Reaper Reaping Too Much CPU

[hutto]

I began recording an album on my laptop. (I no longer have a desktop) I have 3GB of ram. I use the old Fast-track USB. It started with the idea of Drums, Guitars, Bass, Vocals. Simple. Fast. Now there's samples, some orchestral parts, and etc.

I have all of my guitars, bass, and lead/melody parts frozen. Im using Superior with Metal Machine cymbals with Metal! shells, and I wont freeze it until the last second, because I add to the drums just about every time I open the project.

Now, its time for some guest leads, and vocals. I began doing some scratch work on my vocals and after adding one track, it has just tanked my CPU with stuttering. The latency is horrid because of the ass-track.

I asked for help on the Cockos forums, got some kinda vague answers. I know REAPER, but I don't the depths of it, or tricks.

Here's the reply:

if you render a stereo mix of the project as a stem and import it as a new track, the rendered mix will be in time (sync) with the project. You can save that track as a new temp project and record to it. (Hopefully you can get just the few tracks and one amp sim running with a small disc buffer.) Then open up the original project and literally copy/paste the new recorded tracks into the original.

I took about a month off from the project, and I couldnt figure it out. I made a render of the master mix and none of it synced up with my tempo changes.

Can anyone help me on this fucking shit, so I can get it done? I would appreciate it. I dont know what to do.

Thank you

 

[Plendakor]

Where's your buffer at ?
A small buffer is fine for short latency, but won't suffice as the project expands on a less capable system. You'll have to make a compromise and raise the buffer a little, and that will add a little latency.

There are several ways of going around that. For instance, if you track an amp with DI, you can just have the buffer at the maximum and don't worry about latency.

Do you NEED to hear the signal as it goes through the computer ? (By that, I mean hearin it through your computer speakers)
Disable any effect that are not vital to the tracking, worry about that later once everything is recorded on the disk.

 

[hutto]

Where's your buffer at ?
A small buffer is fine for short latency, but won't suffice as the project expands on a less capable system. You'll have to make a compromise and raise the buffer a little, and that will add a little latency.

There are several ways of going around that. For instance, if you track an amp with DI, you can just have the buffer at the maximum and don't worry about latency.

Do you NEED to hear the signal as it goes through the computer ? (By that, I mean hearin it through your computer speakers)
Disable any effect that are not vital to the tracking, worry about that later once everything is recorded on the disk.

I currently have it sitting at 521. I use 416 usually when tracking. Its not great on the latency, but its trackable, and doesnt stutter.

I do like to hear myself when I track vocals. Low in the mix so I push harder.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

I'm gradually starting to have this problem myself as I've bought more plugins over time (bus compressors, tape saturation, etc). Reaper allows you to make custom scripts, so theoretically you could make a script that automatically changes the buffer setting to the highest you can stomach doing vocals/guitar, but only when you hit the live record monitoring button, and then another script that changes it to an incredibly high buffer setting as soon as you turn record monitoring off. I might try to do it myself this weekend.

 

[Terminus]

I have 3GB of ram, and when I record any instruments on my profire, I have to take any plugins unimportant to tracking offline to avoid them using cpu and/or ram. When recording I only have the drums going other than monitoring the guitar/bass being tracked, and when doing vocals, only the rhythm guitars. Also with buffering you have to set it to something like 64 samples (or as low as yours will go) and when you're done tracking you have to pull that buffer up to a higher number to mix your project, I just put it all the way up to 4096 samples. Dont leave any tracks armed for recording either, I've seen friends do that and it will eat up cpu cycles as well.

 

[hutto]

I have 3GB of ram, and when I record any instruments on my profire, I have to take any plugins unimportant to tracking offline to avoid them using cpu and/or ram. When recording I only have the drums going other than monitoring the guitar/bass being tracked, and when doing vocals, only the rhythm guitars. Also with buffering you have to set it to something like 64 samples (or as low as yours will go) and when you're done tracking you have to pull that buffer up to a higher number to mix your project, I just put it all the way up to 4096 samples. Dont leave any tracks armed for recording either, I've seen friends do that and it will eat up cpu cycles as well.

Im using ASIO on my computer, and not the Fast-track as my soundcard. The Fast-track acts weird on Vista. I guess I could try using the line mix knob and turning live monitoring off for vocals. Thus not worrying about the latency too much.

The only effects I currently have running are passes and Superior. Superior runs at about 19% and my passes at 2.5% each.

Ive frozen my guitars tracks each about 6 times and its eaten a lot MB. I rendered the drums down once. I have no clue how much space it ate up. Shits gotten too messy.

 

[Plendakor]

Vista

/Thread.

 

[hutto]

/Thread.

Yep.

I was given the free upgrade to 7. Just never did it, and eventually lost the disc.

 

[Plendakor]

You don't need the disc. Call Microsoft, they'll give you your license. Get the installer from wherever / borrow it.
but get rid of that POS as soon as you can lol ... brings me back some nightmares to talk about it.

 

[hutto]

You don't need the disc. Call Microsoft, they'll give you your license. Get the installer from wherever / borrow it.
but get rid of that POS as soon as you can lol ... brings me back some nightmares to talk about it.

The disc was making me back up all my shit on another drive, or discs. So, I never did it. Im too lazy to go buy an external hard drive.

 

[bryan_kilco]

I have the same problem on a PC that isn't even 2 years old with 16GB of RAM. It seriously frustrates me

Literally I'll have drums (rendered), 2 rhythm guitars, and bass (guits to a bus with single guitar chain and bass with processing). Something is wrong. I'm going to try a TI chipset soon.

 

[Plendakor]

You don't need an external drive, you just use gparted and create a 2nd partition, then format C and install Windows.

If you're too lazy for that tho, well, can't help you lol

 

[hutto]

You don't need an external drive, you just use gparted and create a 2nd partition, then format C and install Windows.

If you're too lazy for that tho, well, can't help you lol

Then I will call Microsoft Monday and ask for a new dvd. Thanks!

 

[Terminus]

You don't even need a new disc, you can download windows from the microsoft website and put it on a flash drive (that can be made bootable). I downloaded Win7 and installed it this way.

 

[hutto]

You don't even need a new disc, you can download windows from the microsoft website and put it on a flash drive (that can be made bootable). I downloaded Win7 and installed it this way.

Thanks, ill dig around.


I finally just froze my drums tracks down, and got rid of any Fx I could. Vocals went ok. A little bit of stuttering. Got all the main tracks before my voice had enough.

Thanks guys fer your help.