Building Overview question

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csavetman
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Building Overview question

Post by csavetman »

Hey everyone-

Hoping someone can help me out on this. Whenever I punch out of recording a large number of simultaneous tracks, say 10-20, there is a several seconds pause- could be 10 sec or more before the building overview process begins in the background processing window.
During that pause, I get the spinning beachball and DP becomes unresponsive- i.e. transport functions don't work, etc
It seems to be most prominent, on longer record passes- say a minute or more. Once the building overview process is completed-which goes fast once it starts, all is good. (except for an occasional cpu spike in the processing meter which doesn't turn off when clicked on). I've found the solution to this is to go to hardware setup window, and just cancel out of it, which resets CPU processing meter.

My question is, is this a function of hard drive speed? Would a faster drive, say an SSD drive alleviate this? Currently using SATA internal 7200 spinner. (Seagate barracuda). Also tried with WD black drive, same results.

I've swapped the drives into a faster computer I just picked up-12 core 3.46GHZ Mac Pro to see if it was processor speed related. Same results.

Anyone know what gives?

thanks,
Carlos
DP 9.5
Mac Pro Dual Quad Core 2.8Ghz
24GB Ram
OS 10.10.5 (Yosemite)
MOTU HD192
magicd
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Re: Building Overview question

Post by magicd »

Check your Background Processing preferences. Make sure DP is not set to do DSP analysis, beat, or tempo analysis.

Yes, a faster hard drive would mean quicker waveform calculations. At this point I do all my work on SSDs. I only use rotational drives for backup.

Dave
csavetman
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Re: Building Overview question

Post by csavetman »

magicd wrote:Check your Background Processing preferences. Make sure DP is not set to do DSP analysis, beat, or tempo analysis.

Yes, a faster hard drive would mean quicker waveform calculations. At this point I do all my work on SSDs. I only use rotational drives for backup.

Dave
Yes I've tried turning off all the background processing prefs- still had the issue. The building of waveform overviews seems to be the sticky spot.
Sounds like it's probably means SSD drives for me then.
Thanks Dave!
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HCMarkus
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Re: Building Overview question

Post by HCMarkus »

magicd wrote:I only use rotational drives for backup.

Dave
This.
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mikehalloran
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Re: Building Overview question

Post by mikehalloran »

When I made the change to SSDs, I was a little bent because certain processes weren't working. It turned out that they were happening so quickly that I didn't know they were already done. Bounce to Disk is the one that sticks out. But, yes, re-drawing wave forms will be much, much (much, much) quicker.

Although the Samsung 850 EVO series is highly recommended, the Crucial MX300 is very good for less. The only performance difference I noticed is that transfer times of huge (250G+) files took longer with the M300. I tested this. Another difference is the 5 yr warranty (850) vs 3 yr (MX300). I buy 2T SSDs these days and have one of each. The 850 PRO is also available and has a 10 yr warranty but no one thinks the extra cost is worth it. The Micron 1100 SSD is the OEM version of the MX300 but warranty service is done through the OEM — sometimes you can get a really good price, though.
DP 11.31; 828mkII FW, micro lite, M4, MTP/AV USB Firmware 2.0.1
2023 Mac Studio M2 8TB, 192GB RAM, OS Sonoma 14.4, USB4 8TB external, M-Audio AIR 192|14, Mackie ProFxv3 6/10/12; 2012 MBPs Catalina, Mojave
IK-NI-Izotope-PSP-Garritan-Antares, LogicPro X, Finale 27.4, Dorico 5.2, Notion 6, Overture 5, TwistedWave, DSP-Q 5, SmartScore64 Pro, Toast 20 Pro
csavetman
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Re: Building Overview question

Post by csavetman »

mikehalloran wrote:When I made the change to SSDs, I was a little bent because certain processes weren't working. It turned out that they were happening so quickly that I didn't know they were already done. Bounce to Disk is the one that sticks out. But, yes, re-drawing wave forms will be much, much (much, much) quicker.

Although the Samsung 850 EVO series is highly recommended, the Crucial MX300 is very good for less. The only performance difference I noticed is that transfer times of huge (250G+) files took longer with the M300. I tested this. Another difference is the 5 yr warranty (850) vs 3 yr (MX300). I buy 2T SSDs these days and have one of each. The 850 PRO is also available and has a 10 yr warranty but no one thinks the extra cost is worth it. The Micron 1100 SSD is the OEM version of the MX300 but warranty service is done through the OEM — sometimes you can get a really good price, though.
Thanks for the info, Mike!

Carlos
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