I'd say dropouts is a sign of buffer settings. I can easily track 24
simultaneous channels of audio, and haven't ever run out of power on
mixdowns, although I'm of a mind that 15 reverbs is probably a little
overkill. I admit, some plugs like to eat cycles, but I don't use them.
About the worst I've used is Acoustic Mirror and even at that I've gotten
near real time response out of minor changes, and I'm only running a 1600+
Athlon on that system with Win2K.

You must be running some hellacious number of tracks or plugs.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio

"John" wrote in message
...
From: "Arny Krueger"


A single CPU is a serious bottleneck. I max out my CPU usage on all
but the most spartan of projects.

You are aware that under some circumstances, 100% CPU does not mean that
the
CPU is 100% engaged, but rather that it is engaged in polling?


The CPU usage meter is a guideline, not an absolute. I'm talking about
the
computer choking on plugins and experiencing dropouts.


I'm disinclined to constantly have
to apply effects offline and hope that I don't need to tweak the
effect later.

What software?


Sonar 3 and Nuendo 2.

I do have 2 hard drives though! At one point I was
using a RAID setup, but found that to be overkill. The extra HDD
throughput simply wasn't needed. Processing power will always be in
a shortage.

Not necessarily.

I hope you're right.


CPU's will ever increase in power, and plugins (and
users) will increase their demand accordingly.

Are you applying effects during recording?

Never have. It wouldn't occur to me to do that.

-John Vice
www.summertimestudios.com