Hardware And Virtual Instruments, What most impacts the performance of virtual instruments Options

[fishbite]

I have a 2 yr old dual processor G4 with 1.25 G RAM, no off-board audio gear. I can't provide the processor speed right now because I'm not at home. I have numerous commercial and free audio unit instruments. However, when I'm working in Digital Performer I find that I can typically only have a couple instruments playing simultaneously. I have to disable tracks such that they aren't playing or "freeze" them (you DP folks will know what I mean). Plus, I often have to twiddle with the latency/sample size or audio playback will break up.

What would have the biggest impact on the ability to play virtual instruments simultaneously - faster processor? more RAM? Should I expect to really only be able to work with one instrument at a time?

I'm looking at getting a new Mac - and yes, I already anticipate problems getting universal binary versions for at least some of the instruments. However, should I go for the fastest processor, biggest RAM machine I can afford? Or what? I welcome any advice.

Thanks,

Seth

[mortalengines]

I've been suffering with this for a while & it is a pain, even with Ableton's ability to freeze tracks (the time it takes to un-freeze & re-freeze is ridiculous). Generally, what I do now is just commit & record/render the track once I am happy with what I got. I can save the midi & the preset for use later if I need to come back to it. You would be amazed at how much time this actually saves. There is a real tendency these days to get real anal about things that are kind of minor (I've been as guilty as anyone of this) & all of the options offered these days can be quite counterproductive in a sense. My CPU is much happier as a result & now I tend to do whatever I can to work with what I have rather than spening an inordinate amount of time looking for the next big dollar answer to a problem that I can solve by thinking my way around it. A good portion of my favorite all time records didn't have anywhere near the ability we have these days. They just aimed for a good sound & good performance & lived with the little errors & limitations. It's time to "just say no" to the planned obsolesence type of industry we work in.

This post has been edited by mortalengines: Wed 1 Nov 2006, 18:58