Toontrack plugin eating CPU usage - anything I can do?

Denalihighway

Hi lads.
Just wondering if you guys who are familiar with computer specs in relation to plugin usage etc might be able to give me some pointers?

I'm using a a laptop with the specs below:

Dell Latitude D620
Intel Core 2 CPU
T5600 @ 1.83 GHz
988MHz, 1.99 GB RAM

Not ideal for making music but its been grand so far. I'm using a Tascam MK122 and bundled Cubase LE5. I use mostly the on board effects etc and the odd soft synths and edirol orchestra. everything's been peachy so far.

with these fired up my CPU usage would be peaking round 32%

as soon as a fire up Toontrack Beatstation ( link ) it goes haywire. CPU usage up around 80% and ASIO overload. I have the latest drivers installed and followed the instructions to maximise performance when installing Cubase.

I'm far from an expert so there could be all many of things I'm missing to be honest.

- do you think this would be a normal reaction to a machine of this nature dealing with this workload or is there something amiss?

- should i look into getting more processing power? (a new machine would be great but won't happen in the short term)

Air_Bass

Your Pc sounds like it's fine for the job of recording (definitely a few rungs up the ladder from what I'm using). I've never used Beatstation but it looks like it's gonna be very graphics intensive. Without a decent dedicated graphics-card your machine will most likely be taking a bit of a hammering.
Some plugins just eat CPU regardless, I've used OhmForce Fromage (http://www.ohmforce.com/ViewProduct.do?p=Frohmage), which makes cool & crazy sounds but the thing just kills my machine.

Denalihighway

yes its a pretty program alright

quick google search seems to suggest i can't upgrade an integrated graphics card?(which I assume this is)

are you aware of any way you can augment the graphics card performance?

Air_Bass

Apologies, I'm not too familiar with Dell model names etc. didn't realise this was a laptop :-( I'm was going on the incorrect assumption that it was a Desktop PC and that you could just throw in a better graphics card. Your options are fairly limited in this case. Definitely switch off all programs running in the background that you don't need - esp. antivirus software. A real last resort is to maybe try turning down the graphics properties to much lower levels (i.e. colour quality and screen resolution etc.) but this will make everything look pants! Might just let you use beatstation though without maxing out the machine

i57dwun4yb1pt8

i had this problem on a desktop with certain graphics intense programs- and plugins - usually using OPEN GL

the probelm is CPU speed step / or cpu throttling .
this is usually a setting in the BIOS before bootup



you need to turn it off.

, so the cpu is always on .

if it isnt this then its likely a software issue .
open gl - you should be able to turn off opengl in the program or turn off super graphics ?

woodsdenis

Denalihighway wrote: »

Hi lads.
Just wondering if you guys who are familiar with computer specs in relation to plugin usage etc might be able to give me some pointers?

I'm using a a laptop with the specs below:

Dell Latitude D620
Intel Core 2 CPU
T5600 @ 1.83 GHz
988MHz, 1.99 GB RAM

Not ideal for making music but its been grand so far. I'm using a Tascam MK122 and bundled Cubase LE5. I use mostly the on board effects etc and the odd soft synths and edirol orchestra. everything's been peachy so far.

with these fired up my CPU usage would be peaking round 32%

as soon as a fire up Toontrack Beatstation ( link ) it goes haywire. CPU usage up around 80% and ASIO overload. I have the latest drivers installed and followed the instructions to maximise performance when installing Cubase.

I'm far from an expert so there could be all many of things I'm missing to be honest.

- do you think this would be a normal reaction to a machine of this nature dealing with this workload or is there something amiss?

- should i look into getting more processing power? (a new machine would be great but won't happen in the short term)

Beatstation is a CPU hog, really mad when you consider that its just a beat box.

Turn off all the plugins on individual drums and then re save this as your opening template. You should see a drastic reduction in CPU usage. Then just add fx per drum as required rather then having them all on.

Denalihighway

thanks for the replies. got em late last night and investigated cpu throttling etc.

turned it off in Setup but it didn't seem to do much at all dissappointingly. so it seems to be this greedy Beatstation. From what Denis says that makes sense.

@DaDumTish - I had a quick look in Beatstation to try and amend settings as per your suggestion but the interface is very simple and I couldn't find those options or anything similar. I'll delve deeper tonight though.

would those settings options normally be in the software interface or somewhere 'deeper' where its installed or something?

@woodsdenis - when you refer to 'individual drums' are you referring the Beatstation pad kit?

So each time you open a certain genre etc, you would have a dry sound until you select a patch? (if that's the right word)

Maybe that's not what you mean? If it is what you mean, I'm thinking, that would be great if it sorted the CPU usage issue but it would be bad for me since I would have to know exactly what drum sound I was looking for, rather than being able to trawl through sounds and find the right sound?

I could be misunderstanding you completely...

I've put up a thread in the Beatstation forums as well - from what I gather other users are having similar problems but no threads I've seen have any concrete solutions for windows users. I'll post anything interesting back here.

woodsdenis

If you look at the default kit that is loaded each pad has an insert plugin inserted (compressor,delay etc ) aswell as plugins on the master outs. You don't need all the pad insert plugins active if you are not using those pads, so disable them. I think the insert fx are made by Sonalkis so a kit with 10 plus of these will eat up CPU.

Use this to trim CPU usage on any kits you load. Either way this plugin is a CPU hog. :eek:

Denalihighway

set the default kit to the bare minimum amount of pads with all insert and master plugins disabled.

can't really notice much difference which is disappointing. not looking good for me and Beatstation, not with this machine anyways. will see what the Beatstation forums come up with and search elsewhere. - although funny enough the only relevant search result i get now is this thread

thanks anyway - if you think of anything else let me know!

be a shame if i couldn't use it. but i suppose there must be others like it out there that don't stick their nose in the trough like this one

woodsdenis

Denalihighway wrote: »

set the default kit to the bare minimum amount of pads with all insert and master plugins disabled.

can't really notice much difference which is disappointing. not looking good for me and Beatstation, not with this machine anyways. will see what the Beatstation forums come up with and search elsewhere. - although funny enough the only relevant search result i get now is this thread

thanks anyway - if you think of anything else let me know!

be a shame if i couldn't use it. but i suppose there must be others like it out there that don't stick their nose in the trough like this one

Must be another issue if still the same. I am on a Mac so can't comment on your system.

drumdrum

DenaliHighway, I use Toontracks Superior Drummer 2.0 product.

While I dont use beatstation, its website suggests to me thats its their dance version of the SD2.0 line.

Maybe I'm wrong...


Anyways, with me SD2.0 eats up CPU so I find it best to bounce the tracks once the playing data is in. For example, if I program a drum beat that I'm happy with, I then bounce out the audio file from the program and just work with the stems. It's like working with real drums as you have a separate track for OHs, Room, hi-hats, kick, snare top, snare bottom and toms (and other tracks if you want)
I then process these tracks like I would a real drumkit,

doing this saves me tons of CPU usage, so maybe theres an option with beatstation to do the same thing...

Look for option to bounce, or export the tracks out....

Anyways hope this helps!