playback with too much DX going on

whr wrote on 8/13/2003, 2:31 PM

I have an 850 mghz PC with 512ram. This obviously will be ugraded ASAP. In the meantime does anyone have any tips or tricks for getting audio to play back without skipping as you add Direct X plugins? I know I can render tracks after the FX are added and then remix and add more if I want to, but it would be nice to be able to go a little further with the FX the first go around.

Comments

MJhig wrote on 8/13/2003, 2:42 PM

You should be able to at least get what I do.

AMD Athlon, 550 MHz (2.75 x 200)
BCM QS750 (3 ISA, 4 PCI, 1 AGP, 3 Motherboard
AMD-750 Irongate Chipset
384 MB (SDRAM)

Win 98 SE
VV 3.0c

Here's the specs. on a test I ran;

In every track, SF Track Compressor and Track EQ.

Main Bus, RGC High Frequency Stimulator, SF Wave Hammer

Bus A, SF Multi-band Dynamics, SF Wave Hammer, SF Graphic EQ.

FX Bus 1, SF Multi-tap Delay

FX Bus 2, SF Acoustic Mirror.

21 tracks (one stereo) with no stuttering of any kind while moving around the GUI opening menus etc. using Audiophile 2496 (.27 drivers).

17 tracks with the CrapBlaster.

*Edit* Playback Buffer set to .400 Seconds.

This is with Hardware Acceleration at Full and Virtual Memory at Windows Default. Read Ahead = none (the only tweak that made an improvement).

Also Easy CD Creator, MS directX helper, MS Multimedia task app., Task Scheduler, Win Help, Ptsnoop, MIDI-Yoke and Task Monitor running in the background. Norton A/V 2002 Pro auto-protect disabled.

MJ

bgc wrote on 8/13/2003, 4:39 PM

some DX fx each more CPU cycles depending on the preset. The Timeworks ReverbX is an example. That may not be helpful for you. Rendering really is a good solid option. You can also try maxing out the playback buffer size. On my older systems maxing that to 1second would give me enough headroom to squeeze out some more cycles for high intensity sections of directx plugs.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 8/14/2003, 2:57 AM

Main thing is to buss reverb wherever possible, and to avoid multiple different reverbs (for musical reasons !) unless a specific special effect is required.

geoff