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Old 08-06-2012, 01:21 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: USA
Posts: 19,510
Default Re: Help with Playback Engine Settings

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bezo View Post
Based on the set up in my signature, can anyone help me get the best performance from my CPU?

H/W Buffer Size
Host Processors
CPU Usage
Plug In Stream Buffer
Cache

Currently I'm trying:
Buffer - 512
Processors - Tried both 1 & 2
CPU Usage - 90-99 w/1 processor - 50-85 w/2 processors
Plug In Buffer - Level 2
Cache - Large?

I run BFD for drums, a very CPU hungry drum VI if you're not familiar. I'm getting loud static burst that I believe is happening because of inferior speed/memory. I know I don't have the latest, fastest CPU, but I'm having more trouble now than I did with my G4 with half the RAM. I'd get an occasional buffer error on the G4. Not nearly the frequency I'm having now.

Any help would be appreciated.
I would start at 1 CPU 99% and see how things go. its normal practice to leave 1 CPU for Pro Tools and then leave the rest for RTAS processing. But there is no magic answer, its workloads dependent. You have ignore errors checked? -- Which may be why you are getting these noise bursts and not an error.

You may be underpowered for what you want to do so need to be willing to disable unused tracks, print VI heavy tracks to audio tracks etc., etc.

A significant factor here will be your disk drives. What drives make/model/specs are your systems drive, and your audio/session drive and where are your sample libraries for BFD stored? For external drives how are they connected to the Mac and for all devices on any Firewire bus what is their chaining sequence. Have you tried other chaining sequences?

Which of the standard recommended systems optimizations of the Mac have you done? These can make a huge difference. Please list exactly which ones you have done.

Darryl
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