Hey!
I’m running Cubase which works fine at first with a clear template… Once I start packing in the channels full of automation, CPU Intensive 3rd party plugins the performance meter goes red… /= It starts to crackle and it’s impossible to produce. I first thought It could be due to RAM but my specs should cover it right?
Intel Pentium 3.2 GHz with 2 GB RAM, Running Windows XP.
So maybe it could be down to my soundcard? It’s an inbuilt one which came with the computer so I doubt it’s amazingly powerful. I was thinking of getting a new one and was looking online. Here’s the noobiness though; I don’t know what to get! There’s internal soundcards… audio interfaces… and other things like Native Instruments’ Audio 2 DJ or Kontrol 1 for example (Maybe they’re audio interfaces… haha I’m so clueless). I don’t even know if they would do the job. What do you guys think?
My price range would probably be around £150.
Thx 
Nope that will be you CPU thats running out of Guts, Freeze, bounce to audio or do anything that will give you a few more Cycles back to work with.
Oh yeah and a external USB or FIREWIRE card will put more stain on your Cpu as will anything plugged into your PC/MAC.
If you use an inbuilt sound card it is worth installing Asio4all:
Details on Asio:
A soundcard can defo have an effect on CPU performance. Mother boards with built in cards need more cycles to process audio at lower buffer sizes. A dedicated card can help. Also check what your buffer is set to in your vet devices.
Oh okay cool, I guess that makes sense. Yeah I got Asio already.
Cubase says;
Input Latency: 61 ms
Output Latency: 61ms
Sample Rate: 44100 Hz
Asio settings are;
Asio Buffer size: 832 samples
Latency Compensation (In & Out); 32 samples
Got hardware buffer ticked, seems to work better like that.
I wouldn’t have thought my computer’s processor would be slow for cubase though /= Guess I’m wrong :L
Thx for the help [=
When you say Intel Pentium 3.2 GHz, what Pentium is it? Pentium 4, Pentium D, Dual Core etc.
A Pentium 4 or D are old processors now, a Dual Core isn’t too bad.
[quote]Jon_fisher (09/12/2010)[hr]Oh yeah and a external USB or FIREWIRE card will put more stain on your Cpu as will anything plugged into your PC/MAC.[/quote]
I find this surprising. It seems counter-intuative to me.
[quote]phil johnston (09/12/2010)[hr]A soundcard can defo have an effect on CPU performance. Mother boards with built in cards need more cycles to process audio at lower buffer sizes. A dedicated card can help. Also check what your buffer is set to in your vet devices.[/quote]
As i’ve read it Phil, a dedicated card will use more CPU and RAM cycle to run than a built in sound cards, mainly because your Build in is still using power and I’ve always been lead to believe that anything running Via PCI, USB or FIREWIRE “POWERED” drain power from your PSU, taking away the power from your CPU and not letting it run at full speed.
You could maybe save POWER and cycles by disabling your Onboard in the Bios before using a external.
if you programme all your patterns you could always play around with latency and sample buffers, near Zero Latency only really comes into play when you play and instrument.
simply put its the time between when you press a key on your keyboard to when you hear the sound from your monitors/headphones so if your not playing a midi device you can open this up and take some strain off your audio card.
[quote][b]Jon_fisher (10/12/2010)[/bAs i’ve read it Phil, a dedicated card will use more CPU and RAM cycle to run than a built in sound cards, mainly because your Build in is still using power and I’ve always been lead to believe that anything running Via PCI, USB or FIREWIRE “POWERED” drain power from your PSU, taking away the power from your CPU and not letting it run at full speed.
You could maybe save POWER and cycles by disabling your Onboard in the Bios before using a external.[/quote]
No, the power output of your PC power supply should be far higher than you need, otherwise just change your PSU. For example my PC has a 800 Watt PSU, on idle it draw about 80 Watts, and at full load it will maybe max at about 400. It doesn’t get anywhere near that using audio applications.
Using USB and Firewire does require CPU time, more so with USB than Firewire.
I would have thought that any extra CPU cycles lost from using an audio interface would be more than made up for by the audio interface doing the audio processing. I can’t be sure of this without testing though.
As far as I know firewire dosnt use any CPU cycles and usb does.
Also firewire is a constant data stream where USB is a packet system much like the internet.
As far as Power as in volts n stuff Its unlikely that your PSU would have any difficulty supplying small voltages a soundcard requires… my focusrite comes with external power so it isnt an issue.
A purpose made soundcard is always going to give you better results than built in… although the mac built in cards are actually very decent.