Increased RAM from 4gb to 8gb but...

[BillW]

The song I'm working on still stutters in the same spot (when 6 more tracks kick in)

Goes to "red" on Mixcraft and System. No better than before.

8gb is the max for my wimpy laptop. I was surprised it didn't help at all. Maybe the processor is more important than RAM? I really doubt that. I triple checked Windows System Info and it says it has 8gb and 7 point something available.

Not a problem but a bit surprising and disappointing.

[chibear]

Open task manager while your project is running and monitor the system performance. Also check the processes tab in TM and see how much RAM Mixcraft is using.

Hard to guess from here, but is Mixcraft approaching its 4 GB limit?

[Torton5]

I'll assume from the fact that windows is indicating 8g ram that your running a 64 bit version of windows 10?

With that addition of ram, your operating system will run smoother but it won't change much how 32 bit Mixcraft will function. You would have to be running the 64 bit version for Mixcraft for it to meaningfully use the additional ram. You could try installing the 64 bit version.

No doubt someone will chime in pretty quickly to warn about using 32 bit plugins in 64 bit Mixcraft (I don't know why the 64 bit version has so many 32 bit plugins but anyway...) and the extra CPU overhead that entails.

As Chibear has suggested, you may just be hitting the limitations of 4gb ram limit (which is still in effect because you are running 32 bit Mixcraft) regardless of how much ram you actually put in.

With laptops, the hard drive can also be a problem because they are very often 5400rpm which is not the best when you start loading up the computer. Also, they come very often with 1 hard drive when 2 are much better for audio editing.

No-one can really tell how hard you are working the computer without being there with you because everyone has different perspectives on what hard work is. You say it stutters when the extra 6 tracks cut in so it might be the plugins that are loaded on those 6 tracks.

Upgrading laptops can be hard because you can quickly spend money on components, when it might have been better and cheaper to just buy a better secondhand laptop. A laptop that functions well initially, starts to display it's flaws when the increasingly knowledgable DAW user starts adding more and more tracks, plugins and virtual instruments etc to it.

Might be time to consider a more powerful laptop for your needs, your knowledge and capability might be outstripping your laptops real world capabilities. You could upgrade the CPU and then upgrade the hard drive (if it's 5400rpm) but all of this will just be a hassle and cost more than getting a better laptop and selling your old one.

You could try the Mixcraft 64 bit option first and see what that does but your CPU is on the edge for running 64 bit properly in an audio editing environment.

[Starship Krupa]

One of my weapons in the battle against audio tearing is Process Lasso. It lets me kill unwanted processes and prioritize ones that I want to prioritize, like Mixcraft and my audio driver.

Even if you don't run it all the time when you are using Mixcraft, like I do, it can be interesting just to give it a spin and see what all is running.

https://bitsum.com/

[MXCRFT864]

I see your processor is dual core and 2.16mhz. I would upgrade to a quadcore if you can. But the CPU on laptops aren't usually upgradeable.

Can your setup handle the demo song "We Can't Go On This Way"? If not, then I'd say definitely go quadcore because my desktop setup was a dualcore 2.33mhz CPU, 4GB of RAM, Win7 64bit, Mixcraft 8 64bit and I had your same problem. Upgrading to a quadcore 2.83mhz processor fixed it. Still using 4GB of RAM.

And like Torton5 said, try using the 64bit version of Mixcraft 8 to take advantage of the 8GB of RAM.

Edit:
Reading this thread pretty much confirms your processor Celeron N2830 is the problem.
https://superuser.com/questions/1025429 ... ve-upgrade

Further confirms Celeron N2830 is not a good processor for a DAW, sorry.
http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/h ... op-501333/

The song I'm working on still stutters in the same spot (when 6 more tracks kick in)

Goes to "red" on Mixcraft and System. No better than before.

8gb is the max for my wimpy laptop. I was surprised it didn't help at all. Maybe the processor is more important than RAM? I really doubt that. I triple checked Windows System Info and it says it has 8gb and 7 point something available.

Not a problem but a bit surprising and disappointing.

[Mark Bliss]

Sorry to hear that Bill,

It looks like most of the answers are covered here, and I'd agree for the most part- your kind of at a wall where most efforts to utilize additional RAM are probably going to be hampered by other factors like the CPU. And yeah, the Celeron line consistently has had bad feedback for performance issues from the time it was introduced.

It would be interesting to see what resources specifically are being used. I seriously doubt that 64 bit Mixcraft is going to get along with that processor, but you might try. We've kind of been all over this with this lappy haven't we!
One thing that's never been completely clear to me, maybe someone more knowledgeable on architecture can answer: In using a DAW, can plug ins use the overhead or additional RAM above the 4Gig limit of the 32 bit host, or are they included in that limit? If not there's not much use in the addition I guess.

On my old mobile laptop based system, restricted by a dual core CPU, 4Gigs of RAM and the added issues created by a "slow" hard drive, it got to the point of dancing through a game of freezing tracks, turning off reverb plug ins (They became major performance killers) and even at the end, mixing sub sections of projects and "guessing" as I stitched it all together and mixed down- listened- took notes, went back and made adjustments and tried again, repeat.... Having that hard drive finally bite the dust and force a replacement was a gift of fate.

I still don't know if it was just my imagination or a real gain, but I seemed to find a very slight performance improvement by making sure all my project assets were coming from one folder instead of multiple locations spread all over my hard drive. Very slight, and maybe imagined.

Going to a quad core and SSD was a pretty big leap in capabilities to be certain. I cant remember the last time I froze a track, and usually when "stuttering" occurs its because of background operations due to "multitasking"

Bill, I cant remember what sound preferences you were using. Have you tried simply bumping up the buffers a bit to see if it affected the playback performance yet?

No doubt someone will chime in pretty quickly to warn about using 32 bit plugins in 64 bit Mixcraft

That's been pretty thoroughly discussed with Bill in previous threads on the subject. And elsewhere.

(I don't know why the 64 bit version has so many 32 bit plugins but anyway...) and the extra CPU overhead that entails.

I think the answer to that is still backwards compatibility.
It is highly desirable to (as far as possible) have the ability to open old projects in each new version as seamlessly as possible, and many of those old plug ins are only available in 32 bit.
I strongly suspect 64 bit versions (where applicable) will be added at some point. I also suspect that adding new 64 bit plug ins are planned at some point.
Right now, the emphasis appears to be on further de-bugging, process bulletproofing, streamlining and efficiency improvements- as well as release/marketing. Kind of an important phase.

[BillW]

Thanks for the responses. I keep falling behind tech wise. Time was I was a go to expert at work and home. Now basic things are new to me.

For example - I take it 32bit programs use a max of 4gb ram. So while windows 64bit benefits from the upgrade to 8,Mixcraft 32bit wont. Makes sense now.

Ok, so maybe I should go 64bit Mixcraft. Will try that next. I understand the 32bit wrapper issue is solved satisfactorily with the latest build

[Mark Bliss]

I keep falling behind tech wise. Time was I was a go to expert at work and home. Now basic things are new to me.

I feel your pain, I was the same and it blew by me a while ago.

For example - I take it 32bit programs use a max of 4gb ram. So while windows 64bit benefits from the upgrade to 8,Mixcraft 32bit wont. Makes sense now.

Seems its not quite that simple, but basically, yeah- you got it.

Ok, so maybe I should go 64bit Mixcraft. Will try that next.

Worth a try, but I am skeptical due to your processor mostly.

I understand the 32bit wrapper issue is solved satisfactorily with the latest build

Improved.
Solved? I dunno. I am still exploring this.

At this point old projects of mine still perform more smoothly in 32 bit and give me some trouble in 64, so I am sticking with that when needed. New projects? Don't have an answer yet.

I have been experimenting with 64 bit plug ins in 64 bit Mixcraft, and creating stems and doing the odd maneuver of mixing them with 32 bit plug ins in 32 bit Mixcraft. Totally backwards thinking, but it works for now.
Next machine upgrade will likely make all this a moot point for me, but for now, its where I am at.

[aj113]

If you're using the laptop's native soundcard I suspect that is more of a problem than the laptop's spec.

[BillW]

Aj: I have a sounblaster USB "card" (dongle) when I do midi, and I monitor using my Tascam interface when recording guitar or bass.

Without a doubt it is my cpu that is the culprit. I didn't need to upgrade my ram (and since it has only one slot I had to buy an 8 gig module and replace my 4 gig.)

Since my laptop is almost exclusively for Mixcraft I guess it wasn't worth it.

The 64 bit version of Mixcraft actually made it worse given the number of vsti's I'm using.

But I then converted about half the midi tracks to audio (the ones I knew were recorded ok) and that eliminated the stuutering. Now I'll see what happens when I start adding eq and compression and maybe other effects.

While a quad core machine with a solid state drive would be sweet, I can't justify the cost. Especially when I already have 4 computers for various purposes. (Actually 7 if you count the 3 "boat anchors" I have in my closet)

But I'm back recording and actually on to mixing, so it's all good.

Thanks for the responses. I learned from you guys, as I always do.

[aj113]

...Without a doubt it is my cpu that is the culprit...

Interesting, may I enquire what brought you to that conclusion?

[BillW]

AJ:

I play that section with task manager open and can see both the CPU and the RAM. I'm nowhere near the available RAM (which I assume is 4GB since it's 32bit) but I'm over 90% Mixcraft and near 100% overall for the CPU.

[aj113]

Tried switching from ASIO to Wave RT?

[BillW]

Tried switching from ASIO to Wave RT?

Worth a try - thanks for the suggestion.

[BillW]

A bit more research leads to an important question -

Is Mixcraft 8 Pro Studio programmed to take advantage of multi-core processing?

It used to be easy to compare chips - clock speed was the only parameter.

Now there is also cache and multi-core vs single thread processing.

Fro example - the i3-6100 (dual core) actually has a higher PassMark rating for single core than the i5-6400. That's because (I assume) it's clock speed is 3.7GHz vs the i5's 2.7GHz.

But the i5 is quad core - so if all four are running vs two for the i3, it has a 25% higher PassMark.

(By the way - the i3 single thread passmark is 4 times my Celeron - and about 5.5 times for multi-thread.)

So before deciding if the price diff between the i3 and i5 is worth it - I need to know if Mixcraft takes advantage of it? And if so, is that true for both the 32bit and 64bit versions?