DSP limitations and CPU

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Scalez

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I'm currently running Cubase SX2 on a P4 1.6GHz and I generally run out of DSP half-way into a mix. Needless to say, I need a new computer...

But I'm wondering if I'll really get enough DSP power before I just run into the same thing if I get, say a dual 2.8 GHz. I'm going to be getting a ProTools LE system soon after getting a computer as well, and I know that LE doesn't come with the DSP cards like HD does, so all DSP will be running straight off the CPU's.

Any wisdom is greatly appreciated. thanks.
 
one 3.2 ghz would suit your need id think. no need to go dual here yet. not to mention you have to go xeon and ecc/registered ram to get dual cpu which means buttloads of money and slower ram.

i must recommend however that you get an athlon 64 system. a 3200+ will be cheaper and will give you more power and more options to upgrade later. for example, the current socket 939 (athlon 64) mobos will all support dual core athlons when they come out simply with a bios update. to get a pentium dual core you also have to upgrade your mobo. if im not mistaken your cpu is pre- intel going to ddr2 and post rdram so you can use your current ddr in an athlon64 system.

one other thing you could do in lieu of everything previous is just get a pci dsp card, for example creamware makes a $350 dsp card that should suit your needs. i think the next one up is something like $500 and offers just about double the possibilities.
 
Hollip, thanks for that! Very helpful. I should also mention that I'm doing both audio recording and MIDI production with DSP-heavy soft synths and hardware samplers.... I was just about to ask what a mobo is but i just figured it out (motherboard). In my town, mobo is the name of a sushi joint with hot waitresses.

What's a DDR though? I think it's RAM. If so, I do plan on keeping my current computer up and running, to use for office tasks and web browsing, so I'm not about to jack the RAM out of it.

I will be getting a new computer no matter what. I might add a DSP card if I need but my goal is to not have to.

hollip3020 said:
one 3.2 ghz would suit your need id think. no need to go dual here yet. not to mention you have to go xeon and ecc/registered ram to get dual cpu which means buttloads of money and slower ram.

i must recommend however that you get an athlon 64 system. a 3200+ will be cheaper and will give you more power and more options to upgrade later. for example, the current socket 939 (athlon 64) mobos will all support dual core athlons when they come out simply with a bios update. to get a pentium dual core you also have to upgrade your mobo. if im not mistaken your cpu is pre- intel going to ddr2 and post rdram so you can use your current ddr in an athlon64 system.

one other thing you could do in lieu of everything previous is just get a pci dsp card, for example creamware makes a $350 dsp card that should suit your needs. i think the next one up is something like $500 and offers just about double the possibilities.
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Also - this might be obvious to you, so excuse me if it is :) - in addition to buying some more raw power, be sure to use your CPU efficiently:

Nowadays it's just so easy to slap a software reverb on, for example, that many people tend to use multiple instances of the same effect on multiple mixer tracks - and only adjust the dry/wet ratio of a practically same kind of preset in all of them.

Instead, utilize your sequencer's effect sends, apply the effects on the buses secifically meant for this kind of operation, set the wetness of the effects to 100% and then only control the amounts you let different tracks send their signal to the needed effects. This way you'll not only save potentially heaps of CPU power but also end up having a more coherent grip on your overall mix.
 
I'll second that.

There are times to use separate reverbs -- even with identical settings -- on individual tracks. But more often it's much easier for mixing and lighter on the CPU to set up a reverb on a submix bus and route sets of instruments through that.
 
Yeah I try to use the sends whenever possible, for reverbs anyway. But my biggest CPU hog is Amplitube, which usually requires a very different setting for each application in a given song.

So for now I just do a lot of bouncing CPU hogs down to new tracks, which works fine, but is time consuming and a pain in the ass if I have to go back and edit the effects and bounce down again.
 
Sure, bouncing is a very effective way to end run CPU-sucking plug in demands.

I guess SX2 doesn't have track/plug freeze. I just upgraded from Sonar 2.2 to Sonar 4 and, besides a rewritten code base that apparently makes much more efficient use of my laptop's Pentium M (S4 runs much lighter and fires up the fan much, much less frequently), possibly the most welcome single improvement is the ability to freeze v-synth and plug tracks.

That said, I recently found it easier to just do one big (conventional DIY) bounce in a case where I just wanted to lock down a mix that had gotten plug-crazy so I could do some more tracking. Freeze is a convenience, for sure, but it's nothing that you can't do yourself by bouncing.
 
I read in FM mag (May 2005) that DSP cards are actually not so much about boosting processing power as they are a way to bundle a bunch of high quality effects, and that today's computers are capable of handling a studio's worth of plugins. So hopefully getting a new computer would negate the need for a DSP card, unless it came with effects you would be using on a regular basis.
 
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