Brand new MacBook Pro and still getting CPU overloads???

RenaissanceMan · Post by **RenaissanceMan** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:39 pm

Howdy folks-

I'm totally bummed at this point. I was previously working on an older Titanium PowerBook G4 1.0ghz machine for my sessions. I've been doing some work with 24 bit/88.2 sessions for a new record. Once I got to 12 audio tracks or so I would start to have playback problems in DP 5.13. I would get regular CPU overload errors, which I attributed to a lack of processing power in that machine.

So, I just bought a 2.4ghz MacBook Pro with 2 gigs of RAM to remedy this, but I'm still getting these messages in the tunes that have a larger number of audio tracks. I can't believe that this machine isn't powerful enough to deal... Do any of you have this problem, and if so, how to remedy? Is this simply just a consequence of dealing with 88.2khz files because of their size? I should also add that when these messages appear, audio drops in and out during playback. So, turning off the warnings still result in affected audio quality and 'completeness'...

Thanks in advance,

rodger1811 · Post by **rodger1811** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:51 pm

A few questions;

(1) Why 88.2? I know I'm going to start a fire storm but 8/10 studios track at the target rate of 44.1/24 bit. I can tell you from my experience that provided you don't push your converters beyond their sweet spot you will be very happy. I shoot for average levels -12 dbfs and -10 dbfs. Trust me, you'll have plenty of headroom to do what you need and room for transients so you don't clip.

(2) What are your buffer settings?

(3) What kind of plugs are you inserting on your various tracks? Maybe you could benefit from bussing.

(4) Have you considered freezing some of the tracks?

Take a look at these areas and you'll likely find some additional horsepower to do more!

Lookinnn · Post by **Lookinnn** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:59 pm

what about your hard drive performance ?
Laptops usually have slow hard drives with small caches ..
It may affect cpu usage .. i'm not sure .. but its worth checking into
maybe add some external firewire drive.
does the mac pro have external sata connections ?

RenaissanceMan · Post by **RenaissanceMan** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:01 pm

rodger1811 wrote:A few questions;

(1) Why 88.2? I know I'm going to start a fire storm but 8/10 studios track at the target rate of 44.1/24 bit. I can tell you from my experience that provided you don't push your converters beyond their sweet spot you will be very happy. I shoot for average levels -12 dbfs and -10 dbfs. Trust me, you'll have plenty of headroom to do what you need and room for transients so you don't clip.

(2) What are your buffer settings?

(3) What kind of plugs are you inserting on your various tracks? Maybe you could benefit from bussing.

(4) Have you considered freezing some of the tracks?

Take a look at these areas and you'll likely find some additional horsepower to do more!

thanks for the reply!

i'm going 88.2 because a couple of 'audiophilic engineers' told me that sound quality would be marginally better if i started from there instead of 44.1. i realize it's going to be down-converted anyways for the cd, but these folks insist that what you end up with will still benefit from the higher resolution. at this point, if all it takes to eliminate my frustration is switch to 44.1, then i'm willing to do it. i was just taking some advice from some folks i trusted...

buffer size: 1024
host buffer multiplier: 1
work priority: high

no plug ins are being used

don't have any tracks i can freeze that aren't being used at this point. this is a pretty bare bones approach...

thanks again-

RenaissanceMan · Post by **RenaissanceMan** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:02 pm

Lookinnn wrote:what about your hard drive performance ?
Laptops usually have slow hard drives with small caches ..
It may affect cpu usage .. i'm not sure .. but its worth checking into
maybe add some external firewire drive.
does the mac pro have external sata connections ?

i'm using external drives for all audio... specifically rocstor 7200 rpm drives.

Tonio · Post by **Tonio** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:15 pm

If you inform you OS, RAM, and other detailed info you might get some answers from experienced folks.

T

Dwetmaster · Post by **Dwetmaster** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:02 pm

and how are these drives connected. You will benefit from an esata card...

kassonica · Post by **kassonica** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:20 pm

What converters are you using?

Try and give as much info around here when you post.

mgmediaworks · Post by **mgmediaworks** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:49 pm

wow.. about time someone else with the same problem I had. i had a dam PC which I built for $500.. ran cubase sx with tons of tracks and tons of waves compressors.. andRverb plugs--.. ide drives 7200.. then i came back to mac.. bought a intel pro tower. 2.66GHZ with 3 gigs of ram..3 extra drives.. .. then I was bummed.. --peaks and halts all the time.. ###hello###? my pc kicked ass..... asus P4 2.0 ghz with 2 gigs of ram..Buffer setting my A** .. I ran 256 buffer setting on my pc.. never a problem.. so why now with a Mac Pro.. $2000.00 do I need to raise buffer settting... oh by the way.. the xtra memory was from :crucial: the best memory can buy..and i even bougt a Raptor 10,000 RMP drive. and still.. problems..... finally left and bought Logic . no problem so far.. I'd love to usd DP. since ive been a user since the days of 2.4.... but could not get it to work. why should I have to change the buffer settings all the time....is that not why i bought this so called power house..and let me not go into the issue i have now that my firewire ports got messed up.. bought it january 2007.. .. but enough about that.. I figured maybe DP6 would fix my issue..but you know.. I bought the 5 Update.. $200.00 never even used it once.. now 195.00 for the 6 update.. HMMMMM....
once in a while Ill dabble with DP..

twistedtom · Post by **twistedtom** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:06 am

MGM have you updated 5 to 5.13 and updated you OS?

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:41 am

For MBP's, the same rules still apply for best performance. Some have already been mentioned:

1. eSATA host card -- takes advantage of the faster data bus-- MUCH faster than firewire

2. do not use the internal drive for anything other than for running DP and OSX during production. Do not stream audio from the internal HD.

3. 7200 rpm external hard drives or faster for audio and DP project files (not the same as running the DP app from the internal drive)

4. An external hardware interface will "mux" for hi-res audio (above 48k). This means that the outputs, for example, on a 2408 interface are halved from 24 to 12 outputs because of required resources. That's the limit unless a second interface is employed... somehow.

5. 2GB RAM are a good start. For serious hi-res production, one should consider 4GB since all 32-bit apps can *each* access that much. Currently, OSX, all audio, and DP are competing for the same 2GB of memory. That makes Virtual Memory work harder than it might work otherwise.

6. Temporarily disable non-essential features *during production* such as Widgets, custom desktop images, and other features that can gratuitously use RAM and CPU. Close any unnecessary windows when not in use. Widgets alone will constantly update themselves to rewrite its plists, especially the weather widget.

7. Airport and other features that "poll" the machine-- like screen savers, automatic update checks, speech, and other time-governed automated should be disabled until needed. Set to activate "manually".

stephentayler · Post by **stephentayler** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:48 am

I suspect that Firewire is causing the hold up...... as I assume your interface and drive are sharing the buss and therefore the speed is reduced to 400....... I also recommend an eSATA card

kind regards

Stephen

aizo · Post by **aizo** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 2:27 am

damn I have a regular macbook and I'm running a crapload of VI's and instances of ozone and vintage warmer. Although I'm using 44.1. I still have some projects with maybe 40 or more tracks running. I need to get into getting an external drive. you guys are scaring me with all this running different actions on seperate drives talk.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:18 am

Well, I experience fewer crashes than most people when I'm working. I'm not sure exactly why that is the case, but I think my hard-drive arrangement is part of it. When I'm running DP, there are at least 5 hard drives active. I try to keep them on separate busses as much as possible. I have a Firewire PCIe card in addition to my MacPro's host Firewire, plus I use a Firewire 800 drive, too, which may or may not be on the same bus as the other Firewire stuff. I've got several internal SATA drives as well, and those are my first-line drives. The lesser VI's reside on the externals, and I choose the fastest drives for the larger of my VIs, or the ones I'll use more instruments from.

I suppose there comes a point when too many drives can cause data jams at the CPU, but I'm running DP with 4 internal SATA drives, plus a couple of Firewire 400 and a Firewire 800, and I haven't reached that point of diminishing returns. (I have a whole rack of Firewire drives that I use for backups, but they're turned off most of the time)

Just try to make it such that your drives are not having to read and write at the same time, and minimize the number of VI's a single drive has to read at the same time. For instance, I can install my jazz library and my several classical piano libraries on the same drive. It's not likely that I'll use any two of those together.

Is that making more sense? On the other hand, I've done a lot of projects in the past on a single-drive computer with and external for backup.

Shooshie

RenaissanceMan · Post by **RenaissanceMan** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:49 am

kassonica wrote:What converters are you using?

Try and give as much info around here when you post.

sure, no problem.

system: macbook pro 2.4ghz dual core intel machine, 2 gb ram, running os x version 10.5.4

converters: using an m-audio firewire 410 with latest drivers, etc.

drives: as mentioned earlier, using rocstor 7200 rpm drives connected to firewire port via firewire cable. yes, i am using the same port for both the interface and the audio drive.

any other info you guys need? still running dp 5.13 as mentioned earlier. thanks for all the replies so far. currently reading through them and taking notes...