How much can your PC take?

[nakedjackson]

Hello all, i just finished putting together my Athlon xp2700 with 1 gig o ram and a7n8xdeluxe with an aardvark q10. I was wondering how many plugins/vsti's your pc can run before severe clipping? I ran 2 waldorf attacks, a1, dcota, and tblbassline and my dcota started distorting like crazy. Is this normal for a computer of my speed?

[toonerama]

It's a good question, but I think there's no easy answer, because the performance and bugs of various plugins really cloud the issue. There's times I've had dozens of plugins running like a charm, and times when one occurence causes a choke.

[maggotcontrol]

All of that stuff differ based on what your soundcard is, drivers, latency setting, the sample rate you're working in, the amount of tracks and which exact plugins you're running and exactly what you're trying to compare so it's really hard unless we do something like create a Sonar project with multiple tracks and occurences of the same exact plugins, same latency setting, same soundcard, drivers, etc. etc. etc. That'll narrow it down to at least your PC hardware level. Maybe we can do this here on audioforums. I know that in some newsgroups like Cakewalk.net, they do this with a small Sonar project loaded up with DXi's and plugins that come standard with the Sonar 2.0 CD and nothing else.

yoshi www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[nakedjackson]

how exactly do you propose we do this? Just give the buffer latency settings and exactly what programs we are using? Also, is it bad to switch asio settings during a project? (for example working on a project, closing cubase, changing asio settings, reopening the project in cubase)

[Bops2000]

Or the 'kick' test perhaps..


Kick the son of a gun when you get peeved at it, if it still works, it's a 'keeper'

[bubba freaktree]

it's tough to evaluate a mixture like you put down. a "classic" way to test cpu is to load the same plugin over and over and see how many you get. a reverb plugin is a good choice since they tend to be cpu hogs. with your setup, you should be able to get 35 reverbs easily. if not, somethings wrong with your configuration.