pc tuning tips

[rhythmtech]

all of a sudden my pc is stuttering when im producing tunes with more than 15/20 tracks

this never used to happen. i have a p4 3.6ghz with hyperthreading and a gig of ram running xp.

xp is stripped down and i have my apps on a seperate partition to audio samples.

ive run advanced system optimizer on it and everything seems ok but i still get stutters once my cpu usage goes above 60/70%..

any of you techies got any ideas?

i know i can freeze channels but is there any other optimisation that i can do?

[SlimboyPhatt]

Right the way i see it, there are two options.

1. http://www.musicxp.net. There are a whole list of optimisations for XP on here.

2. Turn up the latency on your sound card. For example turning it up from around 10ms to something like 20 - 25ms will make a huge difference.

Oh, I will add one more suggestion. You could do what i did, and get a 2.4ghz QUAD CORE with 2 GIG of Ram. OMG it flies!!!!!! I cant get it to stutter ;)

[ampassasinbirmingham]

Right the way i see it, there are two options.

1. http://www.musicxp.net. There are a whole list of optimisations for XP on here.

2. Turn up the latency on your sound card. For example turning it up from around 10ms to something like 20 - 25ms will make a huge difference.

Oh, I will add one more suggestion. You could do what i did, and get a 2.4ghz QUAD CORE with 2 GIG of Ram. OMG it flies!!!!!! I cant get it to stutter ;)

have you tested it to the max? what daw are you using, how many audio/instrument channels your run it to. Im only asking because im building a pc now. Moving over from macintosh.

[SlimboyPhatt]

have you tested it to the max? what daw are you using, how many audio/instrument channels your run it to. Im only asking because im building a pc now. Moving over from macintosh.

Well the first thing I did was to see how far i could push it.

Using SX3 i can get over ten instances of Nexus for example, playing CPU intesive pads and leads.

Plus have all my compressors eq's and sidechaing running.

And most importantly, can run rediculously CPU intesive Waves ir1 convolution reverbs, and with all this my cpu gets to 50% at the most ever!!!!!!


But, if you run a DAW that fully supports the QUAD such as sonar 7, that would prob register at half that. Somewhere neer 20 - 25 %.


I truly am astounded by it.

Hers what i paid.

2.4ghx cpu £180
Gigabyte mobo £120 (i went for the best)
OCZ ddr2 2gig dual channel ram £50 (fast as ****)
250 gig sata2 HDD 16mb buffer £47.


All including vat. You will need to buy i PCI-E graphics card if you dont have one, price depending on wether games played or not, £30 - £100.

I can source the parts for you, and these are capable of running mac os x if you can be bothered with the hassle ( I havent got round to it yet)

Hope this helps

[tonyc2002]

all of a sudden my pc is stuttering when im producing tunes with more than 15/20 tracks

this never used to happen. i have a p4 3.6ghz with hyperthreading and a gig of ram running xp.

xp is stripped down and i have my apps on a seperate partition to audio samples.

ive run advanced system optimizer on it and everything seems ok but i still get stutters once my cpu usage goes above 60/70%..

any of you techies got any ideas?

i know i can freeze channels but is there any other optimisation that i can do?

definately sounds like a latency issue to me

[stjohn]

im not sure 1gb ram cuts it these days... maybe new vsts etc are taking up oo much resources!! either way another GB or 2 is cheap and sure to make a difference