Subject:Any setting changes to improve acid playback??

Posted by: mista k

Date:2/26/2008 11:01:13 AM

have a new system -
quad 4
4gb RAM ( high quality )
plenty of hard space at 7200 rpm
external m-audio 410 soundcard

and in a given project with about 40 tracks - 10 VST's
it begins to chop up and I cant get smooth playback until i mix down.
I know that I am running a lot of tracks but my work demands it -
Is Acid capable of handling the workload?
I know my that it cannot be my computer or can it?

btw -
I right clicked taskbar and went to task manager - processes and right clicked acid.exe and set priority to the highest I think its called realtime setting - and it still chops up.


Anyone have any suggestions to get better playback???

Subject:RE: Any setting changes to improve acid playback??

Reply by: Kennymusicman

Date:2/26/2008 12:20:41 PM

There could be many things. My first thought would be the VST's. VSTi's and effects can be real drainers on power, dependon on the plugin. Turn off all those plugs, and check performance. If everything is back to good - then add one plug-in at a time, until you find out what's killing you

Subject:RE: Any setting changes to improve acid playback??

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:2/26/2008 2:02:19 PM

What drivers are you using?

What latency setting?

I would back off latency to something ridiculously long, check that you don't get audio breakup, then reduce latency until the audio starts breaking up.

If it still breaks up with long latency, there is an issue somewhere in your hardware setup. Obvious things are the video card and bus usage. You didn't say whether you were using a USB or firewire interface.

Subject:RE: Any setting changes to improve acid playb

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:2/27/2008 7:31:11 AM

> You didn't say whether you were using a USB or firewire interface.

He said he was using an M-Audio FW-410 which is firewire.

> ...have a new system - quad 4 ...and in a given project with about 40 tracks - 10 VST's

What percent are your CPU's running at? It is possible that you've added a VST that is single threaded and can only take advantage of one core. That makes your QuadCore into a single core and since quads are usually 4 less powerful processors, that may not leave you with much steam. Is one core maxed out or are all 4 running at 25%? Having a quad only helps if the task you are doing can be highly parallelized. Otherwise it doesn't make a difference over a single core.

The trick is to find the bottleneck in your system. I would start with the latency setting as Jumbuk suggested. If the latency is OK then remove VST's one by one to see if by removing one the crackling stops. If so, that might be the one that's bogging things down. Otherwise it just might be a combination of VST's used together. (I know it's no fun trying to figure this out)

~jr