Sounds like you have too many plugins on individual tracks. However the CPU load should not be greater than in any other app with same number of plugin instances.....

Maybe you have some glitch in your system ?

And yes, I find it is as robust as others and more than many.

geoff

The short answer to your question is: yes it is. I have had no issues mixing a feature with Vegas 4.

Busses really help. And premixes as well. Not sure what you workflow is but if you are doing dialog mixes you need not have on any other tracks. Same for music, effects and so on. When you get each elements done you can do a premix and run it against the other tracks to see how they play.

With Vegas 7 there are issues with the Waves plugins. The issue is not fixed yet but a work around is to disable the audio buffers it seems.

Unfortunately, we have recently discovered a major problem using UAD-1 plug-ins with the Vegas Audio Engine. The current engine does not process data in quite the way the UAD-1 wants, and therefore the UAD plug-ins go into a kind of native cpu software emulation of their hardware.

This native mode is extremely CPU intensive. For a simple 5-track project with one UAD 1176LN plug-in on each track, a project running smoothly should consume about 4% cpu on my 2.8 gHz machine. Instead, I see a 37% CPU load.

The bottom line: Vegas + UAD-1 performance currently sucks. We have a solution in mind for this problem, though it is a major overhaul that is typically the kind only released in a full version update.

On the subject of Waves interacting with the audio engine: Some waves plug-ins don’t play nice with our multi-threaded architecture, and will crash. One solution is to disable track rendering. Another is to only use Waves plug-ins in the mixer. We are working with Waves to resolve this issue.

"The bottom line: Vegas + UAD-1 performance currently sucks. We have a solution in mind for this problem, though it is a major overhaul that is typically the kind only released in a full version update.

On the subject of Waves interacting with the audio engine: Some waves plug-ins don’t play nice with our multi-threaded architecture, and will crash. One solution is to disable track rendering. Another is to only use Waves plug-ins in the mixer. We are working with Waves to resolve this issue."

Very discouraging indeed. I'm using Waves 5 and never plan to upgrade due to Wave's policies. Although I purchased Vegas 7, I haven't installed it yet. Does anyone know if there are problems with Waves 5 and Vegas 7?

>>>Does anyone know if there are problems with Waves 5 and Vegas 7?<<<

Yes. There is a thread here on that as well as in the Video forums.

Who is the errant party - UAD or Sony ?

geoff

Who is the errant party - UAD or Sony ?

geoff

>ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Video Chipset

Is this onboard video? If so, that could be your problem, especially if it uses main memory for video ram.

This was precisely the source of my Vegas/Acid problems with a new box I purchased last year. All sorts of glitches and pops. Once I slapped in a cheap AGP video card with its own VRAM, everything worked great.

Cheers,

Randy

I am using Vegas 5 with typical track counts in the 40-60 range. I also use UAD-1 plugins, waves plugins, and convolution reverbs (not on every track). Sometimes the UAD-1 problem can cause severe native CPU munching, but only once I use about 60% of my UAD-1 power. I've tried Vegas7, and I am unable to run the UAD-1 efficiently enough to use it. I'm having many buffer error problems which I don't experience with v5

Also, I have recently done comparisons between Vegas and another app. with tracks only (no plugins) and Vegas consistently does much better on CPU on two of my systems.

I'm actually really glad to hear that the UAD-1 problem has been identified and a solution has been conceived. Is there any chance it could be implemented in Vegas 7? If you would tell me that it would be fixed in 7, I would upgrade right now.

Waves: Under some conditions Waves 5.2 (not 5.0 or other) can be unstable with Vegas 7 on multiproc machines. Cure: Turn off track buffering in Vegas audio device prefs _if_ you crash with Waves 5.2. Not everybody is going to run into this- plenty of people run Waves 5.2 and aren't having crashing problems. We're working directly with Waves on this- it may require changes from both companies.

UAD- clearly these behave differently than other plugs. We're aware there are issues and will work toward resolving them- sorry no public timetable. It may require changes from both UAD and SMS to completely resolve this, tbd. We understand people like the UAD sound...noted. Please also understand UADs don't behave like "typical" software plug-ins, like our own, or Waves, and we'll likely need to re-write portions of our apps to support the implementation of just this single vendor.

I also have had terrible audio stutter with Vegas 6 and SIR and Ambience reverbs, I have 48 tracks, many plugins used [ mostly Sony ] processor seems to max at about 60 percent but still get stutter.
Using P4 3.0
1 gig ram
audigy 2ZS card
onboard audio disabled.

Very frustrating, I turn off Reverbs and it fine, turn them on and the stutter reappears. I've used some busses for the reverbs but it sometimes defeats the purpose. I like to use different reverbs on
different tracks. I hate aving to settle for a stereo average reverb setting on my drums.

" I've used some busses for the reverbs but it sometimes defeats the purpose. I like to use different reverbs on different tracks. I hate aving to settle for a stereo average reverb setting on my drums."

Verbs and compressors are going to use a ton of CPU no matter what app you use. You've simply found out what your system's limit is. If you want all those different verbs, I suggest rendering some of tracks with the effects (submix) and keep the originals in case you want to change something later.

These are all great responses and I'm going to start with the UAD stuff...I think that might be the problem in Vegas...thanx everyone and Sony for helping out.

WG-

Cowboy junkies went to a church, sat down, put a single stereo microphone in front of the band and pressed record.

Total cost of the recording about $200 ( so they say ), won awards, great sound, etc....( and that's just one example, there were plenty of albums recorded on analog 4 and 8 tracks and still sound better than 90% of the stuff recorded on PCs today )

Now if somebody really needs 50 tracks with different plugins and effects, maybe the problem is not really hardware or software any more, but more likely something else, and it may be time to rethink the whole approach to recording and what music really is about.

Vegas is way more than anybody could possibly ever need.

That's an old, tiresome argument deusx, which for some reason people often like to wheel out when others call for things to be improved upon. If everybody carried on like that, we'd still be listening to music from wax cylinders. Why are we even editing digitally when we managed perfectly fine cutting together 1/4" tape? Gimme a break...

Seriously, what you say is totally irrelevant. I don't know what you do for a living, but the fact is that most contemporary music today *is* recorded on 50 plus tracks, with lots of processing, etc, etc.

Ben

Not an old argument ( since PC based recording has really been around less than a decade, before that it was unreliable and only for those wth a lot of cash ). And 50+ tracks are nothing new. That was all around during the analog era too.

My point is that there are more ways than one to do certain things, and nobody really needs that much processing and tracks. If they really NEED that they don't know much about recording.

Digital is fine , but after a certain point it's all overkill, and most people are better off using all this time writing good matrial, rather than thinking of ways to squeeze a few more tracks with a few more plugins attached to them.

This thread's title is" Is Vegas REALLY robust enough for audio work? " and the answer is yes, way more than enough.

Vegas is just fine the way it is. If they want to improve it , that's fine with me, but I can record anything easily with what's already there.
And I do mean anything. For most things I probably don't even need Vegas. Just plug in stereo output from Triton into sound forge, and already sounds as good as the other guy with 90 tracks and 6543 VST plugins. You think anybody could tell the difference?

"Vegas is just fine the way it is..."

Ha.

To be totally honest? It depends on what you're working on.

I bought the Vegas 6+DVD bundle that came with Acid 6 included, and while I can USUALLY run with just Vegas, every once in a while, I run into something - usually multi-track repairs to crappy Camcorder audio or a bad wireless mic Xceiver freq - that needs Acid to fix. I suspect that Sound Forge would actually be even better for those problems, but Acid covered my butt well enough that I didn't need to go get the Forge.

For most normal video sound problems, Vega will let you override the presets and directly edit audio far enough that spoken signal, as opposed to music or SFX audio, will be either perfect, or close enough to it not to matter. However, for ANY high-level music work, be it live jams, cinematic scoring, or music-video type work, I think I'd prefer to go with Acid, Sound Forge, or some other, strictly audio editing package.
The GREAT thing about Vegas is that, once you have your audio shaken, not stirred, to your heart's content, Vegas just plain doesn't CARE; you present it in any of a bazillion compatible file formats, and Vegas just sucks it down and slaps it on the video tracks, where you want it. From there, all you need to do is sync it up - admittedly a problem if you didn't plan ahead and set up some pre-edit markers - and finalize it. But then, if you didn't plan ahead, you kinda deserve to get headaches from the mistake, don't you? I know I earned my migraines the first time I tried it without markers!

Vegas i, remember, a VIDEO editor - and, pardon my language, a damned GOOD one! But it's designed to work hand-in-hand with other packages for audio edits, scoring, and music tracks. Let it work with them, and you'll get much better results than just winging it with Vegas.

See ya!

Jim