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10-18-2011, 02:08 AM
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#1
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 5
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New mac mini server + Lion + Apogee Ensemble = ABSOLUTE RUBBISH PERFORMANCE.
Hey Chaps. I need a hand. I am new to Reaper and might be doing something wrong...
At the moment my system is running like absolute rubbish.
The session is as follows:
11 tracks.
2 instances of EZdrummer mapped out to 5 tracks,
2 instances of Vienna Sound Library
2 instances of Kontakt 5
Total static ram usage of 1.1gb in samples.
2 Stereo hardware inserts (reainsert). 1 stereo comp inserted on an EZdrummer instance via analog connect (Ensemble). 1 TC reverb inserted on an aux channel via SPDIF optical (Ensemble). All 11 tracks sending signal to aux channel & master buss.
11 additional plugins, mainly waves API bundle and 1 instance of Audioease speakerphone.
Audio Buffer = 512 Samples. Sample rate 44.1khz.
WHEN PLAYING AUDIO reapers CPU meter reads "5.1% Total CPU Usage" (about 1% RT CPU Usage plus 4% FX CPU usage). Ram sits around 1.2gb. For all accounts the audio plays fine... incident free, nice and clean with power to spare.
But when I start and stop audio, try and add a plugin while it is playing, try to rename a track, etc, etc, 2 out of 4 CPU's spike and CPU usage rockets to 4000%!!!! Audio drops out and the computer is literally useless for several minutes... (even outside of Reaper).
This is a new mini mac server running Lion 10.7.1 & the latest version of Reaper (the beta... 4.10?). Quad core i7 2ghz processor. Dedicated 7200rpm audio harddrive and 4gb of ram.
This thing has power galore. For some reason only 5% of the CPU is used on a single core when playing audio and it works fine! It appears to have plenty of power to spare. It appears 1 CPU is never accessed, even when the CPU usage rockets to 4000%.
Why does my system suddenly shit itself when doing rather remedial tasks???
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10-18-2011, 03:23 AM
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#2
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Super Moderator (no feelings)
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: On or near a dike
Posts: 9,834
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Did that use to work before? Can you try if REAPER 32-bit gives you the same results? Are all your plug-ins available in 64-bit versions and/or is it possible that you currently use 32-bit versions?
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10-18-2011, 05:00 AM
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#3
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Civitavecchia (Italy)
Posts: 574
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how many hard drives in the box? Are there dedicated ones for both audio files and samples libraries?
If not, that's the weakest link in your system
__________________
"You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world's intrusion into this one".
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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10-18-2011, 06:28 AM
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#4
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ollie
Did that use to work before? Can you try if REAPER 32-bit gives you the same results? Are all your plug-ins available in 64-bit versions and/or is it possible that you currently use 32-bit versions?
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No, not all my plugins are available in 64bit. Disabling the bridge does offer some improvement... but only 1 instrument track and the Kontakt and VSL channels actually work. The rest is 32 bit and not loaded. The software still stalls, just for about half as long.
Did it use to work? I have come from a dual dual core 2.66ghz 2006 mac pro with a similar setup. It can't really comment on comparisons... different computer & different OS. I used to be able to achieve huge sessions that were similar in nature. All bench marks put the new mini mac well beyond that old 2006 mac pro...
I'll give the 32bit version of Reaper a whirl and post my findings. Fingers crossed!
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10-18-2011, 06:32 AM
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#5
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by matey
how many hard drives in the box? Are there dedicated ones for both audio files and samples libraries?
If not, that's the weakest link in your system
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Really? I'm not so sure. There are two hard drives, both 7200rpm. Are you saying that the mac mini and reaper can't handle 6 vsti's & one mono acoustic guitar track? I highly doubt it. I'd be extremely disappointed if that were the case. My old dying white core2duo macbook can even handle that.
I confirmed it via OSX's activity monitor and it puts the disk usage at 180kb/s when things stall. I don't think it has much to do with the harddrives at all. That is a drop in the ocean of the available bandwidth.
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10-18-2011, 10:15 AM
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#6
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Civitavecchia (Italy)
Posts: 574
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BasketCase
Are you saying that the mac mini and reaper can't handle 6 vsti's & one mono acoustic guitar track?
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I don't have any experience with any mac os system and the latest cpu's killer performances neither...
anyway, you mentioned one instance of speakerphone as well and, as far as I know, it's a convolution based processor (sample based).
maybe I could be wrong, but I've got a problem like yours definitely sorted out with three hard drives as follows: 1)os, 2)samples (vsti and convos), 3)projects audio files...
__________________
"You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world's intrusion into this one".
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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10-18-2011, 12:30 PM
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#7
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 2,301
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Kontakt and VSL are ram hungry on either Mac or Windows.
4gb is a fairly low to deal with heavy samples.
You can add 8gb or 12gb more for less than $100 and heartily boost your performance....
(my next daw will be an iMac and after the first boot up the first thing I'll do is dump another 8gb in it to prepare for Kontakt)
__________________
iMac i5quad/12gbRAM/1Tb Glyph drive/1Tb samples drive > Motu828mkII ---- Still run my GatewayM520 2.8ghz XP laptop. Video editing, 3D work and audio with zero problems.
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10-18-2011, 01:29 PM
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#8
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Belgium
Posts: 5,246
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I suspect Lion is the problem.
There are a lot of problems with USB and FW and with multiple core CPU's not performing as they should. Especially the i5 and i7.
A couple of problems have been solved in 10.7.2. Apple gives the impression that they just don't care to much. The pro user doesn't seem to be their target anymore. After all, only 14% of their turnover is from the Mac...
Also, do you have the latest driver for your Ensemble (it's from september)?
Personally, I'd consider downgrading to 10.6 if that is possible.
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10-18-2011, 06:21 PM
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#9
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TimOBrien
Kontakt and VSL are ram hungry on either Mac or Windows.
4gb is a fairly low to deal with heavy samples.
You can add 8gb or 12gb more for less than $100 and heartily boost your performance....
(my next daw will be an iMac and after the first boot up the first thing I'll do is dump another 8gb in it to prepare for Kontakt)
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Ding! Ding! Ding!
Cheers Tim, you are dead on the money. The CPU meter in Reaper only indicates about 1.2gb of ram usage, but when you look at it in OSx's activity monitor the session is split over a number of processes. Reaper is using 1.2gb. The Reaper Host i386 bridge opens as a separate application and is drawing another 1gig of ram... and VSL instances is another application drawing just under 1 gig as well. Consider this "problem" down to my unfamiliarity with reaper.
...that is almost all of the 4gig! Not to mention the mini mac uses build in graphics that also share the ram. I doubled the ram to 8gig for a lousy $70 and we are sailing smoothly! I'll see how this goes. Unfortunately the mini mac only has two ram slots. If 8gb ram chips weren't so expensive I would have just jumped straight to 16gb total. I'll see how I go with 8 for now. The prices might drop in the coming months.
Thanks for your help guys!
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