I prefer working in RB mostly as it's more like the DAWs I'm used to but have had a few problems recently with "sound dropout" and stuttering on playback especially after putting FX on mixer screen.
I notice that most times the CPU usage reading seems very high. The first reading shown is the actual RealBand CPU loading and the second reading shows 100% a lot of the time even when playing back. I use a dual core processor (Intel TM2Duo E7500 @2.93Ghz with 8 Megabytes of RAM and have Windows 7 64 bit). The C: drive is 1Tb with 2 X 500Gb partitions which are both about half full. I run BIAB and RB directly from the PG drive (F:) with no interaction with C: drive. Audio interface is Focusrite 18i20 and ASIO settings appear correct in BB & RB.

I understand that handling realtrack .wavs is quite CPU intensive but would have thought that my system could still cope adequately with BB and RB without looking like it's on overload most of the time.

Any ideas please? What do other forum members CPU readings show?

What audio resolution is your speaker set to? (For example: 24 bit, 48,000 Hz.)

Also: What plugins do you have loaded and how many tracks are you working with? Does each track have its own plugins?

Hi Noel96,

Audio resolution set to 16bit, 44.1 Resampler quality "Good" (not overly high quality but most of the finished songs would finish up on CDs)

I'm just using the PG FX at the moment....but my FX list also has Sony Express FX and others that RB picked
up from other VSTs like Antares Autotune, lots of Waves FX which I haven't used yet, Lexicon PSP42, Ozone 4
and Amplitube.

Each track has access to all same above effects. Even though I'm not using other effects than PG ones would this put pressure on CPU usage? Can I restrict how many FX each track has access to?

Thanks for your help with this

Are there any other non-music programs running...there shouldn't be.

Are you using a wireless network card...if so it will keep polling and use lots of CPU...disable when you are running RB.

Is your antivirus scanning each tracks, file, etc from the external PG drive....exclude the external PG drive from AV realtime scans.

Do you have your ASIO buffers set extremely low putting more load on the CPU...perhaps back them off a bit and see if this has an effect on latency and sound.

No need to restrict access to PG FX on each tracks if they are not being used (active).

Typically, I'll see a 25% RB load and 50% Total CPU load on the system until RB has completely loaded all audio tracks....remember RB completely loads all tracks before playback can start unlike BIAB which regens on the fly so to speak. But after all the tracks have load, my RB drops to approx. 2% on RB and 8-10% total load on the system on playback using 5-7 audio tracks.

Jeff

Something sounds off.
I loaded a seq file with 23 audio tracks and literally dozens of plugins on this system just now, while online.
RB CPU reads between 16-20% during playback.
Tri-core processor (2.5 gHz) and 4 gig RAM. W7-64 prof. OS.

Maybe try Process Monitor or Process Explorer (free from MS) to track down the cause.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx

Thank you for those great suggestions. Plenty to look at there!

Rharv. Thanks for the link to Process Explorer. Much more comprehensive than the MS screens. I'll check that out.

Mountainside. A lot of great ideas. Taking them one by one......

1. It's an Acer "All in one" PC and although it has a wireless network card it's shown as disabled on the system (Broadband comes via LAN cable). Bluetooth also turned off.
2. Antivirus is Bullguard but "scan external USB devices" is turned off. (I does however do regular auto scans and checks which seem to slow down the processor quite a bit when it cuts in......so could perhaps have affected RB)?
3. ASIO buffers set to 6ms. That works glitch free with Reaper but I'll push it up to 10ms and see if that helps.

CPU meter readings do seem to be much better today (Playback averaging CPU 3 to 15%) but Generating Real Tracks the CPU meter often showing 50-60% RB and 100% total and mostly red during this process. (I do understand that the Generation stage is very CPU intensive but yesterday and some other days it seems to be in the red a lot of the time). Do your machines show red during that stage.

I appreciate the time you have taken to give suggestions. Many thanks
Regards
Kev.

Yes, my screen shows red when generating.
I want that!
Git 'er done as fast as possible.

Well that's some relief Rharv. I thought I had something wrong going on when it showed red and was giving high readings.

Thanks again for your help.

Kev,

6 ms buffer in ASIO could certainly cause stuttering. Try increasing it to a large value (say 100 ms) and see if that helps. If it does, move to lower values from there until you find the limit that works.

Also, the antivirus program could be contributing. I don't know enough about your a/v software to help with this. Do you run BIAB/RB from a USB drive and not the computer's hard drive?

Yes, generating RealTracks is CPU intensive...lots of data to process. But as Rharv noted, you want your processor to focus on that as a high priority event to get it done as quickly as possible.

You might not see this happening in BIAB as BIAB and RB process RealTracks and regenerations a bit differently. BIAB processes these events on the fly and will start playback quicker while still processing in the background. RB, on the other hand, does all of this work up front before you can start playback.

I'm sure there must be good reasons for this, don't know why it works like does...but it does.

Jeff

Many thanks to all for your suggestions.

Noel, Yes I run BB & RB directly from the PG USB drive (clicking .exe files from there too set as Administrator).
I'll try increasing the buffer size but have had some minor latency problems in Reaper with buffer sizes higher than 10ms. On the Focusrite I can direct monitor.... but prefer to monitor though Reaper (to be able to hear vocals with effects running through bus track). Just trying to get a happy medium so I'm not having to change buffer sizes for every job.

Kev

Can you 'Undo' in BiaB?
I mean, once you hit play and it starts regenerating you can't go back to the exact thing you had before, can you?

RB can. It's writing the undo while also writing the new generated material.

That's an interesting point Rharv....didn't think about that...and another point in favor of using RB. I assume you mean that the previous version is saved somewhere while the newly regenerated version is shown in the app? Where does it store the previous version? In the RBBACKUP directory?

Jeff

Yes, and there are settings to control how many of each song, what to do with the older ones, how much space can it use .. etc.
These are in the Preferences-Files tab.

RB does this in two ways;
While working on a file, all edits are stored in the Audio Temp Directory (assigned in the Audio tab I believe, so drive is selectable)
Then when you Save a backup is made.

If you want to see what your system has stored for backups use the RB 'File-Open Special-Open Backup' menu item. This shows the backup folder for the current running version.
If I recall you can also control the drive for this part too, but I think that is hidden in a config file somewhere you have to tinker with.
This is not info needed for most users.

If you want to see your Audio Temp Directory, go to the Prefs Audio tab and note (or change) it's location. I use a separate drive for this but that's just me.
You can make it whatever you want.
Anyway, in File Explorer you can watch that folder grow during a session as edits are made (the Undo edits). However, once you save/close RB it empties out and cleans itself out, so these undo options are now gone .. but you do have the previous (and probably even previous to that) B/U version available as mentioned above. At least until you reach one of the restrictions in the backup options and it gets removed, also mentioned above.

There's backups of backups available (in a way) .. some only available during a session (undo), and some for 'I want to go back to yesterday' .. which are more persistent and available.