Technical Question

[electromonk]

Hello Friends

 

 

I am using P4 , 1.70 Ghz CPU , 256 MB of RAM

 

I am using Fl studio with VSTS and all of you , who have used it might have experienced glitches as VST eat lots of CPU

 

I wanna know, if I update my RAM to 512, will it resolve my issue, coz someone said, that updating my RAM will make the use of FL studio with VST much easier and faster.

 

If yes, then can someone guide me , on how can I do it?

 

Thanks

[cronodevir]

Only if you use samples [.wav stuff] then yeah, synths themselves have nothing to do with ram, its all processing power..

 

though, what is your buffer length set to?

 

in audio options is a slider that says buffer length, boost the length as high as it will go, and your sounds will be MUCH better, what this does is give the computer more time to process the sound, of course, if you use a midi keyboard this will reak havoc, becasue the response time will be how ever long you put, [mine is at like 347ms], what i useually do though is change it between maximum for sound quality, and around 30ms for keyboard playing, though, i'm on a 2.5ghz computer

[electromonk]

the slider is already set to the maximum

 

when i export my samples created with vst to wave, it works fine, but when they are in the VST format, there are lots and lots of glitches. what can be done to correct that how can I make music with FL studio and vst without my cpu usage going to 100%

[phobium]

More RAM would help a lot.

[cronodevir]

better processor, vsti's don't use RAM...what do they have to store?..the choppyness comes from the CPU loading, i have used 32megs of ram, and still ran fruity just fine [i had an uber processor]

[electromonk]

I AM REALLY CONFUSED

[cronodevir]

when you play a wav file in fruity, fruity loads the entier file into ram, thus if your playing with hundreds of wav files, you need more RAM..however, a synth, [like vanguard for instance] all the sound that comes from this , coems from vanguard, into fruity, through thr processor and out the speakers, there is nothing it needs to load, the sound is processed in real time you see?

 

ram is for loading stuff, and then accessing it later [such as loading a wav file in fruity]

 

with a wav, the sound is already made and saved, you just have to load it, but with a synth, your actually MAKING the sound from scratch, which is 100% processor power

 

i personally don't use any wav files, exept for a few tiny precussion instraments

[electromonk]

I do agree with you cronodevir

 

But see this is what is happenning with me

 

I made a song using 3 channels of vanguard , one with imposcar and the whole song with fruity vsts

 

When I played the song in fruity it was very much cluttery and full og glitches

 

 

I then exported all those channels into waves and made the wave samples out of every channel.When I played it in fruity, the sound was not that impressive, but the whole song was not cluttery and glitchy at all.It played very smoothly from start to finish

 

So either it can be RAM or it can be Processor

I got to know, how to solve the issue of RAM

 

but what abt processor.hOW CAN I GET AROUND THIS

[phobium]

I do belive you would gain more from a RAM upgrade than a CPU upgrade.

[electromonk]

Thanks phobium

 

 

I too beleive what you beleive in but cronodevir also has a point, lets see what others have to say about this I hope

[Reznik]

your ram is definetly not enough. dont think about a new processor, you need at least 1gb ram. its not that expensive

give me the complete details of your pc ( mainboard, operation system etc) and i tell you what is most profitable.

[electromonk]

here they are

 

My operating system is Windows Xp sp2

80 GB hard disk space

P4 , 1.70 GHZ CPU

256 mb of RAM

 

Computer

ACPI Uniprocessor PC

 

Disk Drives

ST340014A

 

Display Adaptars

Intel ® 82865G Graphics Controller

 

IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers

Primary IDE Channel

Primary IDE Channel

Secondary IDE Channel

Secondary IDE Channel

Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

 

Keyboards

Standard 101/102 -Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard

 

Mouse and other pointing Devices

PS/2 Compatiable Mouse

 

Monitors

Plug n Play Monitor

 

Network Adaptar

Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet for HP

 

Processors

Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 1.77 GHZ

 

Sound Devices and game controllers

Audio Codecs

Legacy Audio Drivers

Legacy Video Capture Devices

Media Control Devices

SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio

Video Codecs

[Reznik]

i think almost all problems are caused by your onboard soundchip you have.

you need a real soundcard and 1 Gb Ram.

 

this is my analysis the good thing is that you then can tranfer both, the ram and the soundcard to a new pc you will probably buy some time.

but watch out that mainboard then is compatible to your ram.

 

and please check if you have a sata harddrive and the drivers are installed correctly

good luck

 

also try google for "optimizing pc for audio"

 

you can try some tips, i had a good link if i find it again i tell you

[cronodevir]

i currently have a track with 18 channels, of nothign but sytrus, vanguard, and z3ta, plus some other little stuff, i have 256Mb ram, not a single bit of clutter

 

my soundcard is a measly onbord chip, i even have a celeron processor...

 

the only downside i know of it, it takes about 30 seconds to process before the song starts

 

i doubt ram would help any, but it all depnds on what you want, i think the only reason they are sayign RAM, is becasue they believe you want to export all the chennls as wav and work from thier, but from what i understand, that is not what you wanted to do

 

my specs btw:

 

------------------

System Information

------------------

Time of this report: 7/24/2006, 12:16:09

Machine name: N3V0B4

Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional (5.0, Build 2195) Service Pack 4

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation

System Model: Dell DE051

BIOS: Default System BIOS

Processor: Intel® Celeron® CPU 2.53GHz, ~2.5GHz

Memory: 254MB RAM

Page File: 253MB used, 978MB available

Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS

DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

DxDiag Version: 5.03.0001.0904 32bit Unicode

 

---------------

Display Devices

---------------

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip type: GeForce FX 5200

 

-------------

Sound Devices

-------------

Description: SoundMAX Digital Audio

Default Sound Playback: Yes

Default Voice Playback: Yes

Hardware ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_24D5&SUBSYS_01D51028&REV_02

Manufacturer ID: 1

Product ID: 100

Type: WDM

Driver Name: smwdm.sys

Driver Version: 5.12.0001.7000 (English)

Driver Attributes: Final Retail

WHQL Logo'd: Yes

Date and Size: 3/22/2005 11:08:40, 260224 bytes

Other Files:

Driver Provider: Analog Devices

HW Accel Level: Full

Cap Flags: 0xF5F

Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 192000

Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 33, 32

Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 33, 32

HW Memory: 0

Voice Management: Yes

EAX 2.0 Listen/Src: Yes, Yes

I3DL2 Listen/Src: Yes, Yes

Sensaura ZoomFX: Yes

Registry: OK

Sound Test Result: Not run

[electromonk]

updating processor ...........hmmm that means I have to buy a new cpu?

[secretside]

buy a soundcard, your clip are maybe due to the high latency

 

and cpu is a good way too

[cronodevir]

updating processor ...........hmmm that means I have to buy a new cpu?

574165[/snapback]

 

no, see how high your motherboard can support, then go from there, processors are interchangeable like video/sound cards and RAM too ya know!

[electromonk]

sound card is what I am a bit confused about.It is an inbuilt sound card, and the slot in which I plugin the speaker wires, is at the back of CPU

 

I never gave attention to my sound card.

 

 

I need some more views to naarow down and solve my problem please

[cronodevir]

sound card really...has hardly anything to do with it, espesially with fruityloops, 99.9% of what fruityloops needs is processor power

[Reznik]

without a proper soundcard nothing will work.

thats what you need first

100 % Sure

[cronodevir]

a 5 dollar cheapo will be good enough, if your useing FLS

 

i know though, reason actually USES the sound card i think...which is why one little key almost killed me, heh

[NEMO.BOFH]

Only if you use samples [.wav stuff] then yeah, synths themselves have nothing to do with ram, its all processing power..

 

though, what is your buffer length set to?

 

in audio options is a slider that says buffer length, boost the length as high as it will go, and your sounds will be MUCH better, what this does is give the computer more time to process the sound, of course, if you use a midi keyboard this will reak havoc, becasue the response time will be how ever long you put, [mine is at like 347ms], what i useually do though is change it between maximum for sound quality, and around 30ms for keyboard playing, though, i'm on a 2.5ghz computer

573981[/snapback]

All depends on WHAT Vsti you are using. If you are using almost ANY of the NI Instruments, then you will need RAM. I have ran out of RAM MANY times, and I have now updated to 3GB. I will essentially have 4GB.

 

Yes, Cubase and the VSTis use CPU, but dont let yourself get fooled by the Performance Monitor

 

To boot Windows XP, you will need atleast 64mb ram and to run it you need 128. So you have very little already.

 

I would recommend that you get atleast 1gb RAM so you can get your system up and running stable. Upgrading your RAM at this moment will cost you less than a motherboard and processor, that is good enough for a couple of years..

 

Once you have upgraded your RAM, then go to this page: www.musicxp.net and use their Tuning tips to get the most out of your computer for music production on windows XP

[cronodevir]

doesn't seem right imho, vsti's, don't need to load stuff and acess it later, unless you have 100 thousand presets, then it would load the presets into memory, but the actual turning information into sounds, has nothing to do with random access memory, sence your not saveing anything

 

like a game for instance, , in a shooter, the only thing that uses RAM is the level and textures that are loaded, the engine itself doesn't use any of the RAM

 

or better yet, calculator, uses no ram what so ever, and does pretty much the exact same thing a VSTi instrument does, only the VSTi turns it into sound, where the sound is then processed and outputed, not saved, when you turn the synth off, then back on, and play, the sound is recreated and processed, and sent to output again, not saved for later [u8nless you specify such as by saveing it to wav, and then, your saveing to HD, not ram, now if you open sampler, and load the wav, then the wav is loaded into RAM, so it can be accessed when ever the program needs it]

 

[lol, i imagen everyone is SO used to useing .wav files, that they actually haven't ever tried makeing somethign without]

 

i use NO WAV files what so ever [and when i do, its only percussion instaments, which are fucking tiny], i have 256mb RAM, and i can run atleast 10 instances of z3ta all playing at once + FX..without a single bump in the sound

[nomis]

Try installing asio4all or if you are using a creative soundcard (sb, audigy etc.) then the kx project drivers offers much flexibility and asio as well.

Remember to choose the asio driver in FL after install.

 

the musicxp site has all the info needed for optimizing xp

 

 

Dont know if it helps but asio4all did the trick for me with a slow labtop once and i am using the kx drivers on my secondary machine which has sb audigy, a athlon xp 1800+ processor and 768mb ram.

[Jikkenteki]

As a former fruity user myself I will say that probably your biggest issue is your soundcard. Improving this with a solid card and proper written drivers with improve your experience alot (I speak from experience on this on several different computers). Ram will also help you alot. Despite what some people are saying, your plugins and can and do load information into your RAM. How much depends on the plug in, but many read ahead of what is actually playing and that information has to get stored somewhere... as does all the info produces from the various open processes in whatever program you are using. I'd agree that 1 gig of ram is an ideal minimum (again I speak from experience). Your processor is plenty powerful enough (I run Cubase SX3 with no real problems on a 1.7 with 1 gig of RAM), but your soundcard will make or break any music software and adding ram will further improve your performance a lot.