Ambience rules. A gate that triggers from the right source! Great sound! Hardware quality! Unfortunately eats CPU like popcorn

Now here we go to Impulse reverbs:

SIR with 2 second reverb 8% VST Free! Somewhat stable, adjustable, kickass

Voxengo Perfect Space 10% VST Somewhat stable, good gui, very adjustable

Voxengo Pristine Space 11% VST Sort of stable, the king of convolution reverbs. Up to 8 impulses at once in serial. Voxengo really took convo to the next level in his apps, and this is the crowning glory. Eats cpu

Voxengo Flux impulse 10% VST sort of stable. Stripped down version of Pristine Space, not really adjustable, one impulse at a time.

Waves IR-1 was not included in the convo tests because of its inability to work with most of the impulse files available on the net