need help on getting down 'ASIO time usage'

[whippedsilly]

Hi there,

I have just been recording some stuff on Cubase LE4 using Kontakt's Kore player free sampler, but i have found that my playback is REALLY slow and sometimes doesn't even play!
There is a bar in the bottom left of the screen which is the ASIO time usage measurer or something, and whenever that is full my playback speeds are terrible.

Any ideas on what i should do? thx.

[Danny Danzi]

What are your ASIO buffers currently set to in your ASIO control panel?
How much RAM?
What processor do you have?
What operating system?
What is the speed of your hard drive?

Some answers:

ASIO: If your asio buffers are set to 1024 or higher, you should be triggering sounds fine but you may notice a delay in when you press the keys to when you hear sound. Try 256 as a staring point, then 128 then 64. Bring them as low as you can until you get little sputters or artifacts in the samples. The lower you bring them, the more instantaneous your sounds will be. However, too low and you get halfs of samples, artifacts and maybe even drop outs. If you are using Vista, I recommend ASIO4all drivers. They are free, just google them.

RAM: If you have a gig of RAM or lower, you may have a problem triggering the Kore player.

Processor: If you have an older pc with a slower processor that isn't at least a 2ghz processor, you may have problems playing the Kore player.

Operating system: Are you updated to the latest version of your operating system? Windows XP SP3 has decreased latency and some other goodies that can be helpful. If you're running Vista, make sure that too is updated. Make sure your soundcard drivers are updated with the proper drivers for Vista. You can always try ASIO4all like I mentioned above.

Hard drive: If your hard drive is 5400 RPM, you may have a tough time running the Kore player. 7200 RPM drives are recommended for audio applications and sound modules.

Also, if you have loads of stuff running on your machine like chat programs, browsers, AOL, yahoo, MSN etc...kill as much as you can as this will free up more power to your pc. Hope this helps...good luck.

[whippedsilly]

thanks for that reply, very detailed.

My PC is O.K. i think. I have a Gig of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive and my brother just got a new laptop so i have been able to free up about 7GB of Space in the HDD.

However i do need to check the ASIO thing and see which setting works for me.

thanks again.

[Danny Danzi]

You're welcome. Make sure you look into that hard drive speed as well as how many running programs you have going on when you are trying to use the Kore player. This is important. You didn't say what OS you're running. If you are running XP, any more than 40 running processes could be a problem for you. To see what you're running...after you open the core player, hit ctrl/alt/del and see how many running programs there are. With Vista, you can get away with 50-60 because it handles things differently....but from what you're telling me, I would assume you're running XP with 1 gig of RAM.

You're really cutting it close there Whip. Not many laptops have 7200 RPM drives unless the user specifies it...this could be one strike against you running a 5400...yours might even be lower. I've seen a few 4300 RPM's in my time. 1 gig of RAM is definitely too little for today's applications because most of them are created with at least 2 gig or higher in mind. I've yet to run anything or see anything where they recommended more than 2 gigs other than games.....but I'm sure there are audio programs that call for more...especially those huge sampling library type modules.

Your hard drive space is fine...that's not the issue. I think it's a combination of how fast the drive is, your limited amount of ram, and we still don't know what processor you are using. All this is essential for me to know in order to help you trouble shoot this.

The asio thing is another possible issue...see, they all walk hand in hand. So this is why it's always a great thing to go as far into detail as you can when asking for the remedy of a problem. It sucks that you have to know so much about computers and this other jargon just to make something work, but unfortuantely this is one of the downsides to audio on a pc. But once you get everything where it needs to be, you're usually in great shape for the life of that pc. Good luck to you and keep me posted on everything.

[whippedsilly]

ok thanks again.

I am running XP and i do have SP3 and my processor is a 3GHz single core.

Next time i run Cubase i will check how many processes i have running, but right now with Mozilla open only, i have about 60 or so. How do you get rid of them? Do you just click end process? And which ones do i end?

Just also found out that the RPM of my hard drive is 7200 which you said should cut it.

I'll give you the number just in case anyway:

ST3160023AS

thanks.

[Danny Danzi]

Ok good...that's info I needed. You can close things down if you want to....but you have to know what they are Whip. If you close the wrong thing down, you could cause the pc to hang or become unstable. Yeah, for the amount of ram you have, if 60 showed when you're using Cubase...way too many.

What I do is I go into msconfig and search on all the stuff that is running if I don't recognize it. Most stuff I do because I'm a geek lol! But for the stuff I don't, you can take the name or the .dll and google it and it will tell you what it is, what it does and you can determine whether or not you should run it.

There are also a number of Windows services that can be killed but you MUST exercise caution when killing some of them as some systems rely on them differently. Black Viper's Web Site has some really nice tweaks for audio on XP. Just please be careful and mess with one thing at a time so you know what you touched in the event something doesn't load up right or you have to go into safe mode or something. For the most part, you should be able to identify what can stay and what needs to go.

You cpu looks perfect...no issues there. So look into some of this stuff and just be careful. I'd hate for you to take my advice here and not be able to boot up your box because of something I mentioned. Think of what you'd be doin compared to tweaking a race car carb. The wrong tweak and you could get too much gas going through...another wrong tweak, too much air...etc. Just be careful and write down everything you are changing so you can easily revert back if a problem comes up. Don't be afraid to experiment, just do it in increments and keep a running log.

[whippedsilly]

Thanks Loads, you've really helped.

I'm definatley sure i can close down some itunes ones and others processes but because im not totally sure about all ths stuff, i'll search them up anyway!

thanks again,

Whip.

[Danny Danzi]

No problem Whip...best of luck with everything! Glad some of this was helpful. Take care.

[whippedsilly]

I've just been on Cubase and looked at the task manager while on it. One thing i noticed is that the CPU usage is at 100%! Is this normal?

Also, the memory usage is at about 270,000 kb. Is there a way to lower that? Because i have tried everything you said but it is still slow.

Sorry i'm being so annoying.

[Danny Danzi]

Originally Posted by whippedsilly

I've just been on Cubase and looked at the task manager while on it. One thing i noticed is that the CPU usage is at 100%! Is this normal?

Also, the memory usage is at about 270,000 kb. Is there a way to lower that? Because i have tried everything you said but it is still slow.

Sorry i'm being so annoying.

You're not being annoying at all, it's all good. Your cpu shouldn't be at 100% constantly. It may hit there from time to time, but you definitely have some stuff running that shouldn't be there I would think. The way to make your cpu more stable and lower ram usage is to kill some of the running applications like I mentioned to you in the other post. That's all I can recommend at this time.