CPU overloads while recording

Don S · Post by **Don S** » Wed Jun 21, 2006 12:50 pm

I'm using Dp with the RME FIREFACE800. The backup mix going directly out of the FF via SPDIF is unaffected. I'm thinking that spotlight or some kind of internal thing is going on.

Harry · Post by **Harry** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 12:37 am

Quit the Dashboard with that little script " DashOff", that will help!
Look at www.versiontracker.com for that.

dosuna11 · Post by **dosuna11** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:36 am

How do you set rid of Spotlight?

Don S · Post by **Don S** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:08 am

Thanks Harry,

Not sure if it will help, but worth a try! For spotlight, I set the mac drive and the external to private. Hopefully it will eliminate any possible indexing going on. Again, I'm not sure of the problem, these are just shots in the dark.

tomeaton · Post by **tomeaton** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:28 pm

I've been having the same processing spikes. The only thing I changed was upgrading to DP5.01. 4.61 was very stable.

-tom

patcook · Post by **patcook** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:34 pm

CPU spikes while recording have been a nightmare for me since upgrading to DP5, particularly while punching in. I switched back to DP 4.6 and the problem disappeared.

G5 Dual 2.5/4.5 gigs ram/mkII with 424 PCIx card

exact · Post by **exact** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 7:11 am

I'm new to this board, does MOTU monitor and might they now treat this as a problem to solve with a future upgrade? It seems like a quorum here, that it's something in 5 not something in each of our set-ups . . . In any event, I'm going back to 4.6 for tracking at least . . .

Don S · Post by **Don S** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 3:26 pm

I did get spikes in 4.6! I was hoping it would go away with 5. I don't remember getting them in 4.5. Maybe I'll go back to that version. In the meantime, I'll give cubase SE a try. All I need is a rock solid program to turn my Powerbook into a mutlitrack recorder. So far that has proven to be difficult.

kelldammit · Post by **kelldammit** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 5:48 pm

i've done 3 hour conference presentations recordings without a hitch, as well as playback and live bounces of more than 16 channels of 48k/24 bit...again, without a hitch, with other vi's running in 4.61. worst case, that SHOULD work fine as a fallback. i did have some weirdness going to 10.4.6, but it seemed to settle down on its own, and was quite well behaved...
i haven't had the chance to try anything quite so ambitious in 5.01, but i have done smaller-scale realtime bounces etc...for mixdowns, without issue afaik, and i regularly playback over 30 tracks with fx, etc without issue.
just out of curiousity, you've tried all the work priority settings? i think i had an interface that preferred "high"...but i think you'd know that you were having those kind of issues pretty quickly...crackles in audio and such.
what are your studio settings?? try the full-blown setting...
also, make sure your bluetooth and airport (if applicable) are off, and network cable unplugged. pci network cards used to wreak havoc on pc recording stuff....
either way, it's just not right. i've used external usb, external fw, and the internal stock drive for this stuff...something's gotta be up with the interface or driver...mebbe even a weird cable?
something else to try...in dp, close any unnecessary windows, especially ones with metering, as that alone can add a lot of cpu overhead...it might at least keep the spikes from being fatal...

kell

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 6:43 pm

exact wrote:I'm new to this board, does MOTU monitor and might they now treat this as a problem to solve with a future upgrade? It seems like a quorum here, that it's something in 5 not something in each of our set-ups . . . In any event, I'm going back to 4.6 for tracking at least . . .

MOTU listens. They even respond--slowly. Sometimes you'll see the things we've been bitching about here addressed in the next version of MOTU. Once in a while a MOTU employee will drop in and say to someone in particular "that feature was for YOU." Over the past 20-odd years, I've been told that many times, as I always sent lists of improvements to them even in the days of snail-mail. One version in late 1997 incorporated my entire list! Well, all but one of them--the ability to have all MIDI tracks color coded in the same edit window -- which didn't appear until years later, but they did get around to it.

So yeah, MOTU listens and they do their best to fix things. It's a small company, and they just don't move as fast as companies with lots of employees, yet they still stay up with the others, often scooping them with new features. MOTU products always had the feel of something designed BY musicians FOR musicians, and that's what has kept a lot of us sticking around, even if we have to wait a few updates to get what we want.

Now, as for the spiking. I don't think you're going to see a lot of optimization for PPC Macs. The G-series CPU is nearing its end. Within probably one more year, there will be no more G4 or G5 Macs on the market except at eBay. It would not make sense for MOTU to make major design changes for these computers any longer. I think that instead we will see MOTU products coming out of the starting gates like a bat out of Hades when the Intel PowerMacs arrive. We're going to see some serious number crunching going on when that happens, and I've had to restrain myself from buying a Quad G5--though it speaks to me in dreams, calling, calling, [SLAP] ...oh, scuse me... yes.... I was saying I am saving my next purchase for the 2nd wave of Intel Macs. 3rd wave if I can make it that far. That's when we'll see this CPU spiking finally go away. Until then, I can do just fine. Also, I can give you some great advice that will absolutely stop your CPU meter from spiking: close the damn thing.

Hey, it works.

Shooshie

Don S · Post by **Don S** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 6:58 am

kelldammit wrote:just out of curiousity, you've tried all the work priority settings? i think i had an interface that preferred "high"...but i think you'd know that you were having those kind of issues pretty quickly...crackles in audio and such.
what are your studio settings?? try the full-blown setting...
also, make sure your bluetooth and airport (if applicable) are off, and network cable unplugged. pci network cards used to wreak havoc on pc recording stuff....

kell

I've tried all work priority settings. But, not sure about the airport. I'll check on that one.

kelldammit · Post by **kelldammit** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:31 am

confirmed the issue...finally saw it on this system.
what i see is playback/record go along as normal...everything's fine, then suddenly, the cpu meter jumps to the red, but the "cpu clip" light never comes on. sofar as i can tell, at a glance, the recorded audio does not seem to be affected. this happened with an instance of altiverb, and a few stereo audio channels, using sends to the altiverb (on an aux, with output routed to another channel to record).

what is going on?!? cpu usage was fairly low (30%?), and from out of nowhere...blam! then back as if nothing had ever happened.

kell