Tweaks to increase performance? (A preferences question).

[clintmartin]

I have a project with 6 or 7 audio tracks. These were recorded in Sonar...so they are wav files. I was playing around with recording a guitar with S-Gear and 3 other plugins and the dsp was getting pretty high. It blinked red a few times.
Is there a specific setting I should be setting differently than the default Mixbus settings?
I have a quad core i7, but I believe Mixbus is set to use one thread or core? Does that sound right? I'm not at my daw PC at the moment, but I was sitting here thinking about it so thought I would ask if you guys remember a tweak or two you made which helped. Thanks.

[clintmartin]

No one has any tweaks to increase performance beyond the default configurations? Maybe I should change the name of the thread?

[Ben@Harrison]

A quad-core i7 should play 100+ tracks with "many" plugins. I think you should visit the "Windows installation" section of the Mixbus manual. Windows requires a few tweaks to have decent audio performance.

By default, Mixbus is configured to use all of your CPU cores for audio processing, except one. ( avoiding one core helps your desktop remain responsive, even if Mixbus is playing a lot of tracks ). You can change that setting in the Preferences/Misc tab.

Best,
-Ben

[clintmartin]

Thanks Ben. I'll check that. My PC was built by ADK Pro Audio, so I'm sure it's configured correctly. I wonder if I set Mixbus to run on less cores. Something to look for. Thanks!

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Everything seems to be setup correctly. I was recording at 128 buffers, maybe that was too low. I increase the buffers to 256 and the dsp dropped to around 15%.

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What are xruns?

[Overmann]

Thanks Ben. I'll check that. My PC was built by ADK Pro Audio, so I'm sure it's configured correctly. I wonder if I set Mixbus to run on less cores. Something to look for. Thanks!

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"*fewer"
- Stannis Baratheon (I couldn't help myself)

[clintmartin]

Helpful.

[Overmann]

Helpful.

Lighten up, guy! It was just a lighthearted jape!
Make sure you have priority and affinity settings set to the highest possible in your task manager. Also, if you are on a laptop; adjusting the power-settings to maximum (advanced powersettings) will give you a boost in performance for CPU-heavy tasks if your CPU is not already set to 100%.

Setting to "maximum performance" in the control panel's "system performance"-panel will also give you more resources for the DAW. There are many tweaks that you can do to imporve oerall performance in Windows that will help Mixbus.

[x42]

xruns are glitches.

A computer must process audio in regular intervals: Read N samples from the soundcard, process the audio, send it back out.
If processing takes longer than the time corresponding to the given number of audio-samples, the input buffer will overflow and the output buffer underrun and there's a glitch in the audio (crackles, pops, ...).

If a system cannot reliably meet the process deadline, you'll get x-runs, where "X" is a placeholder for "audio/midi buffer over/under".

You can right click on the status-bar (next to DSP load,...) and show "x-run counter". Shift+click to reset it.
The DSP-load indicator shows max ( time-required-to-process-an-audio-block / duration-of-the-audio-block ). It displays the worst-case maximum (not average) over the last 10 seconds (or so). You're good as long as it's below 100%.

Increasing the buffersize (Audio/Midi setup) usually helps, but there is no straight-foward recipe to tweak a generic PC system for realtime-safety (realtime safe means that a system can reliably meet the process deadline). It's also not unheard of that there's a sweet-spot for a given system and buffersizes/sample-rates (esp for USB).

Disabling some power-saving options (e.g C1E halt states in the BIOS, set the system to "performance", etc) can help, using a different USB/PCI slot for the soundcard (IRQ sharing), .. configuring the software to only use one core (results in consistent load, rather than variable load on multiple CPUs -> some CPUs enter sleep/powersafe modes).

This is where Apple has an edge: one knows exactly what hardware is in the box, how it's wired up and how it behaves. It's also how some PC vendors make a living e.g. carillonac1.com, the ADK Pro Audio that you mentioned or the Harrison x-range hardware: hand-pick and properly assemble components suitable for realtime audio.
Some further info: http://manual.ardour.org/setting-up-your...tal-audio/


PS. an x-run can also occur for non-realtime operations (eg. adding a plugin, add tracks,...). This is normal. Analogy: Insert a distortion between a guitar and an amp while playing: the audio will glitch while you re-plug the cables.

[clintmartin]

Helpful.

Lighten up, guy! It was just a lighthearted jape!
Make sure you have priority and affinity settings set to the highest possible in your task manager. Also, if you are on a laptop; adjusting the power-settings to maximum (advanced powersettings) will give you a boost in performance for CPU-heavy tasks if your CPU is not already set to 100%.

Setting to "maximum performance" in the control panel's "system performance"-panel will also give you more resources for the DAW. There are many tweaks that you can do to imporve oerall performance in Windows that will help Mixbus.

It was a light hearted response (My daughter is an English teacher. She would have laughed at your jape!). I appreciate the ideas you guys have written about. I'll look into this tonight and double check that ADK has things setup properly. I only noticed this when trying to record a guitar with the buffer set at 128.