CPU usage...?

[The Late Great Libido]

Hi all,

Just got off the recording laptop and was monitoring the CPU usage while I played back some tracks. I feel like I remember it usually hovering around 25% or less. This time it was sitting right around 40%.

I have a few plugins running but only added a few new ones this session (Glaceverb and the Classic Compressor). Should it be this high? At what point should I worry? I suppose when it stops, huh?

It seems the meter would jump up when I open the CPU meter....is the meter itself CPU intensive?

If it helps I have 2 gigs of RAM and a 2.0 ghz Dual Core on a Lenovo Laptop running XP.

Thanks for any thoughts.

[MetalDave]

When you open the system monitor it does eat up CPU for a split second. I have a computer with X64 loaded on it. I noticed for editting this is the way to go. I am finding that I am having a hard time getting drivers for certain things though. When I use the 64 bit PC to edit on, I see 1/2 the cpu usage as when using 32 bit. I basically gives you 2 times the width as 32. Every time you open a new plug in and run it it will draw more bandwidth. I have a software called CPU burn in. It is supposed to run your CPU at 100% for burning it in. I ran it on the PC with 32 bit windows xp with 2 GB of RAM. It ran @ 100% like it was supposed to do. Then I formatted and installed windows XP Pro X64 and ran it and it only ran it at 50%. The only thing I did was take out 1 GB of memory after re installing X64! 1/2 the memory and still only used 1/2 the bandwidth! I used the extra memory in my recording PC. There are ways to make windows not use as much CPU you can go to this link and see some ways. I have used trial and error on this. Maximize the Performance of Windows XP, from O'Reilly Media - Downloads - TechRepublic

[uab9253]

I use both Glaceverb and classic compressor on almost all of my vocal tracks and when you get 3 -4 instances in, you do tend to get a cpu shove. Likely it is Glaceverb since all the classic stuff is pretty easy on the CPU. I also have Line 6 Gearbox gold on most of my guitar tracks and I have to use the freeze function a lot in Cubase to stay under the roof. Freeze renders your audio and vst down to a wave, shifting the burden to disc/ram and off of cpu.

[The Late Great Libido]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I'll keep the freeze function in mind. I guess I'm scared of it since there's no more adjusting the effect after that. Thanks for that link, MetalDave...I'm sure I'll find something on there that will help me out. I'm slightly computer developmentally delayed

The weird thing the other day was that when I stopped playback my CPU meter stayed at 40%. Why would it do that? When I shut down Cubase it went down to 5% or whatever. Do plugins still eat up CPU even when your track is not playing?

Oh yeah, I neglected to mention I'm also using up to 5 instances of Drumagog as well. Oops.

[Electriclight]

Originally Posted by The Late Great Libido

Do plugins still eat up CPU even when your track is not playing?

The old VST's do use CPU when there is no audio signal going through them. The newer VST3's do not. Another thing to watch for is the VST's running on DISABLED tracks still use CPU power. Make sure to turn them off even if the track is disabled.