[alex reznick]

When I convert without a batch - manually, file by file -
there is no such glitching.

Sounds the the batch mode stresses the machine over a period of time and
eventually it gitches.

I doubt it: this is a 4-core 2.5 GHz machine. And Samplitude is just
about the most economical DAW out there (about 3 times less CPU than
Sonar). Just one job should not cause any CPU overload. Besides,
wouldn't maxing CPU just delay the job rather than intercepting? The
only exception to that is overheating, but Intel calibrates its
hardware with the way safe margin (20 degrees or so) for this to
become an issue under normal temperature conditions.


Does this mean that batch processing uses dither differently than the main
program?

Not necessarily - the load on the system is different because the batch mode
just bangs away on the machine quite relentlessly.

Of course I will try later today to batch process video material - it
is much heavier than audio - and then run bit by bit comparison of the
files. But I doubt CPU load is the cause.

[Arny Krueger]

"alex reznick" wrote in message

When I convert without a batch - manually, file by file
-
there is no such glitching.

Sounds the the batch mode stresses the machine over a
period of time and eventually it gitches.

I doubt it: this is a 4-core 2.5 GHz machine.

One of the *joys* of multitasking operating systems is that they can become
bottlenecked even when there's unused CPU power to burn.

For openers, most software is still single-threaded which means that up to
75% of the CPU power can be idle and the system still unfortunately behaves
like it is running at 100% CPU.

And Samplitude is just about the most economical DAW out
there (about 3 times less CPU than Sonar).

Resampling tends to be CPU bound, or I/O bound depending on the basic design
and execution of the audio software.

Just one job should not cause any CPU overload.

If wishes were fishes. Ever run the XP Performance monitor software and see
what the system is doing when you run various operations? When I do this I
focus on I/O rates, swapping rates, and CPU use overall and per processor.

Besides, wouldn't
maxing CPU just delay the job rather than intercepting?

I still hear a lot of complaints about the sophistication of XP's resource
scheduling software. I've always been frustrated by PCs because they act
ugly given the resource utilization that they register. We used to run IBM
mainframes with heavy interactive loads at 100% CPU (x up to 6 processors),
heavy swapping, and with huge I/O loads for hours at a time, and they still
responded smoothly. IBM's scheduling software was very sophisticated. XP
was developed in the DEC tradition, not the IBM tradition. Back in the day I
was a system programmer for both DEC and IBM computers of roughly equivalent
MIPs and RAM. The IBM boxes could walk away from the DEC boxes when both ran
comparable workloads.

The only exception to that is overheating, but Intel
calibrates its hardware with the way safe margin (20
degrees or so) for this to become an issue under normal
temperature conditions.

Good that there aren't any thermal faults, which of course you really don't
know about for sure unless you are monitoring core temperatures in real
time.

Does this mean that batch processing uses dither
differently than the main program?

Not necessarily - the load on the system is different
because the batch mode just bangs away on the machine
quite relentlessly.

Of course I will try later today to batch process video
material - it is much heavier than audio - and then run
bit by bit comparison of the files. But I doubt CPU load
is the cause.

The video software is a different piece of software. I also run both video
and audio production on the same hardware. AFAIK my audio operations
(mostly in CEP 2.1) run faultlessly and smoothly and don't disrupt the
multitasking of the machine. My video operations (Premiere Elements) often
run well, but not always. PE has been known to make the machine catatonic
for many seconds at a time. I find no anomolies in the finished work either
audio or video. I suspect that I've had less problems multitasking PE since
I turned off swapping...