Hi,
I started producing with FL Studio last year, and my PC has slowly been struggling more and more to play back without buzzing, pops and sometimes straight up lock ups, repeating the same sound, for about a second or so.
There were about 60 mixer channels in use on my last track, and the popping sounds happened occasionally, but I could deal with it. However my most recent track has 78, and it's become almost impossible to work on, constant popping and crackling noises making it exceedingly difficult to hear subtle drum sounds and other details.
My PC is specced accordingly:
- i7 7700k
- 16GB DDR4
- Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3-CF
I am using ASIO4All. Even with the ASIO buffer size at maximum, and latency up to an unusable 48 ms, it still pops and crackles, just not as frequently. Average load (according to FL's meter) is 80-90%
I use synths a lot, and I use effects a lot, there are a few hundred of them, and also compressors, limiters, EQs etc. There are also some recorded sounds, other than drum sounds. To give you can idea of the kind of workload.
Now, from what I've been able to find out about how sound cards work, I can't see how they can improve the performance in my situation, since all the effects I'd have thought would be CPU based. Graphics operations can use the GPU for better performance, but then they also need a low-level graphics-specific instruction set for it. But from what I know about how sound works at the low level, you just feed data into a buffer using some API provided by a driver, and the sound card converts that into an electrical signal, amplifies it and outputs it.
I've never heard of a low level Open GL equivalent for sound, with an instruction set for sound specific processing.
But I'm probably wrong and there is something like that.
Just so I'm sure, I'd like to hear a more experienced perspective, do I need more CPU power or a better sound card?
I'd be very grateful of any advice here.
Thanks in advance
I started producing with FL Studio last year, and my PC has slowly been struggling more and more to play back without buzzing, pops and sometimes straight up lock ups, repeating the same sound, for about a second or so.
There were about 60 mixer channels in use on my last track, and the popping sounds happened occasionally, but I could deal with it. However my most recent track has 78, and it's become almost impossible to work on, constant popping and crackling noises making it exceedingly difficult to hear subtle drum sounds and other details.
My PC is specced accordingly:
- i7 7700k
- 16GB DDR4
- Gigabyte Z170-Gaming K3-CF
I am using ASIO4All. Even with the ASIO buffer size at maximum, and latency up to an unusable 48 ms, it still pops and crackles, just not as frequently. Average load (according to FL's meter) is 80-90%
I use synths a lot, and I use effects a lot, there are a few hundred of them, and also compressors, limiters, EQs etc. There are also some recorded sounds, other than drum sounds. To give you can idea of the kind of workload.
Now, from what I've been able to find out about how sound cards work, I can't see how they can improve the performance in my situation, since all the effects I'd have thought would be CPU based. Graphics operations can use the GPU for better performance, but then they also need a low-level graphics-specific instruction set for it. But from what I know about how sound works at the low level, you just feed data into a buffer using some API provided by a driver, and the sound card converts that into an electrical signal, amplifies it and outputs it.
I've never heard of a low level Open GL equivalent for sound, with an instruction set for sound specific processing.
But I'm probably wrong and there is something like that.
Just so I'm sure, I'd like to hear a more experienced perspective, do I need more CPU power or a better sound card?
I'd be very grateful of any advice here.
Thanks in advance
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