In your songs with the most amount of tracks and plugins how high are you hitting the meter.
For me some are around 42% and one song reaches 63%
Just wondering what good "meterage" should be for a pc running properly.

I would think that depends on how much RAM you have. Audio clips and virtual instruments all take a certain amount of RAM to load. If your's says 50%, when you have 16 gigs, adding another 16 gigs should make it drop to 25%. I try to see where it's at when I first load a blank project, and not go over 60%. Of course, you'll get different results for different systems, amounts of RAM, and CPU speed, dedicated math co-processor, etc. It's not something you can really nail down. If your system is running fine at a given %, just roll with it.

Ram does not lower Cpu for me. I have 16 gb ram and 4 cores (8 bouncing cpu meters).

When i use synths, any of the eight can go over 50% and at that point I'm risking a drop out.

On average, when recurring I'm usually below 10% total. When mixing it climbs fast. Probably to 40.

The CPU meter is really just an early-warning indicator. There is no specific percentage where things start falling apart. I've had projects running at over 80% that played just fine. Technically, anything under 100% means the CPU has enough time to process data and keep the buffers filled. But if you have issues with background processes periodically jumping in and monopolizing the CPU, then you could experience dropouts even at very low percentages. 

good to know, I do have 32gb by the way.

I'm always more concerned with what an audio project SOUNDS like than with what some visual meter LOOKS like.

bdickens
I'm always more concerned with what an audio project SOUNDS like than with what some visual meter LOOKS like.

If you've ever had dropouts because of excessive percentage of the meter you might be concerned.

What about dropouts because some other process interrupts what you're doing but your CPU usage is still pretty low?

cpu usage is down to Windows background processes, driver latency and sampling rate settings, how many plugins used, which plugins used, to an extent how many tracks, to an extent the speed data can be spooled off drives and probably other things as well.
 
It's not something where there's a "good" level other than if the cpu can't keep up, then that's bad. :-)

bdickens
What about dropouts because some other process interrupts what you're doing but your CPU usage is still pretty low?

When I was having a great deal of dropouts I couldn't work on any track when that meter would go about 38%
Since I've changed a few things and I'm able to go much higher now it had made me wonder since this is the first time rebuilt my own pc.
 
There are many factors that can cause dropouts and when you know your system you can tell one is coming with that meter.