You explained it well when you said
Quote:
Before you consolidate a track the computer has to go through all the edits you've made, decide which edits to keep and which edits to ignore, seek, find and load each correct audio clip, make edits to the selected audio clips, make automatic crossfades at the beginning and end of each clip and then play the resulting audio clips as one continuous audio track. More edits means more tasks to perform prior to playing an audio clip.


I would add that for most users this is likely all happening on the same hard drive used for the OS, any Services checking in, Antivirus, etc. .. and that some of this occurs in real-time. You hit play and the system has to try to read all those edits using whatever buffer you have set as the time span to get it done..

Simply moving your 'Temp Audio Directory' to a different drive can help alleviate some of the drive 'thrash' that occurs when working on audio. All edits get stored there during a session and get wiped clean when you end the session.

I feel most systems are adequate for audio as far as processors goes .. they usually spend a lot of their time waiting for requests. The first thing to cause a bottleneck is usually the drive.

On a typical system this can be demonstrated at boot using Task Manager; the Performance tab can show the processor and RAM is not what is taking so long... and you sometimes can even hear a mechanical drive working away (SSD not so much, as it responds much faster).

Make your sound your own!
.. I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome