Please walk me through this, someone ...

Weka wrote on 11/24/2002, 6:43 PM
I'd like to ask this again, at risk of repeating myself and sounding dumb, as I need to have it sorted out.

The implications of 'virtual mastering' with CDA 5.0 have belatedly sunk-in. In theory I can have, say, a 14 track CD of mixed but un-mastered tracks sitting there with their associated plugs in chains waiting to spring into life when I hit play. The advantages of this to the fine-tuning of a project are totally obvious.

However, will I not be always limited by my CPU processing power (whatever that should be) to the extent that renders this process un-useful or only partially so as the odds of running out of grunt by track 13 are very high indeed. Does bypassing the chain free-up cycles or not or could the chains be made to kick-in only when required to do so. Bypassing kinda defeats the idea, no?
Sorry if this is old stuff but hey, I am too!
Thanks
Weka
P.S. Love CDA5

Comments

Geoff_Wood wrote on 11/25/2002, 6:12 PM
What do you mean by "running out of grunt by track 13" ?

Either your PC has the grunt to play the stream without problem, or it hasn't. It isn't a cumulative thing. Writing to CD is another matter, where many PCs do not have the grunt to do processing-heavy plugins on the fly, and pre-rendering is necessary.

FWIW, My Celeron 1G1 plays the tracklist OK with PSP Vintage Warmer on each track, but my Celeron 533 stutters. Of course the C533 is fine with 'less hungry' plugins, SRC, etc.

What is really great is being able to jump to any point on the timeline to compare apparent levels and EQ, thoughout the CD

geoff
Weka wrote on 11/25/2002, 6:45 PM
Thanks Geoff. It was really a question of philosophy and the 14 track CD was by way of an analogy.

To date I would have called-up a chainer template consisting of a high pass filter, a couple of C1s pre-set at (roughly) 100 Hz and 300 Hz respectively, Ozone with the exciter, widener and spectrum analyser activated only and an L1. All or some of these chained processes would be applied depending on the failings of the mix at hand.

My point is that I will have to change my culture in order to run this lot on each track of (for example) a 14 track CD. Would I therefore not be choosing what I used for processing purposes based on the ability of the computer to play the sum-total of plugs, not necessarily what was best for the overall project. And if so why bother? Don't get me wrong, I love the idea!
Thanks
Weka
Chienworks wrote on 11/25/2002, 6:52 PM
Weka, i'll echo Geoff's sentiment; i'm not sure what you mean by running out of steam after a while. Are you adding successively more effects/filters to the timeline as you go? Do later songs on the CD need more processing than earlier songs? If you have an effect you need to apply to one song, you don't have to apply it to all of them. If you have an effect that you need to apply to the entire CD, this doesn't take any more processing power than applying it to just one song. (Well, not entirely. If you chose one specific different effect necessary for each track, but then applied all of them to all the tracks, then the processing needs would be cummulative. But, if you had a specific effect for each track then you probably wouldn't be applying all those effects to every track.)

If you're worried about your computer not being able to keep up with all the processing involved because it's older and slower, you can always prerender to a .wav file first (doesn't matter if this takes days) then burn from this .wav file instead.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 11/26/2002, 2:34 PM
Weka asked
" Would I therefore not be choosing what I used for processing purposes based on the ability of the computer to play the sum-total of plugs, not necessarily what was best for the overall project."

No. You stick in whatever plugs you want. If your computer does have enough steam to preview the track in realtime you upgrade the CPU, which is probably overdue for an injection of viagra anyway.

As I mentioned elsewhere, my Celeron 533 stuttered with PSP VintageWarmer (but it was just the Demo which may have been a factor - it worked fine with Waves L2 and an EQ), but my Celeron 1G1 didn't, and that is about only half the current mass-market CPU clock speed. It still rendered and recorded the CD just fine on the 533.

geoff