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.

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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 ...

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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.

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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.

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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

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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?