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 Need more VST power-Buy more RAM-or is it CPU speed?
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yazzofever
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Joined: 21 Jun 2005
Location: Oregon, U.S.A.
PostPosted: Tue Jun 21 2005 15:03    
Need more VST power-Buy more RAM-or is it CPU speed?
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Madtracker is truly amazing.

But I'm running a PC laptop with 1.5mhz processor and 256 RAM, windows XP. The little CPU meter gets maxed out with some of my favorite VST's because they are not very CPU "economical."

So I want to upgrade!

1. Let's say that I can run three VST's with my current config of 256 RAM before my CPU starts freezing. Does that mean that if I buy 1 GB RAM upgrade, I will be able to have four times the power, 12 tracks of a different VST? Is it that simple? Will the CPU meter adjust for my upgrade?

2. Or does my processor come into play. If you want to upgrade using Madtracker, what is more important, processor or RAM?

3. Does anyone know of a VST plugin that helps VSTi's not take so much juice away from the CPU? I know, fantasy, but I thought I would ask.

yazzofever
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Inge
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Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Nieuw Lekkerland @ Holland
PostPosted: Tue Jun 21 2005 17:11    
Re: Need more VST power-Buy more RAM-or is it CPU speed?
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yazzofever wrote:
1. Let's say that I can run three VST's with my current config of 256 RAM before my CPU starts freezing. Does that mean that if I buy 1 GB RAM upgrade, I will be able to have four times the power, 12 tracks of a different VST? Is it that simple? Will the CPU meter adjust for my upgrade?


No

yazzofever wrote:
2. Or does my processor come into play. If you want to upgrade using Madtracker, what is more important, processor or RAM?


CPU first.

yazzofever wrote:
3. Does anyone know of a VST plugin that helps VSTi's not take so much juice away from the CPU? I know, fantasy, but I thought I would ask.


FX Freeze (http://www.fxfreeze.com/).

Hope this helps.

Inge


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Blaster
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Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Netherlands/Germany
PostPosted: Tue Jun 21 2005 20:17    
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Not so sure on the cpu.. what kind is it? If you're running windows xp with only 256mb of ram.. well it's not an ideal situation.


united trackers
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Inge
Man-At-Arms


Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Nieuw Lekkerland @ Holland
PostPosted: Tue Jun 21 2005 23:44    
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yazzofever PM'd me. Here's my reply:

Quote:
1. Can you please explain why, as you said, "cpu first"-isn't RAM very important? i know i can buy more RAM, but upgrading the process or is a little more difficult.


Memory is used to store processed data in. For using softsynths (such as vsti's), this is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck normally is the amount of computations made to actually make the vsti's work. Some nice thoughts (although still a bit vague) on this can be found at http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov03/articles/pcmusician.htm (under the header 'soft synth tests'). Do mind that if your memory is extremely low, then that will cause to be the bottleneck nevertheless. Anyway: in a balanced system (so with no obvious bottleneck), the cpu speed will be the first limit that you encounter while using vsti's.

Quote:
2. I checked out fxfreeze, correct me if i'm wrong but the program records, or freezes, the vst output, instead of playing it live. then you play the recording on a track. right? can't i do basically the same thing with the sampler function on MT-converting my vst output to a wav file-then playing it on a track.


Yes, you can, but it's more tedious. FXfreeze records the current state of a vst, and bounces it to wave. You can easily re-record this vst when you changed a parameter, which is quite irritating to do with manually recording this. Furthermore, all files can automatically be deleted afterwards, whereas with the integrated sampler you'll need to perform all those actions yourself.

Ah. And keep in mind that I only state *an* opinion, and not *the* opinion. Others might have (very valid and true) counterarguments to my explanations.

Best,
Inge


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BeatMax
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Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Wed Jun 22 2005 03:46    
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There are alot of plugins out there that are pretty low on cpu consumption. The main problem of high cpu consumption is the amount of used oscillators and the coding of them. Heavy computation will get you cpu spikes, especially if you have alot of oscs, say 6 and additionally to that a high polyphony of say, 8 voices. Some very good and free low cpu vstis are Synth1 (Ichiro Toda), Subduer (Majken), EVM plugins.

I managed to create a track using 15 instances of Subduer Beta3. That time I used a 1Ghz! Pentium III. Smile

BMX


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