that's it! i'm g'g'g'going home!

Smeagle · Post by **Smeagle** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 7:41 am

You know what it's like.... you get paid for a job so you go to the music shop and buy a few toys... well on this occasion I bought BFD (drum sample library) and MSI.

I asked the nice man "will this be ok on the CPU?" ... nice man laughs and says "you're running a dual G5 man...you'll be ok"

After my minor embarrassment I bought the two and skipped off home only to find that MSI stutters like a 13 year-old trying to buy alcohol. "p.p.p.please sir ...can i have some st.st.sttt Stella?"

So I bought 3GB of Ram and an external fire wire drive (800mbps) to get me passed this issue.
I put the two libraries on two different partitions on the drive and now instead of stuttering...it CRASHES!

Any suggestions (with random metaphors)?

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 9:58 am

It seems that a lot of people have trouble with this piece of software if they have other stuff that requires iLok keys on their PC already.

buddhabelly · Post by **buddhabelly** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 12:52 pm

Number one is running from 2 partitions on the same drive will give you less performance.

Second, how many devices do you have on the firewire bus?

Third, IIRC, only 2GB of ram may be addressed by any given app. Not to say that extra ram won't help system wide though.

Smeagle · Post by **Smeagle** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 3:20 am

Cheers guys.

Buddhabelly
1 - ok i'll take out the partitions
2 - 2 drives at the moment but one drive is in the 400mbps and the other one is in the 800mbps. does that mean they're on the same bus???

3 - IIRC?

You're right it wasn't ram (although i did manage to load all of BFD into ram to save HD spins during playback)

After my origional post I looked at the activity monitor and the CPU performance is being very odd.

when I run the both instruments the CPU maxes out at about 90% and it starts stuttering. But on another CPU meter it's reading about 50% idle.

Is this because I••™m using a Dual G5 and it's only running on one CPU ?

Is there any way I can optimise MSI (other than polyphony)?

Is there some way for assigning CPU's to specific software like logic or MSI?

Also....yes I am running 2 iLock keys. 1 for logic and another for MSI...how can I optimise this? will it help?

help. I••™ve just got a session next weekend!

Smeagle · Post by **Smeagle** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 3:57 am

just if anyone has the same problem... i've just found something called "Menu Meters" a free download that gives you constant CPU usage in your menu...

it looke pretty useful what ever app you are running

http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/me ... index.html

ive used this to confirm that both CPU's are running at around 50 - 60% when the stuttering occurs.

buddhabelly · Post by **buddhabelly** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 12:55 pm

Smeagle wrote:Cheers guys.

Buddhabelly
1 - ok i'll take out the partitions
2 - 2 drives at the moment but one drive is in the 400mbps and the other one is in the 800mbps. does that mean they're on the same bus???

3 - IIRC?

1. Good.
2. Too many devices on your bus, especially if your using one for streaming/recording. Both FW400 and FW800 are on a shared bus. Either put in another SATA drive for audio and use one of the FW drives for backup. Or you could get another FW PCI card to add FW busses.
3. If I Remember Correctly.

What interface are you using? I'm not troubleshooting specifically for the plugs that you're using, because I don't have them. I'm just trying to help streamline you system in general.

Menu Meters-Keep in mind that any additional app you run in the background takes up CPU as well. Sometimes minute, sometimes could be a hog. Just FYI.

springuy · Post by **springuy** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 3:28 am

Smeagle wrote:Cheers guys.

Is there any way I can optimise MSI (other than polyphony)?

Is there some way for assigning CPU's to specific software like logic or MSI?

Also....yes I am running 2 iLock keys. 1 for logic and another for MSI...how can I optimise this? will it help?
!

You can "optimise by choosing smaller conv reverbs...and setting the sends wisely...

In Logic, quite difficult I'm afraid...

The XSKey is NOT an ilock...but what crashes exactly, how?
DO you have a crashlog , if so, send it to motu...
or an error message that could help us help you

?

bushman · Post by **bushman** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 2:02 am

I am running dual 2.5 G5 on DP 4.6 and have not had any CPU issues. I also have 2 iloks (one for MSI and one for Mach 5). I recently did a small project with MSI, Stylus RMX and Mach 5 all running at the same time without any real problems with stuttering or CPU maxing out.

Another way to have your CPU monitoring at all times is to open up the activity monitor. There is an option there to have a CPu monitor window up at all times that will show usage on each of your seperate processors.

meeloo · Post by **meeloo** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:09 pm

bushman wrote:Another way to have your CPU monitoring at all times is to open up the activity monitor. There is an option there to have a CPu monitor window up at all times that will show usage on each of your seperate processors.

Beware, the Activity Monitor seems to eat quite a lot of CPU by itself only running in the background (as you can see from the process list window).

There are some tools that show CPU usage in the menu bar or in the dock that eat much less CPU... VersionTracker and Google will be able to help you find that

qo · Post by qo » Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:24 pm

The main contributor to CPU usage is your disk read/write buffer size. What's it set at? Try a larger buffer. The tradeoff is latency, but that's just the way it goes.