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Topic: Older Machine Perf - BIAB 2011, VST/DXi, RlTracks & RlBa |
Scott Shewbridge
From:
Bay Area, N. California
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Posted 19 Dec 2010 11:08 am |
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Well, call me a dinosaur, but I'm still using my 2004 Gateway laptop for running BIAB. For a guy that started on an 256K IBM PC in 1985, this is a pretty powerful machine, with an Intel Celeron Processor and 750M of RAM. It has handled all of my BIAB 2007 & Audacity editing needs pretty well.
Because of all of the new lessons available on the BIAB 2011 packages (e.g. country, bluegrass and jazz guitar patterns, etc...) and the adrenaline rush of having Brent Mason realtracks to play along with, I elected to get the USB harddrive loaded "Everything" package. I am reluctant to "shill," but the price right now is exceptionally good value for an up-grader like me.
I spent a day yesterday cleaning up my computer, getting things ready for the upgrade install (oh, you mean I was supposed to run the hard drive defragger on my own? I thought the computer did that by itself!).
Well the cheapskate finally got run over by the technology train.
In a nutshell, after a couple of hours of testing, here is what I've found:
On the Celuron machine with 750M of Ram, BIAB and Real Band installed on the internal harddrive, but realtracks .WAV files on the USB harddrive, Amigo Audio Advantage USB soundcard, Internet connection off, Norton Anti-virus protection off, video accelerator off, playing "Miles and Miles of Texas" (verse & chorus, 3x), here is how the machine performed:
BOOGBRT.sty (Brent Mason Country Boogie Realtracks) - Memory ~50% CPU 100% constant - Stuttering, time slowdowns, garbled out put, no access to control panel functions. Essentially unusable. Replay without real track regeneration does not improve performance. Have to use cntl/alt/del & End Process on bb.exe to make the machine let go of the song.
C_EZSHUF.sty (all MIDI generated tracks with Roland VSC & VST/DXi synth plug-ins operating) - Memory ~50% CPU 80 to 100% - Sound is better than the old VSC midi synth sounds, but when the CPU usage hits 100%, again stuttering, time slowdowns, garbled output, limited access to control panel (i.e., need to hit stop button for ~20 sec, before response). Using replay without regeneration does slightly better, but once 100% on CPU is hit, sound and time fall apart.
C_EXSHUF.sty (all MIDI generated tracks with Roland VSC & WITHOUT VST/DXi syth plugins operating) - Memory ~50% CPU steady at 10 to 20% with occasional transients to 90%, usually due to multitasking. Performance like the old BIAB 2007, with good sync between video and sounds and full control panel access, though sound is back to "toy box" quality.
So, bottom line, if you are using an older machine, I believe you may not be able to get access to the improved sound quality associated with the BIAB REALTRACKS and the DXi plug-ins.
Next I turned my attention to REALBAND. PG Music does not do a good job explaining what Real Band is supposed to be. I'm not sure I fully understand it yet. But by using it to preprocess the Realtracks, I am happy to report that my rendition of Miles and Miles of Texas, accompanied by the soloing prowess of Brent Mason is pretty kick a$$.
It takes my machine a while to render all four of the tracks individually (approximately 90-120 sec), but the play back sound quality is stunning.
As I said, my main reason for getting the BIAB 2011 package is all of the amazing lessons offered. I’m not ready to purchase a new computer quite yet (I would rather buy a nice set of studio monitors for my live recording editing and playback). For the time being, I expect to run the lessons in BIAB with the clunky old non-DXi sounds. When I want kicka$$ accompaniment, I will do the individual track rendering and playback in RealBand.
Any other cheapskates out there got any better ideas? |
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Leon Carpenter
From:
Missouri, USA
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Posted 19 Dec 2010 5:42 pm 2011 needs space
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I have limited ram on my aging sony lap top. When I tried to install the 2010.5 everything pak. I didn't have the room. My 2008.5 BIAB was 8.64 GB. The 2010.5 was 104 GB. When I installd 2011 everyyhing pak. update, and used the save space prompt, it scanned 51,778 files. appx. 5 min. later it had rcovered 70(SEVENTY GB), now that is progress. Anyway, I run BIAB totally from the Everything Pak. HD. Files in progress live in a 4 GB $10.00 thumb drive from wal-mart. When they are completed I save them to a folder in the everything pak. HD. Make your self a back-up of BIAB appx.40 GB ASAP. PS- You need to read: (the save space prompt) carefully, since your pc is a 2004 with limited ram. I hope this helps. Leon
_________________
Big E for president. |
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Scott Shewbridge
From:
Bay Area, N. California
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Posted 19 Dec 2010 9:22 pm
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Unless I'm not understanding or misinterpreting what the monitoring graphs on the Windows Task Manager mean, I don't think the problem was memory (RAM) or disk storage space. I think the rendering of realtracks and even the presumably less-demanding soft-synth DXi plug-ins are too much for my 2004 laptop's Celeron processor to handle. Right now, I don't think "real time / on-the-fly" BIAB processing of either will work.
PG Music does not specify what minimum CPU power is needed to run their program effectively; I think they should. Hopefully I'm wrong and someone can set me straight, but I think realtracks and DXi both overwhelm my older CPU. |
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Erv Niehaus
From:
Litchfield, MN, USA
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Posted 20 Dec 2010 8:33 am
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The later BIAB updates take gobs of memory.
I ran out of memory a while back trying to download the files and I had to break down and have a larger computer built for me by the local computer guru, now I'm fine. |
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Scott Shewbridge
From:
Bay Area, N. California
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Posted 24 Dec 2010 2:11 pm
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A bit of an update.
I went out and got a 1GB RAM module and replaced the old 250M one, bringing the total ram to 1.5GB. This had absolutely no impact on performance. I will be returning it.
I also tried fumbling around with all sorts of PG Music recommendations (Processor Scheduling to Background, Memory Usage to System Cache, Custom Size Virtual Memory). Again, no impact on performance.
After fiddling around with the midi synth settings, I've come to the conclusion that it is not the DXi pluggins that causes problems, it seems to be the Coyote Wave Table. I'm pretty sure my 2004 Celeron processor cannot handle the load in realtime.
I also played more with the realtrack generation. If I take the Brent Mason Realtrack and set the tempo to the track recommended tempo (i.e. no tempo stretching), performance is right on the edge (i.e., the song plays well, except if I start trying to use the cursor to do other things at the same time). If I speed up the realtracks to be greater than the recommended tempo range, performance falls apart.
So, my updated conclusions are, for an older machine with an older processor (CPU), random access memory (RAM) is not the problem. It appears as though the older CPU cannot handle the demands of the Coyote Wave Table, or fast tempo generation of complex realtracks. Disable the Coyote Wave table and if you want fast versions of realtracks, you may need to use Real Band to pre-process them to audio files.
Your mileage may vary.  |
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