Preference settings suggestions for fast PC

[dvbssman]

I'm hoping some of you may have a PC similar to mine and can suggest some Reaper Preference settings that can optimize my PC for the best performance. My projects are typically about 24 tracks with an equal balance of audio and MIDI tracks. I use lots of effect plugins and VST instruments. Here is a description of my PC and soundcard:
i7 920 quad core processor overclocked to 3.8 GHz
Six Gigabytes of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
Two Patriot Torqx solid state drives used in RAID 0 configuration
Windows 7 64 bit (use Reaper 32 bit because of plugin limitations)
Edirol FA-101 Firewire audio interface used with Edirol's ASIO driver

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[dvbssman]

Any suggestions? Even a couple of key settings would be helpful as a starting point. Thanks

[Artbay]

My computer has the i7 920, and it's wonderful for VST number-crunching. It doesn't have any of the other parts that you mention, so I can't help specifically with those.

The main thing is to make sure you have good ASIO drivers (Edirol's drivers should be fine, others may recommend ASIO4ALL), and adjust the buffers and latency for the fastest response times your soundcard can handle. I can get 6ms latency easily - the processor & drives could go lower but the soundcard is the limiting factor.

[dvbssman]

Thanks Artbay. I'll concentrate on reducing the buffer size on my Edirol and even try using the ASIO4ALL driver with it. On some other hardware I own I have found the ASIO4ALL driver to have lower latency than the factory drivers. I never expected that for a generic driver. I guess many of the manufacturers cannot program good drivers. I always do my recording with my notebook PC and then transfer the file over to my i7 desktop for all my mixing and mastering. I don't even need the Edirol for that and can just use the Intel HD chipset on the desktop's motherboard.

[ppwazzup]

One thing I find helpful if I have a lot of fx running is to right click on the items that have fx on them and click "Apply track FX to items as new take. I then make sure the new takes are all selected and disable the FX in the TCP. Doing that I can get under 6% cpu use with over 30 tracks running. I don't remove the original take or the FX because if I need to change something later I can just delete the new take and enable the fx to make my changes. Doing this also cuts WAY don't on the render time.

Hope that helps some.

Matt

[T-tone]

Originally Posted by ppwazzup

One thing I find helpful if I have a lot of fx running is to right click on the items that have fx on them and click "Apply track FX to items as new take. I then make sure the new takes are all selected and disable the FX in the TCP. Doing that I can get under 6% cpu use with over 30 tracks running. I don't remove the original take or the FX because if I need to change something later I can just delete the new take and enable the fx to make my changes. Doing this also cuts WAY don't on the render time.

Hope that helps some.

Matt

What is the TCP? because that's how I'm running all my VST and VSTi plugs is in new take

[ppwazzup]

Track Control Panel (the part on the left of your tracks)

Matt

[Bulls Hit]

Originally Posted by dvbssman

I'm hoping some of you may have a PC similar to mine and can suggest some Reaper Preference settings that can optimize my PC for the best performance. My projects are typically about 24 tracks with an equal balance of audio and MIDI tracks. I use lots of effect plugins and VST instruments. Here is a description of my PC and soundcard:
i7 920 quad core processor overclocked to 3.8 GHz
Six Gigabytes of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
Two Patriot Torqx solid state drives used in RAID 0 configuration
Windows 7 64 bit (use Reaper 32 bit because of plugin limitations)
Edirol FA-101 Firewire audio interface used with Edirol's ASIO driver

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

With an i7 and 6GB of ram, I would stick with the reaper defaults.

I've got a 3 year old core 2 with 2GB and regularly run over 100 tracks (primarily audio, but some midi) on the stock settings

[Artbay]

Originally Posted by dvbssman

...On some other hardware I own I have found the ASIO4ALL driver to have lower latency than the factory drivers. I never expected that for a generic driver...

hmm, i wouldn't have either, but that could be the case. i'll go check it out for my emu 1616m - thanks

[ARP]

I think this is all a bit overrated, tweaking, especially these days, with fast computers. I have never gained any benefits from tweaking, but I have made things worse ! One in particular was a suggestion that changing processor scheduling from programs to background services would supposedly improve things, it made everything click ! especially when using a control surface, whenever I moved a knob a I got a click ! putting it back the way it was cured it instantly ! Also, adjusting for best performance instead of best graphics made no deference whatsoever, in fact in made me very depressed having to look at such a boring screen !!!

ARP.

[T-tone]

Originally Posted by ppwazzup

Track Control Panel (the part on the left of your tracks)

Matt

Thanks Matt
I'm brand new to Reaper and still trying to figure out the lay out and menu and all of it's fetures. Which is quite a task esp. after using Cool Edit since 98 and last up dated to AA1.5 which doesn't support VSTi like Reaper does.

[mtsproductions]

i7 920 quad core processor overclocked to 3.8 GHz
Six Gigabytes of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
Two Patriot Torqx solid state drives used in RAID 0 configuration
Windows 7 64 bit (use Reaper 32 bit because of plugin limitations)

Wow and you are running into issues with that set up???
Solid state drives in Raid 0 that is overkill "i think" but i wish i could do that.
From your specs i would say that its more of a driver and OS issue, i havent used edirol interfaces but your hardware is garbage (not just yours but in general) if you dont have good drivers or support for it. Make sure your dirvers are up to date.
I wouldnt overclock in audio applications the system becomes more unstable when the cpu is overclocked. Maybee experiment with your memory clock settings lower the mhz to like 1200 or even 800 and up the timing i find that to be more of performance boost rather than overclocking the CPU.
I assume that you bilt this machine yourself so you would know what you are doing.

[dvbssman]

Good suggestion from all so thanks. Actually I am not having any problems with my setup other than I am surprised that I cannot get lower latency from Edirol sound module. The smallest buffer setting on the Edirol driver causes cracks and pops and I thought that with my very powerful PC I could get down to a few milliseconds. The two solid state drives operating in RAID 0 is the best investment I made when I built this PC and not because I needed to play/record dozens of tracks at 192 kHz/24 bit. I love how all my programs and plug-ins load almost instantly. I also delight in the fact that the drives are virtually indestructible...no crash worries in between my backups. The drives are 64 G/bytes each so only have 128 G/bytes total but the PC is only used for music and I did not have need for more space than that. I do have some libraries on a one terabyte USB drive that I use sometimes.

[shakey.oberon]

Originally Posted by mtsproductions

i7 920 quad core processor overclocked to 3.8 GHz

I wouldnt overclock in audio applications the system becomes more unstable when the cpu is overclocked.

this is incorrect, the system will only become unstable if you have gone too far, or overclocked without sufficient voltage or cooling

[mtsproductions]

Originally Posted by dvbssman

. I do have some libraries on a one terabyte USB drive that I use sometimes.

That is probably where you are getting your pops and clicks usb is too slow!

You should do some more reasearch on pdc latency, you can only go so low even with the most powerfull hardware, maybee usb 3.0 will be different, but there needs to be a buffer anyway i got mine at 2.7 ms no pops or clicks.
Correct me if i ma wrong but i thought that in raid 0 or striping you would have 64gb and not 128 because it writes half of the file to each drive??

[mtsproductions]

Originally Posted by shakey.oberon

this is incorrect, the system will only become unstable if you have gone too far, or overclocked without sufficient voltage or cooling

Do you really think that overclocking the cpu in audio applications is really necessary? Especially if you are using ASIO drivers that run as background services? I didnt say unstable i said more unstable, more voltage and cooling = more noise in a studio environment!! Your not trying to get more FPS in your game!!!!!!!!

[dvbssman]

What I understand about RAID 0 striping is that half the data gets written to each 64 G/byte drive. If I look at my local disk (C it shows I used approximately 96 G/bytes with approximately 24 G/bytes remaining unused. The OS doesn't show me two drives in the utilities. I only see the two drives in BIOS on boot up.

It is not the libraries on my external drive causing the pops on low latency settings. I was not using them when experimenting. Also the libraries I don't use are the ones stored on the USB drive. If I need to use them I shift them over to my C: drive (two solid state drives).

[GreyBeard]

Originally Posted by ARP

I think this is all a bit overrated, tweaking, especially these days, with fast computers. I have never gained any benefits from tweaking, but I have made things worse ! One in particular was a suggestion that changing processor scheduling from programs to background services would supposedly improve things, it made everything click ! especially when using a control surface, whenever I moved a knob a I got a click ! putting it back the way it was cured it instantly ! Also, adjusting for best performance instead of best graphics made no deference whatsoever, in fact in made me very depressed having to look at such a boring screen !!!

ARP.

+1 With that kind of i7 power and ram, just set it to the lowest latency and forget about it.