High power usage in Cakewalk

[Pragi]

1 hour ago, Max Arwood said:

There is a midi cache setting somewhere too. I have mine wide open. It can cause very slight delay on start while it filled the buffers. 
 

Buffers 128

playback

Prepare using 1000 ms buffers

Hope this helps  

 

 That´s what I´m writing about.

[Steev]

Doesn't look like a power problem to me. Looks more like your "High Performance 900 hp HEMI Hell Cat" of a computer is stuck in traffic.

Doesn't matter how much horsepower you have if there's too many other vehicles ahead of you all trying to get off the same exit ramp from the superhighway. BOTTLENECKS occur when you try to stream 32 lanes of traffic into 2.

Freezing MIDI SYNTHS you aren't currently working with as in recording/sequencing/performing tracks.  There is absolutely NO reason to keep them online, i.e. reperforming already sequenced parts & constantly sending 100's to 1000'S of MIDI Note, CC (control changes) and PC (program changes) thru the MIDI buss.

By adding more MIDI synths to an already congested MIDI buss, you are creating more high traffic "bottlenecks" which causes the DAW to stop the sound engine and simply wait for all the messages to get thru.

[jono grant]

I would freeze things if I could. I need to get at each and every track too often to deal with freeze/unfreeze. 

Purging samples in Kontakt help. I'm also going to try some of the midi setting ideas above and will report back.

Thanks!

J 

[Guest]

 

Quote

  On 1/7/2024 at 3:22 AM, Steev said:

 

You say you CAN'T freeze synths? You can worry about "Purging samples in Kontakt" but you CAN'T deal with taking a COUPLE OF SECONDS to freeze/unfreeze TRACKS in CAKEWALK? Do you have any idea of how arrogant and lazy that makes you sound? ????

Come ON Bro, you didn't even TRY  freezing tracks did ya?? Too busy  "Purging samples in Kontakt", is that even a thing that ya actually need to do? ? I'm not a big fan of using NI synth tech, I've always found it to be glitchy, but I'm thinking maybe I might have caused some of the problems trying to make it do things it was incapable of doing. We are all or have been guilty of that, and so, all assumptions and opinions aside, I'm think'in if Kontakt doesn't purge is own samples they most likely don't need purging. 

And I just noticed your signature describing the absolute WORSE computer configuration I've ever seen! ? I do believe you have more important things to tend to before worrying about freezing tracks & purging samples.

"Intel Core i9-9900K CPU@4.85 GHz, Win 10 Pro, 64 GB DDR4 RAM.  2 x UAD Apollo Thunderbolt, 1 UAD Octo and 1 UAD Quad PCIe card. 2 x M.2  SSD drives, 1 x 8TB Sata drive. Cakewalk by BandLab"

Are these a string "Typos"? This may read like a real "Cup of Drool"? bragging rights dream machine to a "Gamer Junky" for stealing cars, killing monsters, or blowing stuff up (including melting down your computer), but as far as DAW's are concerned, it's a very expensive waste of money "CLUSTERTURD". ?

SOO......... From your own description,  am I correct in assuming that you're OVERCLOCKING an already more than powerful and fast enough Intel i9 CPU from stable 3.60 g/Hz up to a ridiculously stupid UNSTABLE & POINTLESS SPEED of 4.85 g/Hz? WHY? And "Just Because You Can." is not a valid answer!

And WHY are trying to use FOUR AUDIO INTERFACES ALL AT ONCE? I see 2 Thunderbolt interfaces and 2 PCIe interfaces??

BTW, Windows actually doesn't actually fully support Thunderbolt devices which were specifically designed by Apple for APPLE MAC CORE AUDIO DRIVERs Thunderbolt devices was specifically designed for, but Thunderbolt v2 and v3 can be "adapted" into "some" but not "all" USB3.2-C ports, and AMD's "Display Ports" if your graphics card is PCIe 16x supports full duplex I/O streaming, you're good to go for 8 lanes of pristine video & 8 24-bit audio tracks at once. Very problematic Thunderbolt is thru USB 3.2-C, depending on what chipsets the manufacturer installed which motherboards.? I know this to be true because I tried it with my UA Apollo 8 Thunderbolt 2 into a USB 3.2-C on my Windows computer. It worked, but was problematic and didn't perform nearly as good or FAST as my Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 USB 2 Interface, and I'm not willing to give up 8 lanes of PCIe x16 bandwidth on my AMD FirePro W 7100 graphics card I desperately need for smooth and fast operation with Vegas Pro 18 video plugins, editing and rendering. But the Apollo 8 runs GREAT plugged into the Display Port on my 2012 IMac! ?? 2012 was the last year Apple made iMac's with Firewire ports, they didn't have Thunderbolt ports yet, but they had AMD graphics with a DisplayPort so that's how I even found the hack out in the Pro Tools user forum to port Thunderbolt devices on early Mac's thru DisplayPort, so all is well.

 HOWEVER!  CbB will only patch into and run off ONE Audio Interface Master Clock Source, and unless they are all synced together under the same "Clock Source" thru the same Buss the other 3 will just conflict with each other, wreak havoc in the Serial & USB-C 3.2 Busses, Windows Registry & Device Manager. Absolutely NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would recommend doing that!

And for GOD'S & your COMPUTER'S SAKE STOP OVER CLOCKING! An i9 already has more speed and power then you'll ever need to run Cakewalk, and over clocking is a GAMER HACK, Cakewalk IS NOT A GAME, and the rules are different for CREATING music BY YOURSELF, than they are with PLAYING with YOURSELF. And yeah, pun intended.

 You don't actually die, hurt yourself or lose anything in a video game by crashing. But in a DAW project you can lose MANY hours, days, months, and even years of work and THAT can FAQ'in STING! ???

SAY NO TO SPEED! And yeah, pun intended. ✌

void all warranties and support from all software & hardware vendors and insurance. Are you using a liquid nitrogen cooling system so it doesn't overheat, explode, or throttle down to the speed of an old 1st gen Intel Core Duo? And has absolutely NO POSITIVE effect on the speed of your audio interfaces latency, digital audio converter accuracy and or stability of Windows OS and Cakewalk DAW or the quality of the music. And last but certainly NOT Least an Unstable COMPUTER CONFIGURATION!

Ever hear the expression "SPEED KILLS!"? Well, it's actually a bit more than just an expression.

And so the real questions here are; "How many audio tracks to you need to record at once & how fast you need to go to record them?"

lol, what a  d o u c h e, the real question is what business is it of yours what anyone else does with their PC, you don't know what someone may or may not use their pc for, you don't know jack sh!t. yeah yeah, youre trying to help solve a problem, why not build a PC for them and give them strict instructions on how it must be used from the PC bible according to Steev

Anyway,  good to see you haven't changed over the years, still the arrogant, smart  a r s e, know all  p r i c k  you've always been ?

Edited January 9 by Artie Choke
Added 'Steev's' deleted' quote back for reference'

[Starship Krupa]

The indication of very high power usage isn't necessarily cause for alarm in the DAW world. It probably just means that Cakewalk is keeping all the cores lit up and running, rather than letting them park or sleep. Not a bad thing, unless it leads to temperature throttling. The power usage stat is useful in situations where you're trying to figure out what's sucking down your laptop battery or making your system overheat. Your 850W power supply is probably at least 100W more than is necessary to run a system like yours, so you have plenty of safety there.

Steev makes a good point (although your system isn't a "clusterturd," not wanting to freeze tracks isn't a sign of arrogance or laziness, and Windows has supported Thunderbolt since Windows 7 on Intel-based systems like yours. Older AMD motherboards and CPU's are another story as Intel made it difficult for AMD to implement the technology). Overclocking an i9-9900K isn't necessary for DAW work. Leave that for your gaming sessions. I game on my DAW system, so I do overclock, but the games I play aren't AAA titles, so they would probably run just fine at stock clock. The most demanding one I have is Red Dead Redemption 2.

For DAW use of that system, that much overclocking just makes it more likely that you'll send your CPU into thermal throttling, which you do NOT want.

A good tool to have for monitoring possible system issues is HWINFO64. It will let you see if there is any thermal throttling going on, monitor CPU and GPU clock speeds, fan speeds, etc.

I completely understand not wanting to freeze if I can avoid it. I'm constantly trying different instrument sounds, patches, tweaking patches, adjusting the synths' internal FX, etc. when I'm composing with virtual instruments, so freezing just doesn't fit that workflow. Especially with scoring work like you're doing, when I'm using orchestral sounds a big part of the process is swapping different sounds in and out to see what fits best. Do I want a sax or a trumpet? Flute or clarinet? Bassoon or trombone? Cello or viola? Brass, Woodwind, or String section?

That said, for a project with 60 instrument tracks, there might be a few you could freeze whilst you fiddle with the others?

And if KONTAKT is your main sample player, might it be more efficient to use its multitimbral capabilities to minimize the number of instances? I know that this helps for some instruments but not others. SampleTank is said to use the same amount of resources whether you have 3 instances of it or use one instance with 3 different ST instruments.

Also, try to exit other apps like Chrome when you're doing a project of this size and complexity.

[msmcleod]

9 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

And if KONTAKT is your main sample player, might it be more efficient to use its multitimbral capabilities to minimize the number of instances? I know that this helps for some instruments but not others. SampleTank is said to use the same amount of resources whether you have 3 instances of it or use one instance with 3 different ST instruments.

If you're likely to want to freeze/unfreeze regularly to edit parts, then I'd recommend using multiple instances of Kontakt. 

The CPU usage is around the same for a single instance/multiple instances (assuming you've got the multi-processor options set correctly within Kontakt).

The amount of time to freeze everything is around the same, however with multiple instances you have the option of unfreezing one of the instances in isolation - with a single instance, it's all or nothing.  Re-freezing that single instance in a multiple instance scenario is much quicker than re-freezing everything.

However, if you don't regularly edit parts and just want to freeze to allow you continue with the rest of the composition, then a single instance might be more convenient as it's a single click.

As an alternative to freezing, you could consider bouncing to a stereo track then archiving your original tracks.  I use this method when I need to re-record something later on in the mixing process and I need latency as low as possible.   

If you've got lots of tracks that need freezing, this method is often much quicker as it only requires one mix-down, rather than one per track (or one per synth).  Obviously when it comes to mix-down, you'll need to mute this track and freeze the individual tracks in order to get more granular control, but it can be useful while you're still editing/adding tracks to the project.
 

[jono grant]

On 1/6/2024 at 12:22 PM, Steev said:

 

You say you CAN'T freeze synths? You can worry about "Purging samples in Kontakt" but you CAN'T deal with taking a COUPLE OF SECONDS to freeze/unfreeze TRACKS in CAKEWALK? Do you have any idea of how arrogant and lazy that makes you sound? ????

Come ON Bro, you didn't even TRY  freezing tracks did ya?? Too busy  "Purging samples in Kontakt", is that even a thing that ya actually need to do? ? I'm not a big fan of using NI synth tech, I've always found it to be glitchy, but I'm thinking maybe I might have caused some of the problems trying to make it do things it was incapable of doing. We are all or have been guilty of that, and so, all assumptions and opinions aside, I'm think'in if Kontakt doesn't purge is own samples they most likely don't need purging. 

And I just noticed your signature describing the absolute WORSE computer configuration I've ever seen! ? I do believe you have more important things to tend to before worrying about freezing tracks & purging samples.

"Intel Core i9-9900K CPU@4.85 GHz, Win 10 Pro, 64 GB DDR4 RAM.  2 x UAD Apollo Thunderbolt, 1 UAD Octo and 1 UAD Quad PCIe card. 2 x M.2  SSD drives, 1 x 8TB Sata drive. Cakewalk by BandLab"

Are these a string "Typos"? This may read like a real "Cup of Drool"? bragging rights dream machine to a "Gamer Junky" for stealing cars, killing monsters, or blowing stuff up (including melting down your computer), but as far as DAW's are concerned, it's a very expensive waste of money "CLUSTERTURD". ?

SOO......... From your own description,  am I correct in assuming that you're OVERCLOCKING an already more than powerful and fast enough Intel i9 CPU from stable 3.60 g/Hz up to a ridiculously stupid UNSTABLE & POINTLESS SPEED of 4.85 g/Hz? WHY? And "Just Because You Can." is not a valid answer!

And WHY are trying to use FOUR AUDIO INTERFACES ALL AT ONCE? I see 2 Thunderbolt interfaces and 2 PCIe interfaces??

BTW, Windows actually doesn't actually fully support Thunderbolt devices which were specifically designed by Apple for APPLE MAC CORE AUDIO DRIVERs Thunderbolt devices was specifically designed for, but Thunderbolt v2 and v3 can be "adapted" into "some" but not "all" USB3.2-C ports, and AMD's "Display Ports" if your graphics card is PCIe 16x supports full duplex I/O streaming, you're good to go for 8 lanes of pristine video & 8 24-bit audio tracks at once. Very problematic Thunderbolt is thru USB 3.2-C, depending on what chipsets the manufacturer installed which motherboards.? I know this to be true because I tried it with my UA Apollo 8 Thunderbolt 2 into a USB 3.2-C on my Windows computer. It worked, but was problematic and didn't perform nearly as good or FAST as my Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 USB 2 Interface, and I'm not willing to give up 8 lanes of PCIe x16 bandwidth on my AMD FirePro W 7100 graphics card I desperately need for smooth and fast operation with Vegas Pro 18 video plugins, editing and rendering. But the Apollo 8 runs GREAT plugged into the Display Port on my 2012 IMac! ?? 2012 was the last year Apple made iMac's with Firewire ports, they didn't have Thunderbolt ports yet, but they had AMD graphics with a DisplayPort so that's how I even found the hack out in the Pro Tools user forum to port Thunderbolt devices on early Mac's thru DisplayPort, so all is well.

 HOWEVER!  CbB will only patch into and run off ONE Audio Interface Master Clock Source, and unless they are all synced together under the same "Clock Source" thru the same Buss the other 3 will just conflict with each other, wreak havoc in the Serial & USB-C 3.2 Busses, Windows Registry & Device Manager. Absolutely NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would recommend doing that!

And for GOD'S & your COMPUTER'S SAKE STOP OVER CLOCKING! An i9 already has more speed and power then you'll ever need to run Cakewalk, and over clocking is a GAMER HACK, Cakewalk IS NOT A GAME, and the rules are different for CREATING music BY YOURSELF, than they are with PLAYING with YOURSELF. And yeah, pun intended.

 You don't actually die, hurt yourself or lose anything in a video game by crashing. But in a DAW project you can lose MANY hours, days, months, and even years of work and THAT can FAQ'in STING! ???

SAY NO TO SPEED! And yeah, pun intended. ✌

void all warranties and support from all software & hardware vendors and insurance. Are you using a liquid nitrogen cooling system so it doesn't overheat, explode, or throttle down to the speed of an old 1st gen Intel Core Duo? And has absolutely NO POSITIVE effect on the speed of your audio interfaces latency, digital audio converter accuracy and or stability of Windows OS and Cakewalk DAW or the quality of the music. And last but certainly NOT Least an Unstable COMPUTER CONFIGURATION!

Ever hear the expression "SPEED KILLS!"? Well, it's actually a bit more than just an expression.

And so the real questions here are; "How many audio tracks to you need to record at once & how fast you need to go to record them?"

 

 

Hey man, what's with your anger? You don't understand AT ALL what I said. Anyhow, I don't have time for idiot trolls. I know how to freeze an f'in soft synth. 

You sound like a deranged idiot on Twitter. 

[jono grant]

On 1/7/2024 at 4:25 AM, msmcleod said:

If you're likely to want to freeze/unfreeze regularly to edit parts, then I'd recommend using multiple instances of Kontakt. 

The CPU usage is around the same for a single instance/multiple instances (assuming you've got the multi-processor options set correctly within Kontakt).

The amount of time to freeze everything is around the same, however with multiple instances you have the option of unfreezing one of the instances in isolation - with a single instance, it's all or nothing.  Re-freezing that single instance in a multiple instance scenario is much quicker than re-freezing everything.

However, if you don't regularly edit parts and just want to freeze to allow you continue with the rest of the composition, then a single instance might be more convenient as it's a single click.

As an alternative to freezing, you could consider bouncing to a stereo track then archiving your original tracks.  I use this method when I need to re-record something later on in the mixing process and I need latency as low as possible.   

If you've got lots of tracks that need freezing, this method is often much quicker as it only requires one mix-down, rather than one per track (or one per synth).  Obviously when it comes to mix-down, you'll need to mute this track and freeze the individual tracks in order to get more granular control, but it can be useful while you're still editing/adding tracks to the project.
 

Thanks Mark. Ya, I'm using several instances of kontakt. Actually, increasing Cakewalk's i/o buffers helped overcome the power reading in task manager, suggested by a user above. I'll play around with the multi-processor settings in kontakt as well. so far, the problem seems better though. Thanks  

 

 

  

[jono grant]

On 1/6/2024 at 6:55 PM, Starship Krupa said:

The indication of very high power usage isn't necessarily cause for alarm in the DAW world. It probably just means that Cakewalk is keeping all the cores lit up and running, rather than letting them park or sleep. Not a bad thing, unless it leads to temperature throttling. The power usage stat is useful in situations where you're trying to figure out what's sucking down your laptop battery or making your system overheat. Your 850W power supply is probably at least 100W more than is necessary to run a system like yours, so you have plenty of safety there.

Steev makes a good point (although your system isn't a "clusterturd," not wanting to freeze tracks isn't a sign of arrogance or laziness, and Windows has supported Thunderbolt since Windows 7 on Intel-based systems like yours. Older AMD motherboards and CPU's are another story as Intel made it difficult for AMD to implement the technology). Overclocking an i9-9900K isn't necessary for DAW work. Leave that for your gaming sessions. I game on my DAW system, so I do overclock, but the games I play aren't AAA titles, so they would probably run just fine at stock clock. The most demanding one I have is Red Dead Redemption 2.

For DAW use of that system, that much overclocking just makes it more likely that you'll send your CPU into thermal throttling, which you do NOT want.

A good tool to have for monitoring possible system issues is HWINFO64. It will let you see if there is any thermal throttling going on, monitor CPU and GPU clock speeds, fan speeds, etc.

I completely understand not wanting to freeze if I can avoid it. I'm constantly trying different instrument sounds, patches, tweaking patches, adjusting the synths' internal FX, etc. when I'm composing with virtual instruments, so freezing just doesn't fit that workflow. Especially with scoring work like you're doing, when I'm using orchestral sounds a big part of the process is swapping different sounds in and out to see what fits best. Do I want a sax or a trumpet? Flute or clarinet? Bassoon or trombone? Cello or viola? Brass, Woodwind, or String section?

That said, for a project with 60 instrument tracks, there might be a few you could freeze whilst you fiddle with the others?

And if KONTAKT is your main sample player, might it be more efficient to use its multitimbral capabilities to minimize the number of instances? I know that this helps for some instruments but not others. SampleTank is said to use the same amount of resources whether you have 3 instances of it or use one instance with 3 different ST instruments.

Also, try to exit other apps like Chrome when you're doing a project of this size and complexity.

Thanks, I got some better results raising the i/o buffers in cakewalk. I'll look into the overclocking, I didn't set that up but I can ask the bloke who did. Certain video files I have running in CW can slow things down as well. Cakewalk isn't great when running certain video codecs.  Track and synth freezing is great for sure. Some folks don't realize though, when composing a large score to a film, there are many tweaks being done constantly to most of the tracks, especially when there is experimentation going on. At the same time you are building a score you are also still writing the score. Time frame given to work on film and tv is incredibly short these days , it's not like you get everything ready beforehand and then just build it all at once. it can be a gradual process. Lastly. the UAD system is another element here. It's very mac-centric and running on Thunderbolt. I had less issues when running the UAD system with firewire 800. (Before did the mod to TB). J 

[Starship Krupa]

14 hours ago, jono grant said:

Some folks don't realize though, when composing a large score to a film, there are many tweaks being done constantly to most of the tracks, especially when there is experimentation going on. At the same time you are building a score you are also still writing the score.

I get it, if you're using orchestral libraries, you're trying different articulations, etc. Similar for ITB electronic music. Composing, sound design, they're all part of the process. It's not the same process as sitting down with a song already in mind, and your task is to turn your song into a recording. It's more recursive.

I've not done commercial scoring for pay, but I've composed music to go along with short movies that I made myself.

I've done the rock band, singer-songwriter thing, "write" a song on guitar or piano, and I've done it the other way, too. These days mostly the other way.

[msmcleod]

One other thing you could try... I've found that having lots of small MIDI clips on a track eats up way more CPU than a single MIDI clip on the track.   

If you've got lots of smallish MIDI clips, try consolidating them into one by selecting them and "Bounce to Clip(s)".  

[jono grant]

8 hours ago, msmcleod said:

One other thing you could try... I've found that having lots of small MIDI clips on a track eats up way more CPU than a single MIDI clip on the track.   

If you've got lots of smallish MIDI clips, try consolidating them into one by selecting them and "Bounce to Clip(s)".  

Really? I knew it was like that for wave clips, didn't know about midi clips! Cool! Thanks

[jono grant]

On 12/19/2023 at 3:44 PM, OutrageProductions said:

Does it show if search indexing or virus scan is running in BG?

You have a ton of processes in TM. Anything you can dump? My list is ⅓ of that.

Wondering that myself. I have startup items disabled except my sound card and VPN. Yet, huge list! I'll look into that. Thanks!

[Andres Medina]

About video file: I settled in H264 codec, after many trials an error tests.

Very good resolution to work with while composing, and low load in the CPU.

[jono grant]

On 1/9/2024 at 8:11 PM, Andres Medina said:

About video file: I settled in H264 codec, after many trials an error tests.

Very good resolution to work with while composing, and low load in the CPU.

Andres, with the H264, do you get the Cakewalk issue where it adds some padding at the file beginning, resulting in your exported audio being a little late? (Not late within Cakewalk but late when you export for other platforms) Curious, I've had that issue with any QT or MP4 video since version post Sonar 8.

Good to know that H264 might have less CPU load 

[Andres Medina]

On 1/16/2024 at 4:29 PM, jono grant said:

Andres, with the H264, do you get the Cakewalk issue where it adds some padding at the file beginning, resulting in your exported audio being a little late? (Not late within Cakewalk but late when you export for other platforms) Curious, I've had that issue with any QT or MP4 video since version post Sonar 8.

Good to know that H264 might have less CPU load 

The thing is, as many others on the forum point out, I rely on an external video editor. I had so many problems exporting from within CW, that I abandoned this idea.

I use Adobe Premiere, but there are plenty of video editors, some of them free, that allow you to just import your finished audio and re export the whole video+audio in any format, resolution, etc. I also re export using H264 codec. So far, no problems at all with clients.

Hope this helps!

[GBTBassist]

Hi @jono grant

Bit late to this as I just had the same issue pop up as my PC got slower and more and more dropouts.

Purely by chance I read another unrelated post that mentioned what CPU hogs the Izotope products are. I had 2 effects loaded (Insight and Tonal balance) and CPU was high (25%+) and the power usage was strong red - Very High with my GPU running at 47%.

I had already frozen all of my (mainly) Midi tracks to unload the real time effects etc.

I closed both apps (they were running in the background as I continued finessing the song).

CPU now hovering around 6%, GPU between 9% and 15% and power Low to very low. This also dropped my GPU core temperature by around 2 degrees.

May be worth adding this to any other checks you are doing (if you haven't solved it by now anyway).

If you have solved it, it'd be good to post your solution?

GBT

[Glenn Stanton]

as always - check your buffers settings - low latency with plugin hogs can yield unsatisfactory behaviour ? as a general rule - set the buffers to as high as possible that you are comfortable with. for me that is 2048. and most times even with Nectar (major hog) and Abbey Roads Chambers - seldom over 10% CPU.