How Do You Manage CPU Intensive Sessions?

[wagtunes]

I am actually at my wits end with this.

4 tracks. Yes, FOUR.

Drums
Bass
Rhythm Guitar 1
Rhythm Guitar 2

I have Omnipressor on Drums and Bass.
I have Amplitude Brian May on Rhythm Guitar 1 and 2.

I can't even play the guitar parts in real time without the CPU frying and crackling all over the place.

I have what, a year ago at least, was considered a powerful PC. I have never run into a problem like this until I had at least 20 to 30 tracks.

My suspicion is that Omnipressor and/or Amplitude Brian May are CPU killers.

To put this track together, what I had to do was disable the plugins, play the parts, then, after recording them, enable the plugins and freeze the tracks.

The way I see it, that's my only option.

How do YOU handle something like this? Or is this pretty much what I have to do? It's a bit of a pain because you kind of have to guess at your plugin settings, then, if something is off, make adjustments blind and hope the adjustments are better. I can't play any of these tracks without them either having the plugins disabled or the tracks frozen.

I have to wonder how anybody even uses these plugins, but that's another issue altogether.

Please help.

[dirtysnow]

Does Amplitube still have a lower cpu mode? Worth a try if it exists. On my old laptop I would have to do similar, freezing everything possible except the armed track, disabling plugins on master etc. If I had suspicions about a particular plugin I would fire up an empty project with just that plugin/patch too see how much cpu it is after. Certain things were definitely off limits until done tracking. Cpu bottlenecks are really ungood for workflow unfortunately.

[Jafo]

Freezing tracks might work.

[wagtunes]

Freezing tracks might work.

Except I can't even record the track to begin with, with the plugin active. It crackles just playing the MIDI keyboard while the record is on. That's how bad it is. I have to record it without the plugin even on. Doing it that way you can't even tell what the track is going to sound like.

[Jafo]

Yikes, sounds like you have some pretty heavy duty issues indeed... it's been a long time since freezing the other tracks didn't solve this sort of thing for people. CPU killer indeed! Hmm, maybe recording with a second computer? That's inelegant and typically gives timing issues, but it might be feasible.

[experimental.crow]

i'd want to identify just what is sucking up all the juice ...
iirc , some of this is new kit in your setup ...

[wagtunes]

i'd want to identify just what is sucking up all the juice ...
iirc , some of this is new kit in your setup ...

Well, there are a few relatively new things going on here.

MODO Drum
Eventide Omnipressor
Amplitude Brian May

While I saw a spike with MODO Drum, it was manageable. The next addition, Brian May, I was spiking only once in a while. With the addition of Omnipressor, the spiking is all the time if Brian May is loaded. Without it loaded, CPU is fine.

So it's probably a combination of the 3.

But it's a moot point. If I need all 3 plugins for what I want to achieve, well, I need all 3 plugins. I won't leave something out. So what are my options? Don't do the song the way I want? That's not an option for me.

There has to be a solution to this.

[andrelafosse]

Do you really need the Omnipressor before you're ready to mix the tune?

[BONES]

There are easy solutions - record the tracks with lesser, less CPU intensive plugins, so you at least get a half-decent idea of how it is going to sound, then swap them out for the CPU-killers. Surely there are dozens of alternatives to Omnipressor that will get the recording done and you could record with the metronome instead of drums and bass, to free up more processing power.

[andrelafosse]

When I'm recording guitars, and absolutely need to have specific CPU-intensive plugins running in real time, what I'll often do is bounce a rough mix of the song, or just the rhythm section, down to a two-track file. I'll then import that file into a new project, record my guitar parts with that mix as a reference, do all the editing and comp'ing of the guitar tracks that I need, and then bounce the guitar parts out, to import back into the original song.

For me, this workflow is surprisingly similar to how it was recording to analog tape way back when. Very rarely were parts tracked to a pristinely-mixed, super-polished accompaniment. We'd get a rough mix that had the elements that we needed to lock in with mixed front and center, and then we'd go to work. (I'm sure you've experienced this too, Steve - I'm just thinking out loud.)

[camsr]

Try to spread the plugins out across mixer tracks, if possible. You may have 4 stems, but maybe you have an 8-core CPU? If it's feasible to do more parallel processing, it will allow more plugin instances.

[wagtunes]

Thanks for all the replies. Ultimately, this is what I'm doing. Record a track and then print it. Bring the wav file in, deleting the original track. This way, I never have more than one track with any FX on it at all. It's a little tedious but nowhere close to the hell of the 70s with having to shove 10 tracks onto a 4 track tape recorder.

We have gotten just a little bit spoiled.

[chk071]

Any way to check the specifc plugin's CPU usage in Cubase? You can do that in Studio One...

[wagtunes]

Any way to check the specifc plugin's CPU usage in Cubase? You can do that in Studio One...

If there is, I have no idea. Some plugins, like Reaktor, will show the CPU usage on the plugin itself. But if a plugin doesn't have that option I have no idea where to get it from.

I can run 30 instances of Omnisphere before my PC starts to buckle. So something has to be wrong with one of these plugins CPU usage.

[wagtunes]

Okay, did some troubleshooting and the real culprit is the brand new Eventide Omnipressor. It is an absolute CPU killer. How do they even release something like that? Granted, it sounds amazing but sheesh. It comes at a steep cost.