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in that case I would do as Rann said. as a final last resort once youve tried everything.

Back up and re-install. Should solve it and will take less time to do, than what you've spent on trying to fix it so far.

quote:

Originally posted by music2dance2 Maybe its a vista thing? Anyone else have to tweak anything with vista on their PC?

Yeah, the most common tweak for people with Vista installed is to format their hard drive and install XP...

haha yeah i was thinking of suggesting that myself. Wasnt sure how much lowski wanted to keep vista though.

I know people who have managed to get vista working ok, but it just seems pointless when there are so little problems with XP

Seriously you shouldn't have to do any of those twekas mate. Your computers well fast enough to run the sequencer and watch a movie and chat on msn and downlaod a torrent at the same time.
Surely reason isnt so poorly coded that its unuseable on such a fast machine.

Anyone bothered to check how he's using DSP's? For instance, using discreet effects that might be better used on multiple channels/instruments/whatever, like reverb? No matter how fast your pc is, if you use multiple hungry hungry hippo DSP's, you're gonna get resources eaten up like a birthday cake.

If you haven't already, try removing & replacing DSP's one by one in order to see which ones make the most impact on your processor. Knowing with DSP's can kill your machine is important. Reverb, for instance, might be left out until the end of production, when you're ready to bounce the computationally complex things to audio.

MOK is probably right. Some plugs are terribly coded. In general Reverbs are the most CPU hungry dsps you can use. A good bench mark is to see how many convolution reverbs you can run. Also some synths are terrible. Old synths such as some of the Arturia things can be pretty terrible.
But really dude your system shouldn't be having issues. I am running Dual core at 3 ghz and have trouble pushing my cpu over 50% on some reasonable full productions.

quote:

Originally posted by lowski i checked the task manager and the only thing running is reason. i also went to preferences/audio and set up the fast track. it was a little better but still the same. also, yes i put all of my synths is a combinator so its easier to keep track off. i also have a redrum for ever drum sample, which usually takes up a 14ch mixer +. then a 14 mixer for synths and a 14ch mixer for fx, which i only use about half of. then thoughs 3 mixers runthrough a master mixer. oh also i have my kick and sub bass going through its own mixer as well. i would say theres probably 200-300 devices by the time i've put all the parts into a song. so as you can see it's quite a bit i'm asking from the program. i haven't set up the comp i just bought. i'm gonna try and figure out the problem with this existing one first. transfering all the files is gonna take forever and i'm not really looking forward to it hahaha

MOK - You have a point I saw Lowski's earlier post but didnt read it through. I'm not sure how many devices I have in one song on average but 200-300 seems too many.

Lowski - if you want send me an RPS of a track in question ill just see if it plays on mine? Maybe it's the amount of devices you have running? Of course I'd understand if you didnt want to do this.

dj rann , shit bro im on vista home premium hahaha

yeah when i open up the task manager nothing is running, just reason.

as for the shit sound; it kinda sounds like a cd skipping forward, lots of glitchy sounds. everything else sounds clear though. it goes along with the dps meter/ cpu meter(reason 3) when it hts the red it starts skipping through and making a horrible glitch sound.

my computer came with 2 sound card. 1 was a primary sound card and the other was realtek. both hae the same result. even when i loaded the fast track (and yes i set it up in the reason preferances) its was a little better but still the same problem.

every computer i have used reason on, thisbeing my 4th has had the same problem. so i just keep getting better ones.

lots of good advice guys thank you, seriously.

i dont really care if im using xp or vista, all my comps came with vista.

music2dance2. i will send you a song im having problems with . the only thing is that i use all drum samples from outside or reason , and pretty much all my synths are bought refills. but at least you will be able to see how i build a song. i know i waste energy like crazy but the way i build a song helps me keep it orginazed. m

maybe i will actually post this for everyone, hahaha.

rapidshare work??

[[ LINK REMOVED ]]



if all else fails i might take my comp back to best buy and get them to save my reason fills and refills and ask for them to take out everything i dont need. i might even open up this site and let them read it becuase i dont really know much about computers.

either way try out that rns file. and thanks to everyone for there input. much appreciated !!!

The pc techs will hate you if you try to get them to do all that.
The best thing you could do is learn learn learn, as this is obviously an important subject. You can solve this yourself once you know where these problems lie. Keep troubleshooting, save yourself some money. And for gods sake, don't entrust your audio software, sample collection, and saved projects with a PC tech. They don't know, nor care, what this stuff is, and there's a good chance you might lose stuff you didn't want to lose.

BTW the skipping you're hearing is called ASIO overload. Tell us about your VST's man. Its either those, or things eating up your system resources. I think its a combination, but I highly suspect its mostly the VST's.

quote:

Originally posted by Sanguis Mortuum Yeah, the most common tweak for people with Vista installed is to format their hard drive and install XP...

I am using Vista and can run Live with butt loads of instruments, media player, sidebar, all graphics there and no glitches. Only if I run at 96khz, and for that I will use higher latency. I am running dual core amd 4200, with a Focusrite Saffire interface. No problems here, can't say I don't want faster but, it runs real smooth for me,Reason does too.

I say its probably his soundcard settings, latency or ASIO drivers.


edit****- also I use no tweaks, except- put graphics card settings on Performance, instead of Quality, then if I play a video game i just switch it back to High Quality. Thats the only tweak I use and runs fine.

Agreed if you decide you have to to go back to the tech guys just make sure you have a back up of everything. If you cant do it yourself.

You also mentioned that this happens on all your PC's.

That seems to me its the amount of devices you have running. Or the way you are using your devices.

You can send a published file which will play all your refills and samples, incase you wasnt aware. No worries any ill give this a run through

quote:

Originally posted by lowski dj rann , shit bro im on vista home premium hahaha yeah when i open up the task manager nothing is running, just reason.

You select the tab called: Processes, it should say a total somewhere.

This ran up to a point on my PC and then stopped in the break down.

Ive just had a quick glance and you have to reduce the amount of the devices you have. I see your using a single redrum for individual sounds, each with there own effects/processors. YOu could just use 2 or 3 at most to do this. I'll take a closer look but this is definatley where your prob is i'm sure.

ok had another look. I couldnt go through it all in detail right now, but i reckon its over kill on your devices i.e. eq's & maximizers on everything.

Not sayin this shouldnt be done but I'm sure some of those sounds wont need them especailly the maximizers. Do you add these after the track is done or during?

You need to strip the track down and add only what it needs. Also i just noticed you could use an NNXT for the FX instead of several NN19's which will save the CPU usage.

If you strip down the redrum, FX/processors on sounds and NN19's for a start you should see an improvement, this wont hinder sound as you can route things differently to get the same effect you want. Try using some spiders this will help save CPU usage also. Theres lots you can do here mate, for sure.

I'd get a refund on that other PC unless your not short on cash.

Yes learning to use your DAW and plugins effciently and properly is a whole part of prduction. I had a stink computer far AGES (2ghz amd with 735 RAM looool). It was a major part of my skills to learn to make the tracks i wanted within the cpu constraints. I love reverb for instance but the machine wasnt grunty enough to run even one instance of Perfect Space. On my new system (3ghz Dual Core with only 2 gigs of RAM atm) can basically run as many as i want
To actually get the stuff i wanted to make done i had to basically work out a system to work around the CPU limitations. Plenty of freezing. I often couldnt add some effects untill a certain stage. ie. reverbs lol. Also i used to generally have to bounce the whole track down and the take it to a new project file then add the effect, sweeps and crashes etc. Also did this with the vocals.
I still do some cpu saving things even on the new machine. For instance although Sonar supports proper sidechaing with sends, i use a lot of sidechain compression form the kick. To do this i make a kick track and run it the lenght of the project and mute it. If i was to use the sidecahing in sonar i would have to make a send from the ducking kick to every other track compressor i wanted to duck with. So i just put one instance of DB audioware Dynamic Processor on it and assign a send and then every channel i want to duck i can just throw another BD on it and assign the recive to the ducker kick.
Much easier .
Although you must truly be making some comlex tracks mate because even the computer you had when you started the post should be able to handle heaps!.
One other thing i have always found the ASIO drivers to be terrible. I have used Acid Pro, Fruity loops and now use Sonar. Sonar doesnt recomend the ASIO drivers. Neither did Acid Pro to my memory. I do have a spasticated Audigy Platinum card. Maybe its ASIO is just shit ...

Sorry Lowski for the delay....work has been killing me this weekend!

OK to resolve some of the issues:

1, Music2dance2 seems to have given some really good and consrtuctive advice specifically realting to your reason project, and I too have been guitly in the past of running seperate instances of devices when you could actually consolidate your samples/syth sounds/fx/etc in to much more economic methods. This is also a really, really good learning exercise in routing, so have a go at figuring out how you can reduce your devices used, but still maintain your project.

2, What is this about 2 soundcards? Are they both active? If so, you need to sort this ASAP(!) as there is no point unless you are trying to use the I/O on both simultaneously (which is really not a good idea as in my experience this rarely ever works, apart from with specifically designed interfaces that are meant to cascade with each other such as MOTU etc.). You really need to decide which card you want to use, and actually physically remove the other one. If it is on board sound, then disable it in the BIOS, as it will do nothing apart from cause potential conflicts.

3, My advice - format you vista PC with XP. It's really simple to do Just go in to the bios (on PC power startup, hold down f8 or f10 sometimes depends on computer) and go to the boot section. Choose boot from CD as the primary boot location. save changes and exit. put the XP cd in the drive and it will boot from that. I forget the exact details, but choose install windows XP (not fix etc) on the ssystem drive, the choose the option to format all partions, then choose the newly formatted system drive to install the fresh windows xp. go through the install for windows, do the updates, install all your newly downloaded drivers(which you did before starting any of this!) for your chipset, modem, soundcard, USB midi keyboard, printer, whatever, etc. Then install all your programs (reason, wavelab etc) and make sure you then configure your programs preferences to match your setup (soundcard driver etc). Then finally, do the twaeks on page two of this thread and you should have a very happy DAW.

4, unless you really want to keep it or bestbuy have some evil returns restocking fee, take back the new computer - you old one still have some good years left in it. Don't forget, California law states you can return any bought item (undamaged by you) for refund within 30 day of purchase (yes even without the complete packaging).

Hope this helps and please let me know how you get on!

hey guys , been real busy the last few days. thanks fr all the responses, it's much appreciated.

lets see where to start.

Mok; i decided not to guy to the pc guys at least not yet. im gonna try and work my way through this problem


Lucidity; im suprised you can do all that. our comps sound do have about the same specs. i don't really know about soundcard settings, latency or ASIO drivers. well i know about latency and i have never touched it. i guess that could be where some problems are coming from. as for my sound card i either set it on one of the 2 options that came with the computer. primary or realtek. i find that having on the realtek soundcard lets me run more dvices smoothly. i have no idea what a asio driver is. i downloaded one that someone mentioned early in this thread but i have no idea how to use it.

flutlicht junky; you might be on to something. when i hit process there tons of things listed. i dont even know what most of them are. sysmtem idle is at 90+/- cpu. that doesn't seem good. almost everything else is at 0 though. not even too sure what all that meens

music2dance2; thanks for looking at the song. overkill huh? shit. i always build my songs like this. my default track is a like how you see it but with empty redrums and combinators. all the redrums have eq on them. the problem with having more sounds to a redrum is ive i have to go back and eq certain sounds i think im gonna run into trouble. i have always buildt my songs like this so to change nomight be a bit difficult. but there are some things you have mentions that i can apply. one quesiont though do you think my new pc will be able to handle what i'm doing or should i take it back?

theartfulducker; what you just mentioned seems to be way beyond my skill level. hahaha thanks for the input though still apprciated.

DJ RANN; yes Music2dance2 for sure has some excellent point. i do really need to try and use only one device for fx and just route them different , like through a spider or something. the sad this is i don't even know how to do that but i'm sure i can figure it out.

with the soundcards; when i go in reason to preferences/audio/audio card driver. theres a bunch listed. first no sound, DX primary sound, DX speakers (realtek HD audio), DX realtek digital output(realtek HD audio;this one has no sound, MME speakers(realtek HD), MME realtek digital output; also no sound. i always select DX speakers (realtek HD audio). this seems to have the best sound.

as for loading xp and doing all these this you listed below im a bit hesitant. as i'm sure it's quit obvious i dont reallt know anything about computers and the last time i tried doing as you said. it left me not even being able to play the intros of my songs with out the dps maxing out in the red and sounding horrible. not that i don't appreciate it , i just don't know what i'm doing well enough to try this out. i'm gonna get one of my friends that knows about computers to read all this and see if he can make any sense of it. hopefully so becuase at this point i cant do anything in reason with out the dps sitting in the reds. this will probably take a few days to a week to get him to help so i will post again once i'm at this step.

thanks everyone for the help and input.

Hey Lowski, glad to hear you're going to work through it.

It really isn't that difficult to get your PC and projects working to how you want them.

You need to get your hardware in order, then your OS in order, Then then your programs correctly set up, then your sequencer/projects made as efficient as possible. When you've done these you really will not have any more problems.

quote:

Originally posted by lowski with the soundcards; when i go in reason to preferences/audio/audio card driver. theres a bunch listed. first no sound, DX primary sound, DX speakers (realtek HD audio), DX realtek digital output(realtek HD audio;this one has no sound, MME speakers(realtek HD), MME realtek digital output; also no sound. i always select DX speakers (realtek HD audio). this seems to have the best sound.

Unfortunately, you do not have an asio option for your soundcard and honestly with the sort of projects you are trying to do, you need to think seriously about getting a soundcard or audio interface. Even a cheap one like the M-audio delta audiophile (2in 2 out for about $80) will see make a big difference in terms of quality. Don't go for anything less than this (especially not a soundblaster as they will also be below spec for audio). Normally I wouldn't give advice about upgrading or buying a soundcard to deal with processing problems (and it will not directly fix this) but when trying to play back so many intruments or large projects, in this case it will make a difference.
Your current soundcard (I'm talking about the realtek one as the other is basically useless and should be disabled), only has MME drivers which can be "wrapped" with the asio4all driver you mentioned finding in another thread but really this is a (small) band aid and not a cure. Get a proper soundcard and latency issues will be drastically reduced and you computer will become better at processing audio.

quote:

as for loading xp and doing all these this you listed below im a bit hesitant. as i'm sure it's quit obvious i dont reallt know anything about computers and the last time i tried doing as you said. it left me not even being able to play the intros of my songs with out the dps maxing out in the red and sounding horrible. not that i don't appreciate it , i just don't know what i'm doing well enough to try this out. i'm gonna get one of my friends that knows about computers to read all this and see if he can make any sense of it. hopefully so becuase at this point i cant do anything in reason with out the dps sitting in the reds. this will probably take a few days to a week to get him to help so i will post again once i'm at this step.

Doing what I mentioned in the tweaks post only caused issues because I thought you were on XP and not vista. Those tweaks are not meant for vista, hence the problems but sorry, should have made sure first.

As for the formatting it is really, really simple and there is nothing more to than was put in my later post about how to format to XP. I do it about once a year anyway to make sure my computer runs a good as possible, as trust me it makes a huge difference. If you're going to be working on PC's you should really learn how to do this. Unfortunately, PC's are not like macs which (for the most part) just take care of themselves. PC require a lot more user maintenance. Also, both Vista and XP are not audio specific OS's - we use them specifically for audio and probably less than 3% of the time spent by microsoft coding either of them was spent in consideration of audio functions. that is why those tweaks (at least for XP) can make such a difference.

As for the background processes you have running - this is again more reason to format and start fresh. It will have so much crap going on in the background that is doing nothing more than sapping the life out of your CPU.

Here's how to do it step by step:

XP Formatting Link 1

or (a better guide with screenshots)

XP format and install

It's so easy and takes about 45mins. Just remember to back everything up (on to an external drive/DVD's/other internal drive which is not going to be formatted/etc) and get all the new drivers for all your hardware before you do this.

I know it seems like a mountain if you've never done it but it really is very easy and will make a huge difference.

I initially posted a thread about how vista sucked a while back because I had a number of crashes during setup.

TIP: As soon as you switch Vista on, go to backup and do an image backup and store it somewhere safe. I did this and used it in the first hour...ha ha. Image backup is only available on some versions of vista.

Anyhow that was off topic. I persisted with Vista and it's all running perfectly fine now incl. Cubase SX3, Reason 4 rewired, several VST's including Access Virus TI. It's all pretty stable and performs nicely.

I think you need to be looking at the number of devices you're using in Reason. For instance why are you using a seperate Redrum for every sample? I don't see the point of that.

Post your reason file so we can all download and check how it runs on our pc's. That's the way forward.

I initially posted a thread about how vista sucked a while back because I had a number of crashes during setup.

TIP: As soon as you switch Vista on, go to backup and do an image backup and store it somewhere safe. I did this and used it in the first hour...ha ha. Image backup is only available on some versions of vista.

Anyhow that was off topic. I persisted with Vista and it's all running perfectly fine now incl. Cubase SX3, Reason 4 rewired, several VST's including Access Virus TI. It's all pretty stable and performs nicely.

I think you need to be looking at the number of devices you're using in Reason. For instance why are you using a seperate Redrum for every sample? I don't see the point of that.

Post your reason file so we can all download and check how it runs on our pc's. That's the way forward.

quote:

Originally posted by lowski sysmtem idle is at 90+/- cpu. that doesn't seem good.

Thats normal. Just represents how most of the cpu is doing nothing (idle) so don't worry about that one

well since were all on this topic i also i had a question because im dealing with some of the same problems it's just with fl studio....

I tried changing the audio settings in the program to use the asio driver but when i changed it......fl doesnt even play a sound not one sound so i uninstalled and reinstalled and i still have the same problem any way on how to fix this problem please........i'm also running with an hp do you think that might be a problem as well?

As a general note, if you're using a home/office brand PC (especially HP) for Audio specific purposes you have to realise there is so much software pre loaded on that machine that has nothing to do with Audio. It's trying to be this home, multimedia, gaming, DTP, worprocessing, internet, educational, photoalbum, do-all-things-for-all-people computer.

HP also, love to promote their own brand within their own computer so a lot of it is also designed to keep flashing the HP product gourps to you.

All of this means when you go to use it for a specific use, it will not be anywhere as efficient as another computer that is configured or tailored for that use. To simplify, the more stuff it has running that has nothing to do with the task in hand, the slower it will go.

Even the version of windows that comes with it (yes the disk as well as the preinstalled version) will have a load of extra HP bullshit built in that you will probably never use or need.

People have got vista running fine now but it seems like extra hassle to get it set correctly not to mention that not all hardware manufacturers have vista supported yet. Anyway, I heard that Microsoft are bringing out a completely new OS (not vista based at all) in a couple years so what's the point in trying to learn it. Stick with XP - you know it works and everything has support.

As for the ASIO problem with FL - What soundcard do you have?

i think its Conexant HD-Audio SmartAMC HD2...not sure if this correct...but this what i see on my comp so?

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