Ionnas.
IonnasHi, I’m quite new to all this. I downloaded Zynewave Podium Free about two months ago, and tried myself in music-making for the first time. Everything started out okay, but then I started to make more complex tracks and the program isn’t running as smoothly as it should. When I playback to listen to all my tracks, it lags a lot. The program seems confused and overloaded, and the playback cuts and glitches. First I was able to sort of get through it by closind and re-opening the song file and increasing the ASIO buffer size (I use ASIO 4 all), but now it is really bad and increasing the buffing only helps a little bit and temporarily. It seems that as soon as I have more than about 8 tracks, the playbacks stops running well.
I’m sure Zynewave was made to run more than 10 tracks. I feel very limited because of this, and I lose a lot of time. I don’t know if it’s Zynewave or my laptop. Something makes me think it could be my laptop, even thought I bought it last spring, so it’s very new, and it’s supposed to perform quite well (I’m not sure with the terminology and the meaning of these statistics, but I know it’s 6g of ram, and it’s a quadcore, and has an AMD radeon graphics card) BUT I am having problems running adobe photoshop CS5 on it, which I would have thought would work perfectly on it. So if it’s my laptop, what am I doing wrong?
It worries me if it’s my laptop which is causing problems, because I want to purchase a more complex and performing DAW, but will it be able to run it? Is there a sort of limit of tracks Zynewave Podium Free can do?
I know my questions are very large and vague, but I’m a bit clueless, and I thought writing here and interacting with people could help me understand better. Thank you very much for your time. 🙂
PulseThese crackles and glitches occur when there’s a CPU overload. You can see this in Podium in the lower right corner. When things reach 99-100% strange things happen.
So it seems that there’s a problem with the notebook, because my machine is quite older than yours, and still, when I was using Podium Free I was able to run around 60-80 tracks flawlessly with CPU around 95% (depending on the used plugins.) using ASIO4ALL as well, with 768 buffer. So you might wanna check some of your plugins one by one for denormals and unusually high CPU usage, some vsts are not so CPU friendly.
A good way to avoiding such high CPU usage and subsequent crackles and artifacts is to bounce your tracks to waves, then unload your vsts.
On the other hand Podium Free is limited to use only one CPU core, no matter how many you have. This is the only limitation in terms of the number of tracks you can have. Oh, and to be able to access all of your 6 Gigs of RAM, you must use x64 Host, and run x64 plugins only (or bridge them with jBridge)
Good Luck
CC
IonnasThanks a lot for answering!
Okay, so I know now what to watch for, which is really helpful. I’ve checked my VSTs, and only one seemed really demanding (DSK synthdrums), but the cpu overloads also in parts where that particular VST doesn’t play. Another VST I use a lot can get demanding depending on how I use it (Synth1 VST) but I love it way too much to let it go haha!
Anyhow, you just thaught me that I can render tracks individually (I thought I could only do that to the master track) and now I can playback my tracks with no problem! Which pretty much solves my problem. 🙂
I find it strange though that with only the 7 VSTs I’m using on 11 tracks on my current project, it makes my CPU usage overload already. Only 7 vstis can be that demanding? I guess rendering is crucial, and it was what I was missing.
Also, if I use a x64 host and x64 plugins, will it make the program perform considerably better?
Pulse@Ionnas wrote:
…but the cpu overloads also in parts where that particular VST doesn’t play…
…
Also, if I use a x64 host and x64 plugins, will it make the program perform considerably better?
Exactly these CPU spikes, no matter if the plugin is actively processing MIDI (or audio) are the denormals caused by some plugs. This was the main factor why I let go of many old plugs in the first place. Synth1 however is very light an in use here quite often.
So here I can suggest you my all-time favorites – Oatmeal, Atlantis, TAL Synths (and FX) – light and great sounding, with dozens of instances of them, the CPU is way lower than 90% with Podium Free on a 3.1GHz AMD – That was my setup for a long time.
@Ionnas wrote:
…with only the 7 VSTs I’m using on 11 tracks on my current project, it makes my CPU usage overload already…
Oh, you can max out your CPU with just one 🙂 – Just an example – If its demanding, play big polyphonic chords, use many voices per osc, have long release times and all internal effects are on. 😯
About the RAM usage – Most softsynths and effects depend on the CPU, the ones that are RAM dependent are those dealing with samples (and soundfonts) – samplers and sample-based synths, or just sample playback – as they are loaded into RAM. So if they constitute a big part of your work, then the x64 environment will dramatically improve the performance. Otherwise – not a big difference.
Well, just bear in mind that you have only one core at your disposal and act accordingly, go for optimized vsts, bounce, and things should be OK.
Hope that Helped
All the best
CC
kim_otcjIt’s not so long since I upgraded to a modern computer and ditched my old Windows XP box. So I’ve made a few tracks in Podium using only a Pentium IV and 1 gigabyte of RAM.
I would suggest, if you’re working up to the limits of your computer, to create group tracks and set them up for offline render bouncing. Your synths go on child tracks of the group track, in which ever way you want to organize them (maybe two or three to a group).
You work on one group at a time, and when you’re done, bounce the group track to free up the memory they’re using. Then move on to the next group. Once you’ve bounced a group, Podium will disable all the child tracks of that group, including all the plugins, and just read the bounced audio file. And while it might not be able to handle a dozen tracks of heavy soft-synths, it can easily play back a dozen tracks of bounced audio files.
If you have to go back and edit some stuff in one of the groups, it’s no big deal. You can disable the bounce, go in and make all the changes you want then just bounce it again. No problem. It’s one of Podium’s best features (in other DAWs, bouncing/freezing tracks can be a pain in the neck).
You could make the biggest most complex song in the history of the world, if you’re clever about nesting and bouncing group tracks.
IonnasThanks a lot for the tips guys, it’s really nice of you 🙂