MacBook RAM/Performance Issues

[timstar78]

Hi...I am hoping for some recommendations/help.

I have a late 2007 MacBook
Processor 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB RAM

I run Pro Tool 7.4.2 with a Digi 002 Rack and have a 500 GB Fire Wire drive.

A couple of my latest recordings have featured a lot of tracks and plug ins. The problem is that I still need to add tracks and I am starting to get the usual error messages regarding CPU power and buffer size. In my latest song, I am running plug ins such as EZ Drummer, Amplitube and TRacks 3 and it really seems to be slowing my system down. My Activity Monitor showed that 1.8 GB of my RAM was being used and about 85% of my CPU power.

If I upgrade my RAM to 4 GB, will this help my situation? Anything else I can do to improve the performance of my computer? Or, is my computer just not going to be fast enough to keep up with all this activity?

Thanks, in advance...

[albee1952]

I have been told by two Pro Tools instructors, that 4 gig of RAM is the happy zone so it couldn't hurt. From what I have read, the T Racks stuff seems to take a lot of 'juice" and many of the amp sims do as well, so if you are using more than one of each, I would save the Amplitube settings as a preset and then duplicate the playlist and process using AudioSuite for your Amplitube tracks. When you get to this point, I assume you bump up the buffer to 1024?

[DigiTechSupt]

If you want a second opinion, getting more RAM is a good idea, but it's unlikely to improve performance of plug-ins all that much. Albee's suggestion about using A/S to print the plug-in is spot on.

[timstar78]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I have been told by two Pro Tools instructors, that 4 gig of RAM is the happy zone so it couldn't hurt. From what I have read, the T Racks stuff seems to take a lot of 'juice" and many of the amp sims do as well, so if you are using more than one of each, I would save the Amplitube settings as a preset and then duplicate the playlist and process using AudioSuite for your Amplitube tracks. When you get to this point, I assume you bump up the buffer to 1024?

Thank you for the replies. I've since upgraded to 4 GB RAM and that has seemed to help.

Could you elaborate on the AudioSuite idea? Currently, I have four separate guitar tracks, each of which have the Amplitube plug-in. I am not sure I am following what you are suggesting?

[state of the arb]

I'm having a similar problem except I don't think I should be having one. I just recently purchased an Mbox2 Mini and I get the CPU & HW buffer errors often. Problem is my CPU usage in activity monitor doesn't even show 50%. I only have about 5 tracks (3 instrument & 2 audio) with two EQ's and one compressor. Surely this can't be right? It feels to me that my Pentium 4 running Cubase SX 3 could handle more and that simply can't be true. It will be the disappointment of a lifetime :)

Any ideas?

[flommer]

Originally Posted by timstar78

Thank you for the replies. I've since upgraded to 4 GB RAM and that has seemed to help.

Could you elaborate on the AudioSuite idea? Currently, I have four separate guitar tracks, each of which have the Amplitube plug-in. I am not sure I am following what you are suggesting?

What they are saying is to render the plugin's effect to audio so you can eliminate the plugin. You can bounce to another track or use the audiosuite versions of the plugins to render "offline"

[flommer]

Originally Posted by state of the arb

I'm having a similar problem except I don't think I should be having one. I just recently purchased an Mbox2 Mini and I get the CPU & HW buffer errors often. Problem is my CPU usage in activity monitor doesn't even show 50%. I only have about 5 tracks (3 instrument & 2 audio) with two EQ's and one compressor. Surely this can't be right? It feels to me that my Pentium 4 running Cubase SX 3 could handle more and that simply can't be true. It will be the disappointment of a lifetime :)

Any ideas?

Wrong forum.. Try the windoze LE forum. (or are you currently using a Mac?).You're also going to have to post more info like PT version, OS, etc...

My guess is that your p4 is behind the curve compared to core2 duo etc, kind of like g4 to intel Mac. Hopefully the peecee guys can help you optimize..

[state of the arb]

I'm using a MacBook Pro 17". Sorry, only updated my details after the post.

I think I found the problem though. I assigned both processors to RTAS so there was nothing left for the Mac. I changed to only one processor now and it looks better, will check it properly tonight when I get home.

[Obsidian Dragon]

Also make sure you are recording to an external firewire drive (not the internal system drive and definitely not a USB drive).

[color me bad]

^^how do you set up the changes to make the recordings go on the firewire drive?