Digirack002 A Laptop And Dwindling Cpu, Are there any External Processing units Options

[rufusrat]

I have a Ti 15inch Laptop
1GHz PowerPC G4
512K L2 cache
1024MB DDR333 SDRAM
60GB Ultra ATA/100
10.2.6 OS X

I have all sounds and songs saved to an external 200Gig hard drive.

I'm running Protools off my DigidesignRack 002- I have about 6- 8 tracks and a few Plug ins (say 4 to 6; not much in my book) And I'm running out of CPU. I just don't understand how just a few plug ins can run my CPU down to nothing.

I want to know what I can do. Is there any way of getting an external processer to take the load off my computer?

If any one can help I'd appreaciate it greatly - this power outage is really holding me back.

Thank you!
rufus

[Synthetic]

what kind of plugs are you running? even though it seems you don't have that many plugs going... it only takes a few of really CPU intensive plugs like reverbs and soft synths etc to bog down a fast computer.

also... depending on your drive... it can slow you down too

it takes a fast external drive to keep up with audio especially once your in high-definition 24bit/96 khz range. as a tip, i think sometimes huge drives can be a disadvantage... for instance, i replaced my OEM internal drive with a drive twice as big but same brand and speed.... the new drive was noticeably a little slower than older drive and I think its due to the more area it has to look through on the disk for reading/writing, the slower the drive... but this is just my theory and i could be wrong... i run 4-6 plugs on my Digi001 on a G3 350mhz with around 20 tracks going on a 30gb Glyph firewire drive and its sluggish but works. If I add a reverb... i have to cut 2 or 3 other plugs out

This post has been edited by Synthetic: Tue 7 Oct 2003, 16:49

[rufusrat]

Synthetic, thanks for getting back to me. Yes – you guessed it! I’m using D-verb. It eats all my cpu. I had heard of TC – Works Powercore Firewire plug ins as having a card that
Takes the load off the CPU – but it doesn’t work for RTAS or TDM. Do you know of anything like that for Protools?

I had also heard of partitioning hard drives to make it faster – I guess I should try cutting up that 200Gigs.

It would just be so great to be able to use reverb with out recording it that way; and not having to think about it. I always change my mind on how much of it I want to use in the end.

Oh well!

Thanks

I’m going to check out your site

[jasonmaass]

Hey i dont know if your processing the plug ins on every track or not, but if you are try setting up aux sends for each plug ins such as reverbs and delays here is how you do it....... I apologize if i am telling you something you already know but create a new aux track. select what plug in you want on the aux track. Assign the aux track INPUT to bus 1 and/or 2. Then go to the sends of each track you want to send to your plug in ie. reverb or delays and select bus 1 and/or 2 , be sure to turn up the send fader that pops up when you assign your sends, and your aux fader. hope this helps

This post has been edited by jasonmaass: Wed 8 Oct 2003, 05:22

[Synthetic]

bingo Jason... I was thinking of suggesting same thing.... D-verb is not as bad as say RealVerb or some other reverbs but yes it can be taxing on cpu especially if you have more than one instance of it

[rufusrat]

Synthtic - Jason,

Thanks to the both of you. I'm new, and I don't know that much about auxiliary and send or really even bussing. I’ve read books – but unless I actually see it and how it’s done , it takes a really long time for the light to go off in my head. I’ll just read some more. I think your suggestion, Jason, will help greatly. Hopefully I’ll be able to get at it this weekend – I’ll let you guys know how it all goes.
Thanks,
Letha