Native Instruments Studio Drummer RTAS

[60Strat]

Hey all of you Eleven Rack users....have you guys seen this drum solution?...pretty amazing...check out the videos on YouTube...while I have your attention do any of you know what the minimum processing power might be to actually use this plug-in? I have MacBook that is struggling to handle even the light version of the program....my system is a 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM and the audio cuts out....I am thinking I might need to upgrade to a MacBook Pro....

[60Strat]

so here is the exact message I'm getting: [CPU usage is holding off USB audio. Remove some plug-ins, delete some tracks, or increase the "H/W Buffer size" in the playback engine dialog (-6104)]....I tried increasing the "H/W" which doesn't seem to change anything....I only have the drum track and 2 guitar tracks so far....so deleting tracks does not appear to be an option.....anyone have any ideas?

[Webb]

An upgrade in RAM to 4GB may help. What is your buffer currently set at?

[60Strat]

Webb,

Usually I run 512 but I moved it up to 1024 and I was able to record for 45 minutes before it shut down...does seem like it is a ram issue...if I restart I get more time....

[60Strat]

Here is the YouTube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQNXU...e_gdata_player

[madgt621]

you may want to turn on "error supression", I have it on all the time, and I usually only hear clicks and pops when I'm really maxing out my cpu.

When tracking, I have the buffer usually set to either 64 or 128, 256 if i'm using a lot of VI's. Anything higher is unacceptable to me for tracking. If I can't get those buffer setting working well while tracking, I'll print scratch tracks of the VI's i'm not currently tweaking to audio, and then make the original tracks inactive. I'll then call them back when I need to tweak them.

Once everything is tracked, I then raise my buffer to 1024, as I don't care about latency at that point.

I don't think RAM itself will fix this problem, as it's an RTAS/CPU issue, though it's always good to have as much RAM as possible. With that said, I have 8GB of RAM, and since Studio Drummer uses Kontakt, it will have access to the Kontakt Memory Server, which accesses your RAM outside of PT, but I highly doubt that it will be using anything over 1.5GB. This way, you won't hit the 4GB (really 3GB) limit in PT. Of course, to benefit from KMS, your computer must be on a 64 Bit OS, with 4GB of RAM or more.

[60Strat]

Thanks again for the help...I printed a scratch track and no further cpu problems...

[madgt621]

Glad you got that worked out. As I said, I do it all the time.

This process is made even quicker in other DAWs by doing this "offline" or "faster than real time". Actually, an overwhelming majority of DAWs have this feature. It is known as "Offline Bounce" or more commonly "Freeze Tracks". Though it does not cure RAM issues entirely, it frees up CPU, especially at low buffer settings. Think about it, all you need is enough CPU/RAM to host all your audio (which isn't that much, most of your CPU is eaten up by plugs) and the immediate amount of plugins you're using, in other words the one track you're working on. When you want to move to another, you'd freeze the current track, and then unfreeze the other.

So everyone, please vote for Freeze Tracks on ideascale. It is currently the second most requested feature under 64-bit processing.

Ok, time to step off the soapbox now.