Performance optimization of DP 4.61 on a Powerbook

[xluve]

Hi there,

I'm new to using mac for music and to DP. I switched from static Pc-Nuendo just because now I'm moving a lot.
Well, I'm really disappointed about the DP performance on my Powerbook and I hope there's something I miss or I wrong

My configuration:
DP 4.61
Powerbook Aluminium G4 1.5 Ghz
Mac OSX 10.4.6
1.5 GB RAM
Only Internal audio card (scratches projects)
AAS Longe Lizard Electric Piano 3 + NI Battery 2
external firewire Hard disk

With this configuration, buffer set to 512 (because of live performance) and multiplier 1, I can play maximum 3-4 notes of the Lounge Lizard and 3-4 notes of Battery 2 simultaneously with 1-2 stereo audio tracks playing. Switching to bypass the sole MW limiter (applied to an audio track) while playing causes system non-response for about a minute, even if MIDI is NOT playing (audio reproduction continue correctly)
Hope is a problem of my computer, and DP can work on a pb in a different way.

Anyone have a Powerbook similar can tell me what kind of performance shold I expect from my system?

Maybe there are topics I don't understand clearly for improved performance.
1- Setting the buffer multiplier
2- why when i go in hardware settings, even if I don't change anything, closing the window causes DP reload all the song and VI and patches? Is it normal?
3- There are system optimizations in Tiger I must do? (shutting down dashboard- is it possible?, configuring something...)

Thanx to all for every detail you can tell me

marco

[emulatorloo]

An article from Electronic Musician by a dp user and powerbook user has just what you are looking for - on optimizing OS X for DAW work

Tracking the Big Cats
By Jim Bates

http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_trackin ... index.html

<snip>

I started with my own system, which is a Titanium PowerBook G4/667 MHz, with 512 MB of RAM. I had been getting periodic CPU spikes, audio dropouts, and warning messages when running even moderately-sized projects. (Incidentally, those included projects that ran fine in OS 9.) The optimization procedures described here have boosted my DAW's performance considerably. Large projects that typically took a minute and a half to load now take 30 seconds. Whereas 15 tracks used to spike my CPU and cause occasional error messages, I can now run more than 50 tracks of 24-bit, 96 kHz audio with the CPU running a bit more than 50 percent.

<snip>

[emulatorloo]

P.S.

Dash Off

http://www.puissancemac.ch/dashoff/index.html

[xluve]

Sounds really really good!

I'm going to follow instructions and try...
What version of OSX do you have?
Is Panther a little bit lighter than Tiger or not?

thanx

marco

[emulatorloo]

Is Panther a little bit lighter than Tiger or not?

thanx

marco

I haven't run a lot of tests, but to me they seem the same (if you turn the dashboard off)