Very strange 002/LE problem...

[rc86mike]

I am currently running a 002 control interface on a new G5 iMac with 512mb ram, 1.8ghz and 160gb. Everything has run perfect for the last couple of weeks but tonight for some reason it started to act up. The current track I've been working on has gotten quite large. About 15 tracks, 20 plug-ins, 7 of the tracks also have bus sends inserted. My CPU usage was 75%.

Well I plugged in a microphone and it's signal started to cut out/drop out almost like a studder. I was troubled by this so I changed pre-amps. Same thing. I changed mics, same problem. I ran a line from my keyboard into one of the Line Ins, same thing, changed that line in to another, yet still the same thing. So randomly I tried playing the track and LE started running very slow. So I increased my CPU usage to 85%. Problem solved. No more cut outs, although LE is still running slower.

Have I pretty much bogged down my system? And even if I did why would my signals be cutting out like that? Is the problem in my preamps or my CPU usage? Any help and/or similar problems people have run into would be much appreciated. Thank you.

[RussUK]

This shouldn't happen, are you getting the 'you are running out of power, tryn increasing buffer size' (paraphrased) warning message?

From what you are saying it doesn't soundlike you should be, but that depends on your plugins and their resource needs.

A couple of work arounds:
1. Turn off your plugins until it is time to mix
2. Bounce the completed song so far to a stereo track (via a pair of stereo busses) and then turn off the remaining tracks until you need to mix. Therefore you will have a monitor mix to work with until final mix.

I know it helps to have reverbs etc. up during tracking, but it does use up resources so try and avoid it.

[rc86mike]

Yes, I did get the message saying I'm running out of CPU power and to increase my setting under Playback Engine.

For the time being would it be horrible to set my CPU usage to 95%? I suppose I'm pushing the iMac pretty hard *shrugs*