Subject:Garritan Personal Orchestra

Posted by: Lostdog

Date:7/21/2004 4:26:08 AM

Hi all
Further to my previous messages regarding using GPO VSTi in Acid 4, it's now up & running & sounding great (thanks to everyone for their advice!).Problem is, as soon as I have more than 3 or 4 GPO parts running, it starts to stutter/click and even slows down half way through the track. Is this likely to be a memory issue (I recently upgraded to 768Mb), a processor issue (I've only got a 1.67GHz AMD processor) or simply a compatibility issue between GPO and Acid? Or maybe it's something I haven't thought of, like my OPc settings? The memory usage in the bottom RHS of the screen is only showing 9/768.

Has anyone else had this troublewith GPO or other VSTi's? Any thoughts welcome. Thanks.

LD

Subject:RE: Garritan Personal Orchestra

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:7/21/2004 5:23:38 AM

This is normal for any VSTi at some point when you’ve run out of resources on your PC. You can try increasing the latency (e.g., say from 5ms to 8ms) to try and get rid of the stuttering/click but if it’s your 1.67Ghz processor that’s being overloaded, then your only option is to render some of these out. i.e., solo the loop and render it, then bring it back in as an audio loop and delete the original MIDI loop. But try increasing the latency which would buffer more and stutter less.

~jr

Subject:RE: Garritan Personal Orchestra

Reply by: Maruuk

Date:7/21/2004 2:17:50 PM

That's what, an Athlon XP 2400? I'd be surprised if that was the bottleneck with that low a load, especially with 768 megs. You surely have 7200 drives with a 2400 so that's not the problem. Memory's fine. Have you tweaked your overall system (defrag, optimized for audio, etc)?

Subject:RE: Garritan Personal Orchestra

Reply by: Lostdog

Date:7/22/2004 4:46:35 AM

I think you might be right - need to defrag & tweak for audio. I'm using the 'wet' orchestral samples in GPO which are a bit bigger, so think I'll try using the dry ones. Probably more hygienic (?!).

I'm looking around for quicker processors anyway - Athlon ones confuse me - difficult to compare some of the new ones to Intel Pentiums - I look at the Ghz speed of the processor, but some of the new Athlons don't seem to specify this - they say (eg) '3200+', but I don't know what that means. When I got my current processor I mistakenly thought it was a 2Ghz processor cos it was called '2000+'.

Also, if I decided to buy an Intel processor, would I be able to use it on my current motherboard? or do you have to buy both together?

All a bit techy for me....

Subject:RE: Garritan Personal Orchestra

Reply by: DKeenum

Date:7/22/2004 6:00:14 AM

Isn't that the way life goes. You get some really cool new software and end up buying a new computer to run it!

Subject:RE: Garritan Personal Orchestra

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:7/22/2004 7:36:51 AM

Maruuk has a good point. GPO is a sample player so it’s probably reading the samples from your hard drive. Once you stack a couple of them, your hard drive becomes the bottleneck. I would definitely defrag and make sure you’re using 7200RPM hard drives. Also having the samples on a different hard drive than your OS (i.e., not on the C: drive) is a good idea to improve sample playback performance. There are other tweaks for setting up a PC as an NLE or DAW that you can also do.

As far as processors go: What AMD tried to do was to name their processors to match what they believed was the equivalent Intel. So if they thought their 1.6Ghz was as fast as an Intel 2.0Ghz they would name it 2000. I’m not sure if that helped their customers or confused them. I never owned an AMD so I’m not the best person to ask but I saw them doing this and it seemed like deceptive advertising to me.

If you switch from AMD to Intel your absolutely need a new motherboard and depending on the Front Side Bus (FSB) speed of the new motherboard you may need faster memory too. That’s not a bad thing because getting a faster processor and limiting its speed by your slower memory is a bad idea. So I always upgrade mobo / proc / mem together. Essentially its like getting a new PC.

~jr

Subject:RE: Garritan Personal Orchestra

Reply by: Lostdog

Date:7/23/2004 5:15:10 AM

Thanks for the advice & immense techno knowledge! Shall tweak away this weeked (ooer!). Maybe I'll move into aircraft manufacture due to the lower setup costs....or maybe I could hire the Royal Philharmonic when they're not on tour!

Cheers!