crackling cubase

[WESTERBERG]

Hi everyone,

I find that once I build up 3 to 5 tracks in a cubase project crackling starts to occur-freezing tracks usually helps but I wanted to fix the problem without doing this. I was wondering if it is just not enough RAM or if the problem could be other things and if so what are the possibilities.
Also I would like to know if their is a way on a pc to tell if the RAM is maxed out when a project is open.

Hope you can help-thanks for reading!
Chris

[tacman7]

How much ram do you have and how much are you using?

More likely your latency is too low for your processor to handle when you start putting a serious load on it.

[jono not bono]

Check the buffer size... The higher the buffer size the more latency, but will (providing your computer is fast enough, and equipped with enough RAM etc) usually sort this kind of crackling noise. It could also be your hard drive being to slow...

When you look at the transport panel, on the far left there are two blue thin meters. The left bar is processor power being used, and the one next to it, on the right, is hard drive.

Are any of these two meters going up to the top and hitting red?

I can't really suggest much more without knowing more about the problem.

Are the 5 tracks in use midi channels using VSTi's? Or are they channels of audio or samples with many plugins or no plugins?

Sorry I'm not more useful

Jono_not_Bono

[WESTERBERG]

Thanks for the replies Tac man and Jono
I check those two meters on the transport bar and the one on the left does climb right up to the marker when the crackling occurs but moves around dropping and then rising as the crackle occurs.Jono said this meter is processing power being used.

The other meter does not have a reading...you say this one measures the hard drive...I have only an 80 gig hard drive in the computer and it is over 3/4full but as I said there is no reading on this meter.

So I seens to be the first meter that is causing the crackle...I increased the buffer from a low reading to 1536 and the crackle stops but the first meter still has a high reading at times.

Is the solution to just increase the buffer size or make some changes to the specs of my computer?

Thanks for all the help!

Regards
Chris

[jono not bono]

Sometimes, as I record more and more tracks, I raise the buffer right up when listening back, and when I record I lower the buffer right down as low as my computer can take it so I have about 3 ms of latency ...(if you do this you will probably have to temporarily turn off all cpu heavily plugins until its recorded and then turn back on and buffer size up to listen back... (My computer us quite powerful so I only have to do this techinique when writing plus 80 track stuff)

Its a way round it... Also put 4 gig of ram in the machine and that would help things

Anyway, hope this helps...

Jono_not_Bono

[tacman7]

Recording music is a balancing act between real time and your resources.

Hard drives are cheap, you should have plenty of space, that shouldn't be an issue.
Also one drive for the OS, one to record on.

The closer you get to real time (lower the latency) the harder your computer works.

At some point it will start crackling(failing to keep up with real time).

You have to find that point and work within it according to how your machine is setup and how you work.