Frustrated - HW Buffer size / Out of CPU power

[ThisNameBetterNotBeTaken]

Hey, I just bought the digi001 and upgraded my computer around last week. I have a Pentium III 800eb (socket 370) on an asus cusl2 Motherboard, 256 MB RAM, system disk=maxtor 27 gig 7200 RPM, audio disk=maxtor 30 gig 7200 RPM ATA100, sound blaster live, asus v3800 32mb vid. card, Aopen PCI fast ethernet (for home LAN).. anyway, knowing it was a requirement to have win98 SE, I decided to install it on just win98 and it worked.. but only to a point. After about 8-10 audio tracks + multiple plug-ins on tracks, I got errors saying to increase my H/W buffer size. I also got the occasional out of cpu message.. I have it set to cpu usage 65% but it still shouldn't take that much should it? so.. I figured it was just because I wasn't running the second edition of 98, so I bought it today. I started fresh with a format and installed it. I was primed for some serious effecient use of protools, and I was severely bummed out when the same errors popped up. Shouldn't I be able to record more tracks then that with this system? Can any body help? I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

S.J. Kardash

[ThisNameBetterNotBeTaken]

oops.. I accidentally posted this twice.. sorry 'bout that.

[Mike Glenn]

You have too much getting in the way of PTLE. You need a seperate hardware profile just for DIGI. Let me know if you need help on that. There are also numerous posts on the sb live card and hassles with it. Also ata66 or ata100 can cause problems. And the ethernet card is a no-no. The seperate profile will help sort out the conflits.

Mike

[ThisNameBetterNotBeTaken]

Thanks for the help Mike, I tried it... I disabled the network card and sound blaster live in a profile.. I tried it out, and it didn't make any difference. I counted the plugins I was using and in total on 10 tracks, I was using 22 plugins. Is this why I ran out of CPU power? When I took all the plugins out, my cpu meter went almost all the way down. Should plugins really take that much cpu power? What would happen if I needed eq on all tracks plus compression/limiter on some plus some with delay and some with reverd? Shouldn't protools be able to handle that? If not, I am very disapointed. I am willing to try anything here to get my problem rectified. Anyone? Oh and another thing that is strange is, when I drag the transport around, it temporarily erases the contents of the mix/edit windows. It refreshes when I set it down somewhere though.. just wondering if this is normal behavior? Thanks...

S.J. Kardash

[RDOG]

Bussing effects solved that problem for me it just like using a regular mixinng board. You would not have a seperate effect for every channel. I hope this helps you out.

RDOG

[Rock_Artist]

Pro Tools LE isn't intended for Win98 First Edition.
You got to some point because Win98 is Win98 (SE or FE).
But Digi enabled to use some exclusive SE features regarding
buffering and threads and such things I have no clue.
Those H/W buffer settings was added to enable low latency by using feature
that exclusive for 98SE. Before working hard on the config try to check out
how it runs on SE.

[ThisNameBetterNotBeTaken]

Yeah RDOG, I thought of doing that for the effects, but that only applies to the reverbs and delays.. not compression/limiters/other..
but thanks, I will give it a shot and see what kind of resources it frees.. and
Rock_Artist, SE is installed, I think I said that in the first post, but its still not workin' right. oh well.. I'll keep trying stuff I guess...

[ThisNameBetterNotBeTaken]

heh, yeah it turns out d-verb takes tons of cpu power.. by using aux sends / returns to one or two d-verb plugins, I freed lots of cpu power. I think the problem is solved. Thanks everyone.

S.J. Kardash

[OndHan]

What's happened with your Sblive?
Still using it?