HELP! Sonar shows cpu usage as 96% and starts cutting out

Hello,

I was running a session with no problems, but out of nowhere, on the bottom of the window on the cpu usage it displays as like 95% - 96%, but on task manager it shows that my cpu usage is only about 40%, and my audio is kind of stuttering. 
i had my ASIO buffer size as 288 samples.. and playback was pretty much impossible, it sounded horrible, like it was staggering it even slowed down the audio, and it sounded distorted, i changed the buffer to 2080 (around there). And it now playsback a lot better but sound kind of has hiccups every now and then and the cpu usage is maxing out but the session is very light compared to what i'm used to having run on the computer.

here are my specs:

hp media center 2.4GHz quadcore
4GB ram
750GB HD

Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 (firewire) (i recently obtained it)

My session has about 4 channels running, a stereo drum track, 3 DI tracks with amplitube metal, I have a lexicon reverb aux, and a master bus for guitars with ssl eq, and i have a paz analyser on the master bus

I normally run session of about 20 - 50 channels and LOTS of plug ins, without a problem, but something appears to be eating up my CPU!!! :(

i look at the processes in task manager and sonar is the only one that's heavy at about 450MB :S so  i do'nt know what's going on!

PLEASE HELP ME!! :)

Hi there,

I use Amplitube a lot in my sessions, and I know that having several instances running at once really eats up cpu cycles. I'd assume that at the very least this is contributing to your cpu issues.

You might want to try archiving the Amplitube tracks and then attempting playback again to see what the difference in cpu use would be.
If it turns out that you are taking a cpu hit due to Amplitube, try freezing the Amplitube tracks. You could also try using the "bounce to track" feature, and then either archiving or deleting the original Amplitube tracks. 

Also, you don't mention the source of your drum track. If it's a VSTi, you could try following the same steps listed above. Especially if it's a kit from a large sample library.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Keep us posted.

Ryan

 

Like the man said, disable one at a time until you find the culprit. 

have a read of c5's post

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2337373

also , you might find your sound card isn't setup as well as could be.  maybe that'll help

but machines with heavy CPU plugs do have limits

Any chance u accidentally changed ur sample rate or bit depth. What u described is what i hear and see when i load a tune and don't adjust the settings for what it was recorded in. 

ok thanks to you guys i found the solution.

I started removing plugins one at a time and removed them all.. then i put all the plugins back and there was no problem. I ended up with the same amount of plugins I had before but now everything plays back well and with no problems and with an audio buffer of 288 samples :) And my CPU show about 20 or 30 percent :)

I had read here on the blog about some issue some one had similar to this, in which a plugin just started running wild and draining the computer's power. And I would really like to know why this would happen.

Again thanks to everyone as always you are all awesome!