Slowdowns on some parts of song and PC freezing on stop.

Spy · Post by **Spy** » Fri May 02, 2003 4:47 am

Hi fellow musicians..
I need to hear from somebody who has experience in working with SFP and Cubase SX.

I'm working on a mix of song consisting of about 10 tracks... part of them are midi, and part are audio.

It's more of a melodic metal/rock song... so i have guitars here: one accoustic guitar and two electric ones. Accouastic guitar has only chorus effect in Cubase SX and a delay effect in SFP (Pulsar 2), electric guitars are having the same things: Amplitube, 2 compressors and equalizer - all in Cubase SX (nothing in SFP).

In the work phase I have drums and bass as audio + synth pad (from STS sampler) and 2 synths (VSTI)... Pad has no effects, synths have delay effects in SFP.

Now, when i play the song, everything goes fine till both electric guitars end playing and the part with accoustic guitar begins, the sound slows down a lot and pulling-crackling begins for about 10-15 sec, then everything goes back to normal again (till the part when electric guitars end playing the chorus and the part with accoustic guitar begins - the same problem appears again). I thought it could be VST overusage - but no, VST meter shows i'm using only about 50-60% of "chip" and the most strange thing is that the slow down + crackles begin when the part where all tracks play is over, and there's only drums/bass + pad + acc guitar plays.

I also noticed that my synth pad which's playing almost 4 note accords loses some notes...

One more thing - when i stop playing the song, PC hangs for few seconds and then unfreezes, so it is very uncomfortable for me to work

I thought maybe it's my DSP power that is used a lot, but no, it shows i'm using about 40-50% only.....

So, thanks for reading such a long post, maybe you know a solution for me to fix all these freezing and slowdowns when i play the song? I have a Pentium IV 2 Ghz and 768 RAM and i think my resources are enough to play this song...

Thanks one more time.
Spy

P.S. i forgot to mention that i have set cubase sx on high priority and SFP on low.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spy on 2003-05-02 06:42 ]</font>

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sun May 04, 2003 8:53 am

I don;t use SX, so can't help with any specifics, but to help the first SX expert who happens along, maybe you can fill in a few more details:

- what operating system ?
- does this happen ONLY with this song, but all other songs are OK ?
- have you just tweaked / modified / installed / deleted something, or changed some settings ?
- if you delete one particular track as an experiment, does that help ? Which track ?

With a little more info maybe a light will go off in someone's head to help you.

Spy · Post by **Spy** » Sun May 04, 2003 12:37 pm

Well, i guess i was just using too much VST power as when i removed compressors from electric guitars, the problem disappeared...

Herr Voigt · Post by **Herr Voigt** » Sun May 04, 2003 4:50 pm

You're right. You can put your sfp up to 95 % or so, but be careful with VST (I use Cubase 5.1). If the VST meter shows 60 or 70 % you can be sure that you get problems, cos Cubase shows only its own loading, not the loading of the whole system.

Spy · Post by **Spy** » Sun May 04, 2003 5:36 pm

Yes, i experienced this....
compressors and reverbs eat a lot of resources, so it's better to mixdown these tracks to have the song playing without hassles

MarcelG · Post by **MarcelG** » Mon May 05, 2003 6:11 am

Sounds like a denormalisation problem to me.

Did you try inserting a 'normalizer' plugin before the 'problematic' (compressor) plugin?

I had the same sort of problems. If you watch the performance meter, do you see 'cpu spikes'?

Succes!

MG

Spy · Post by **Spy** » Mon May 05, 2003 6:34 am

Marcel: I don't have this normalizer plugin, where can i get it?

I don't see CPU spikes, it goes higher on some parts of the song and lower on another parts...

And the strange thing is that when the part where almost all tracks are playing at the same time (and it should be using the most CPU power) the VST meter shows the lower usage than when I have only drums, bass, synth and acc guitar playing... Can it be that this acc guitar set (chorus and stereo expander + native sx EQ) uses more CPU than 2 electric guitar tracks (with Amplitube effects & native sx EQ's) and 2 tracks with VSTi synthesizers? I don't think so...

By the way: you can listen to the song (or what's made so far) here: http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=17&0

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spy on 2003-05-05 07:44 ]</font>

Spy · Post by **Spy** » Mon May 05, 2003 6:46 am

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.p ... &subItem=6

is it this normalize plugin you were talking about?