Sudden BFD problem

[darrenriley]

Recently, when using BFD, Pro Tools takes ages to play or record. Often I'll get the message telling me to try increaing my hardware buffer, which I do. This sometimes helps, sometimes it doesn't. It seems to do this only with BFD. I've tried other sessions with various synths and sample collections (Sampletank 2 XL, Arturia CS-80V etc) and the sessions work everytime. I've even created a session which uses Sampletank and works fine, then added BFD only to see the same problem.

Occasionaly the problem gets less severe, usually if I give it twenty minutes or so. I've recently installed BFD XFL and the latest update but this was happening before then. I'm using Pro Tools 6.9 by the way. I have a 3.0ghz P4 and 1gb of RAM (possible reason, but why did this not happen before?)

Anybody got any ideas?

[RTPro]

BFD is very RAM hungrey. I would have a min of 2gb

[darrenriley]

That's my plan. What I don't understand is how everything was fine until about a week ago, maybe two. The only change I made before then was to add the Waves bundle to my plug-ins. I know each Waves plug-in is extremely heavy on the CPU but I even get the problem with a fresh session. Turn BFD off, it's fine; turn it on and it's terrible again!

I've adjusted the buffer size to 512 and the DAE is set to the default 2. That's improved things a bit. I guess I'll just have to wait until I can afford 2gb of RAM, which is the maximum my motherboard can support. Why can't technology slow down long enough for me to catch up?

[Ross H]

Go to the KVRAUDIO.com forumn and find the FXPansion support area. You will find this is the very best support for BFD for all hosts and platforms.

I am not sure about the BFD Lite version (I have full version) but I would make sure you have 16bit mode selected vs 24bit (in BFD gui, not PT). This will reduce strain on your PC. In addition there are various settings that can be worked through to optimise performance.

A seperate and dedicated hard drive for BFD is a must, in addition to loads of ram.

Ross

[darrenriley]

Thhe 16bit mode seems to help somewhat. I wasn't sure if I'd have to run PT in 16bit as well; I don't

[Ross H]

I usually track at 24/48 in PT with 16bit mode in BFD, however I just recently read that the samples are 44.1 and that it is beneficial to track sessions at 24/44.1 for best results with BFD.

Can anyone comment on this. I don't have a great deal of knowledge as to whether there is any fact to my understanding of the differant sample rates?

Ross