Playback Overload!?!?!?!

[art bain]

I'm on a G4, 1.25 ghz single, with 2 gig RAM. I used to have the processor spikes consistently, but I seem to have stumbled onto some settings which help.

Buffers @ 512
Medium work priority

AND . . . Background Processing set for "Wait until DSP analysis is needed". Actually, I do believe that this setting helped the most.

As far as the alert is concerned, I turned it off months ago! It was showing up frequently and causing the transport to stop. Yet, with it off, I never notice any glitches or dropouts anymore, sometimes with as many as 30+ tracks of audio.

Hope this helps.

AB

[stayingetdown]

Cool. Thanks for the reply. I'm going to try the wait until DSP is needed setting. Yeah, I've had the overload alert off since DP4 or something and while I don't get alerts, I do get playback drop out which is really a big pain. Thanks again!

[Timeline]

I just read this thread

I would suggest you move up to a MBP with a 7200 rpm drive. It's really not smart at all pushing audio through a 1 ghz machine anymore and current versions of all DAW applications are expecting users to be much better equipped. It's even less bright to be pissed about a hardware shortcoming which is entirely your fault and has nothing to do with DP then lash out here. Your shortness with MLC was about as rude I have seen here.

[kassonica]

Indeed I concur with timeline Don't bite the hand that feeds you especially with knowledge because you end up stupid.

Your problem seems strange though, I'm running a PB 1.25 with a gig of ram and can easily record 12 tracks at once at 48/24 and have been able to playback 30-35 tracks with 20 or more plugins (albeit by then the system is running slow)

So I'd look into your configuration first.

And ask nicely around here for the minds on this forum are simply incredible and very humble about it.

[stayingetdown]

I understand that my system is out of date. I also realize that current versions of DAWs require more out of a computer (Kassonica and Timline-you are totally right and by the way, thanks for the extra info and ideas about hard drives). I would like to upgrade, it's just that money is pretty tight on my end. All I wanted to find out was if I had my bases covered or if I was missing something.
I apologize if I sounded upset about the first reply to my post. "Anybody else sick of hearing this? No offense, but I must field 4 of these a month" seems like the kind of reply that would make a timid newbie not want to post here anymore. I just felt like my question was being poo-pooed. If MLC was really worried about not offending me maybe he/she could've written something different in response to my reply clarifying their original meaning. Everyone else that responded seemed to have helpful hints and I've responded with only courtesy and thanks.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The fact is I answered your question - two minutes after you posted! I was the ONLY one who answered your question until a half hour later when a few others started to offer help. I preceded my wry comment by asking you NOT TO take offenses. You chose to. That is your choice.

I was sincerely trying to help. That suggestion has helped many overcome the problem you described - including myself when a nice guy from Australia named Geoff told us how to fix it. In fact, I just thanked him for that comment yesterday (or was it this morning?) after about 2 years of trying to remember who had helped so many with his short post long ago.

BTW, I am not worried about offending anyone. I am who I am. If you stick around here (and I hope you do) you'll find I am usually direct and to the point. I don't coddle so get over it and lets move on.

MM

ps- It would appear that you need a faster computer and/or a bigger/faster hard drive to take advantage of the features in DP.

[ktzstanza]

I just signed up on this forum and this was actually the first thread I read. I can see stayin's frustration with that initial answer. MLC, while you did preface your comment as to not offend, you also need to remember that not everyone is well aware of "forum life." While I have been to enough forums to know that you were actually trying to help, I also know that saying something like that to someone with 10 posts is essentially like saying something like that to a stranger off the street. Now if you were to say that you are ok with that as well, well man....i would have to just write it off as arrogance, but I reckon you wouldnt waste your time in here if you weren't genuinely trying to help.

Anyhow, this thread is getting seriously derailed from the orginal topic (and i didnt help). Lets get back on topic!
Stayin, I would also say you are in dire need of an upgrade man (sorry, i know that is never the answer you want to hear, but hopefully you got some life out of that machine).
Another thing I would recommend (and this is a long shot...but worth a try), is perhaps moving any plugins that may be loading in upon startup out of the plugins folder and try to do this with a "bare-bones" DP system. Perhaps something you recently installed is cause things to get weird behind the scenes.

Good luck!

[stayingetdown]

Thanks for the mediation ktzstanza.
I do need a new computer. In the meanwhile, I will try moving my plugs so they don't load upon opening DP. That's something I haven't thought of. Thanks for the help! If anyone else has any other suggestions, I would love to give them a go! If I can avoid having to upgrade the system right now, that would be awesome. Thanks in advance and again, thanks for all the help you all have given!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I just signed up on this forum and this was actually the first thread I read. I can see stayin's frustration with that initial answer. MLC, while you did preface your comment as to not offend, you also need to remember that not everyone is well aware of "forum life."...

Thanks for taking the time to post and for joining us. I'll tell ya, I've been online since at least 1988 and I have pretty much seen it all. You get a little jaded after nearly 30 years online. Sorry. Life in the fast lane - heat in the kitchen - and all that. The bottom line in a situation like that is (for me - at any rate): Did I get my question answered? In 99% of the forums I visit, you DON'T get an answer. So if you do, and it has a little pepper in it, maybe the guy on the other end has things he is struggling with and waiting for answers. But he still takes the time to answer you. Damn, I'd consider myself lucky and say thanks.

Look around, you'll see some serious off topic stuff 'round here, even by some of us 'long timers.' Just stay away from politics and religion and you should be alright. We don't bite (except maybe for Monkey Man, but he's down under and sleeps when we don't).

Hang, dude!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

...If anyone else has any other suggestions, I would love to give them a go!...

If there is one thing you can do quickly and cheaply, it would be to get as much RAM as possible. It might help.

[kassonica]

I just signed up on this forum and this was actually the first thread I read. I can see stayin's frustration with that initial answer. MLC, while you did preface your comment as to not offend, you also need to remember that not everyone is well aware of "forum life."...

Thanks for taking the time to post and for joining us. I'll tell ya, I've been online since at least 1988 and I have pretty much seen it all. You get a little jaded after nearly 30 years online. Sorry. Life in the fast lane - heat in the kitchen - and all that. The bottom line in a situation like that is (for me - at any rate): Did I get my question answered? In 99% of the forums I visit, you DON'T get an answer. So if you do, and it has a little pepper in it, maybe the guy on the other end has things he is struggling with and waiting for answers. But he still takes the time to answer you. Damn, I'd consider myself lucky and say thanks.

Look around, you'll see some serious off topic stuff 'round here, even by some of us 'long timers.' Just stay away from politics and religion and you should be alright. We don't bite (except maybe for Monkey Man, but he's down under and sleeps when we don't).

Hang, dude!

Wow since 1988 you've been online, thats impressive

I can't imagine what the net was like back then but i've been online in australia since 1996 and the difference and speed is simply astounding.

I put i search for Hendrix in hotbot i believe in 96 and got maybe 3-10 thousand hits now it's in the millions.

I'm seriously impressed.

[Shooshie]

Some of us are kinda old. MLC and I are among the elder crowd here. By old, I mean full of all kinds of ••••, but not yet completely set in our ways. I tend to be more the coddling type until someone offends me. MLC speaks his mind, and is usually right more often than wrong. But he doesn't take merde from just any frenchman. He's earned the right to be a little salty, or as he said, "some pepper in it."

I can't remember when I got on the internet. It was probably around 1989-1990. I do remember when the first browser came out: Mosaic in about 1992. Netscape was born in about 1993, and pretty soon people were using those "browsers" more than all the other internet gear we had back then -- Gopher, Homer, Eudora, Newswatcher, Fetch, WAIS, InterSLIP, PDIAL, NOAA Weather, and lots of others. I finally succumbed to the WWW in about 1997. Prior to that, I stayed mainly in Newswatcher, Eudora, Fetch, Homer, and Gopher. Plus I started every day with NOAA Weather! The Internet was so cool back then! Now, we think of our browser as the gateway to the entire Net, but it was a latecomer to the game. Let's say that it was the ultimate evolution of net tools. There had been a browser-like app that ran in Macintosh's Hypercard, long before Mosaic or Netscape existed, and it did pretty much what they do, using hyperlinks and mail archives and all sorts of cool things. The internet browser seems like the ultimate because it IS. The evolution focused on browsers from that point on, and most people now think the WWW and the Internet are the same thing! (They're not! WWW is a client protocol that runs on the internet.)

I love the history of the internet. It's a defining moment in human history -- the moment something was born that changes the world. Humans became meta-connected at that point, which had never happened before. Carl Malamud, an aging internet engineer, wrote its early history in "Exploring The Internet -- a technical travelogue" back in the early 1990's. In it, he chronicles the odyssey that was the laying of T3 cables worldwide, and wiring campuses, governments, and businesses for the internet. In some cases, people just took shovels, dug the trenches, and laid the cable themselves, rather than waiting for their governments to do it for them. But eventually the net stretched around the world. His book is fascinating. It has a picture of the Internet Toaster -- an appliance (literally a toaster) run remotely from the internet. Back then we were easily amazed at anything that extended our reach -- either our ability to see, or our ability to manipulate things -- in real time over long distances. Google Earth was the ultimate goal; we all wanted that. I'm actually NOT amazed it got here so soon, what with it being the killer app of all time. Well... next to the browser.

Ok... I'm on a huge tangent roll tonight. I've got to stop.

Shooshie

[newrigel]

Hi,
Lately I have been experiencing playback overload and thus CPU overload when I try to record and I was wondering if anyone here could tell me why. I have a Powerbook G4 with 1gHz Processor and 1 gig of RAM (both of which are running fine in the system profiler). I am using a MOTU 828 to record into DP. I'm using hardware for monitoring. I have my DP buffer size set to 1024, with the work priority set to Medium (which I'm told is better for single processor machines). I am using only 1 stereo bus, the work quanta is set to 500 ms, and the max work load is at 90%. In the project I am working on, I have 13 mono tracks only seven of which are enabled. Of those seven I am trying to record on two of them at once. The funny thing is that I recorded 8 tracks of drums and one scratch track all at once for this project without any problems at all. After that I did two tracks of bass and also had no problems. Now I am trying to do two tracks of guitars and the thing keeps overloading on the playback bar in the audio performance window which in turn spikes the CPU. What's even more crazy is that it seems like it REALLY likes to overload when the guitarist turns on his delay pedal. I'm about to throw my computer at the wall. Please help!!! Thanks!

On a new project recording the FIRST 8-9 tracks really didnt tax the processor since the files were being recorded... But as soon as you start playing those 8 tracks and then recording 2 tracks (and doing punch ins or retakes) is where the problems start... Those drives are 5400 RPM (if my memory serves me right) and not really that fast for doing lots of tracking because if the drive gets fragmented then your in for trouble. After you track your drums 8 tracks I would defrag the drive and then try to freeze any tracks that are using any type of process (plugs) and then try to track your stereo (or 2 mono) files. Try not to run any plugs until it's time to actually produce the mix. This stuff is really hit and miss with buffer settings, work quota, buss assignments, audio drivers etc. so what you can do is just try to get the drive defragmented and back to health and try to turn off any channels (tracks) that aren't doing anything so the processor can go to work @ reading and writing to disk...
ALSO, max out the buffer settings! You asking that G4 to do quite a bit so the less processes you have running the better...

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I can't remember when I got on the internet. It was probably around 1989-1990. I do remember when the first browser came out:
Shooshie

Browser? I was on an Apple IIe accessing BBS's (text only, modem with a telephone handset resting on a giant box with a speaker). CompuServe (also all text) and the PAN (Perf. Artist Network) were cutting edge. Of course, a 20MB (That's with an M) HD was the size of a show box and cost about $300 bucks.

The bad old days!

[Timeline]

I have to say the guys on this board are absolutely thee greatest wankers I have ever known evidenced by the outpouring of info for a distressed newbee that has not even explained to us how or when he bought into or got a copy of DP in the first place for a 1ghz laptop.

I'm happy being one of the oldest geezers amongst ya'll. Merry xmax hehe...