Tracks Ram or Proccesor

[ramchandra]

I am having problems with being able to play 16 uneffected tracks at a time without system hicups. My system is running at 1.33 ghz and 960 mb of ram there is nothing on it but tracktion, windows, and plug ins. Can anyone help me resovle this awful problem?

[sonikbliss]

well, without knowing what kind of computer you're using and not really being familiar with Tracktion, I would say mess around with your buffer settings if that's an option. Track count is usually a processor intensive task as opposed to RAM.

[T-rex]

Also, one thing that really helps with track count is a fast hard drive, at least 7200 rpm, dedicated to recording. IF you have a slow HD or are recording to the same hard drive your system is running from, it can limit your track count.
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[Phiz]

I'll second that its likely slow harddrive access. Is this on a laptop? Most laptop harddrives run at low RPMs. Defragmenting your drive might help. Reducing your bit depth/sampling frequency to 16/44.1 will certianly help if it currently is at something higher.

[Zoltar]

If you haven't done it, disable Virtual Memory! This is important.

[bourzia]

really?

[Phiz]

I was under the impression that you just needed to set a constant amount of virtual memory, not disable it.

Of course you never want to have to hit virtual memory, but does just having it enabled cause a performance hit?

[Zoltar]

I may be mistaken, but I am under the impression that virtual memory and audio recording programs will cause hickups.

I'm a little confused by why microsoft xp with 1 gig of ram would want virtual memory (it seems to want it). I always disable it, and let it tell me when it's run out of physical memory (sometimes is very ugly ways)

macs are a little kinder, but I don't let them at the hard drives either. everything runs better, as long as you don't push the computer too hard.

edit:

one more thing. it seems if you have Virtual memory enabled, microsoft will use it. all those little freezes when you switch applications, or just now and then....I hate that. That used to be a big cause for blue screens. Anyhow, I hope this helps.

[bourzia]

I'll try it

[ramchandra]

the system is a PC with a sempron 2200 and a SATA 80 gig hard drive running 7200 my interface is a presonus firepod

[Phiz]

That drive is certainly fast enough to pull of 16 defragmented tracks. Maybe you are CPU or bus limited. Trying running perfmon.msc and watching some of the disk performance metrics. (right click in the legend area under the graph, selecte 'add counters...', from the drop down list pick 'physical disk', From the instance list select the drive letter with your audio data on it, from the counters list select "%Idle time", click add -- you should now see a new line on your graph. If it is always at 0% when playing back tracks, then you have a disk problem.)

[ramchandra]

I'm thinking about getting an AMD 64 2800 cpu and another hard drive dedacated to apps I hope that should fix it. Does anyone else have hope?