How to push Performance with EW Products

[deckard]

Hello everybody,

I am new to the forums so, hello to everybody.

about my question: I do have a bunch of EW products on my pc. I got 3,4 Ghz, no dual core, Intel Northwood bridge, 2 gig ram, sb audigy 1 ex.
so i meet all requirements to run applications like Gold Orchester, Choir, etc. But the problem that I am facing almost each day, I cant use all the power of those products. Memory too small (!) and I get sound artifacts every so often the more tracks I am adding to my Cubase SX projects...

So my question: What can I change to increase performance?
I have heard on different forums that I could buy 1 or 2 extra PCs and run them in a cluster via Firewire, so that each PC runs the application and helps the master PC to process the application.
Does that makes sense? Is that actually working, cause I am playing all projects on the fly aka live. So I need outstanding latency.

I was wondering how the big studios run those...

So if you guys could help me out here and give me some ideas, I would greatly appreciate it. Cause composing isnt that much fun, when you have to monitor your resources all the time!

Thank you guys and girls!

John

[Vatroslav]

When you say live, you mean live performance in front of audiences?

Your prolems are pretty much normal given your specs. You could buy another 2 gigs of RAM and do pull the LAA trick to get the most out of your memory, but it's not gonna get you far.

You have two options - another x32 slave machine or a new one x64 from the ground up.

I chose the second.

[deckard]

Thanks for your reply. No, not infront of an audience. "Live" meaning to say, I record while I play.
What is the LAA trick?
Does a 64bit system realy increase the performance. And how do I connect two pcs to do the trick? How is the latency on that?

Thanks for the help!

J.

[ricks]

Hello Guys!
Vatroslav, can you tell us the necessary steps to use the LAA trick?
That sounds interesting.
Best,

Ricardo

[Vatroslav]

Then we all perform "live". :)

The LAA trick is the way Windows re-allocates files inside RAM to take maximum advantage of your 4GB of memory (officially 3 GB for apps, 1 for OS, but it hardly ever gets to that), it's Microsoft's new RAM management feature. This is even more useful in x64 enviroment than in a x32.

For some more info go here: http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=8038 and try googling large address aware and 3 GB switch and searching this forums with the same keywords as well.

I really don't have a lot of experience with networking and latencies invlolved, I just know that today I would always go with a single machine rather than a network of two as you will end up spending about the same amount of money (if not more) and with twice as many things to worry about.

Of course, if you already have a powerful machine, it may come off cheaper to buy another average one to boost general performance.

And yes, all pro audio performances are increased in a 64-bit enviroment for numerous reasons. The most important being the absence of 4 GB barrier.

In a x32 enviroment, apps top at 4 GB no matter what, and that's just not enough for complex performance.