This is an awesome thread for dudes like me who are considering the jump to Windows 7 64-bit. I'll eventually upgrade to 8.5 as well. Great thread.

It's been a while since ...
Is everyone okay ?  No more challenges ?

Dear Jose -
I did apply the tweak on XP.  But when I press F4, I do notice more core loading on the 1st core.  Though at least there is some activity on the other three.
 
Using a QX9770 processor.
 
What I should do is remove the tweak, just to see if it is any worse?
 
THANKS
AB

Thanks for the info Jose.  I do not think I have anything on my master bus.   But I will see what happens when I have more audio going through separate output buses.
THANKS,
AB

Eratu,

I knew it! 

I told you I had a feeling that 64 bit would finally be a reality for you this time.  I admit I was afraid at first, with the FabFilter plugins issues you were having.  But, thanks to Joao from JBridge, you were able to find a temporary solution for that!  This really makes me happy partner :-)

Let us know if you have any other conflicts with the remaining plugs.  You know you can count on me for testing them ;-)


Take care my friend!

JOSE: In the words of Darth Vader: "You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister... you were right.";)

brammer

I'm curious about your comment on 12 gigs not being enough, could you elaborate?

If you are a heavy sample-user, once you start down the path of x64 using Kontakt 3.5 or 4 x64, you may get greedy very, very fast. I feel 12GB is just barely okay for my needs, but I can tell I'll want more soon. I'm still testing, but I would get NO LESS than 12GB, that's for sure. Your needs may be very different than mine. Right now there are two things I want for this machine already. 1) 24 GB of RAM and 2) an SSD boot drive and SSD sample drive.

Not sure if I'm a "power" user - but most of my tracks are midi
my usual "arsenal" is listed in my signature
2 of my last projects were pushing the envelope of choking my machine, I'm thinking 12 gigs with an i7 would get me over the hump

What kind of samples are you running in Kontak - some real hogs or just tons of them??

Guess I better "up" my projected dream system to 24 gigs
At least it'll be less by next year!!   :-)

Thanks for all your sweat & hard work

MINI-UPDATE:

Omnisphere 1.1 x64 was just released. Downloaded, installed, and seems to working just fine in Sonar 8.5.1 x64 so far! Wooo-hoooo! Now I'm feeling my trip into x64 is going to be well worth it. :)

ANOTHER MINI-UPDATE:

Just did a test session with 12 instances of Omnisphere x64, 3 fully-loaded instances of Kontakt 4 x64 and 1 instance of Amber Piano x64.

Everything worked great, ran Sonar 8.5.1 x64 which chewed up to 4.7GB RAM, running at about 10% CPU usage, with a few bumps up to 15%.

Saved, reloaded just fine, latency, playability just fine. :) As expected, but nice to see in real life.

With a heavier session and moving into complex projects, I think 12GB RAM will just barely be adequate... as I thought in a prior post in this thread. However, this session was totally responsive and I could do whatever I wanted inside Sonar, so I'm pretty happy, and quite optimistic.

Clearly, CPU is not the main issue any more. The i7 seems to be handling Omnisphere with ease.  :)

I think I made the right choice sticking it through with x64.... :) Happy day for DAWs!

Just a note to say things are looking good here as well...the current problem child is drumcore 3.  It has the problems  mentioned in this thread, rendering it unusable.  Any other drumcore users here?

http://forums.drumcore.co...d=6&messageid=2353

Jose's the one who deserves a medal. :) But I'm glad you kept pushing me, man. I think this DAW is going to be great. Can't wait to get big projects going on it soon.

Andy: Sorry to hear about your Drumcore 3 issues. One of the fun benefits of trying to live on the x64 edge. ;) I don't use Drumcore -- I use Battery and Addictive Drums... both of which work just fine on this machine. Hope things get sorted out for you. I assume you've been in touch with Drumcore's developers but just in case you haven't, it may be worth your time. Also, if you discuss the issue with Joao (JBridge guy) he may be able to help you with a simple tweak to JBridge. He did a quick tweak to help me with FabFilter plugins, so maybe your issue will be in the same class of complexity? Worth contacting him....

LOL! We all have different types of projects and workflows. It's a combination of type of project and workflow choices that causes the RAM usage to be chewed up quickly. If you do the same type of project, your workflow might have a completely different result. :)

There are a couple of different types of "complex" projects I run...

1) Audio-drama hybrid projects - 45-70 minutes in length with 75-100+ tracks, hundreds and hundreds (I might have hit 1000+) of small edits/clips, couple dozen VSTi, and who knows how many VST. I've never counted the VST, but it could be close to 100 in some cases, maybe 40-50 on average, maybe way more. Not all the tracks are active at the same time, of course, not all have VST -- sometimes just a couple of tracks are playing back at a given moment, and maybe 20-30 playing back on average at once, just like any high-track project, not everything is going at once. Those tons of tiny clips come from tiny edits to tracks adjusting dialog, effects, etc.

2) Scoring - 10-20+ minutes in length with 50-150ish tracks of audio and MIDI, sometimes synced to a big video file for scoring, tons and tons of MIDI, dozens and dozens of VSTi and who knows how many VST. I'm sure I've gone well over 100 VST in some projects. Not all tracks are active at once, of course. Sometimes just one track has content on it at a given millisecond on the timeline, sometimes 40, but almost every track will have a one or more VST... so that adds up fast.   

In both cases I can easily see myself going up to 12GB in the near future, even this week. I *sometimes* have 5+ instances of Kontakt loaded. Sometimes I use a lot of the channels, sometimes not. Sometimes I just have a quick Kontakt instance with one patch as an instrument track... so it adds up fast when I'm not planning the sample-loading.

As a 32-bit user I CONSTANTLY ran into RAM problems and had to come up with workarounds, freezing, etc... and I hate freezing, bouncing tracks down, submix bounces, etc. I prefer to have the whole project right there, editable at any given second. That's why I've tried several times to move to 64-bit and am so thrilled to finally make the jump now.

As for Omnisphere I don't know how many I'll be using in a project. But I think for a 45-minute scoring/mixing type hybrid dialog-laden audio-drama that I do, I can easily see myself using 12 instances or more. Maybe even 20 instances to be honest if the project gets hot and heavy and I need more special textures for a scene. I have an old template that has 10 Atmospheres as *default* so I can see myself using more Omnispheres very easily since I'm moving those projects over to Omnisphere. For my projects I may use a sound/patch once on a track, but I like to have it available for creative experimentation so I leave it loaded for the whole project. :) That right there is a workflow choice and it clearly chews up resources.

Then, you have to add up Kontakt instances and libraries. I load boatloads of samples/multis/etc and I want to have several key multis available as I'm working, even if I don't use every patch in the multis. Again, a workflow and template issue.

So all that can very quickly add up and get VERY crazy, VERY quickly. RAM goes fast. I have yet to load up one of my complex projects on this DAW.... But I plan to do that soon, and I'm sure once I "unfold" the parts of it, I'll hit 12GB on some of them.

True, I'm sure if I planned it very carefully, I could cut down on RAM usage. However, this is not conducive to my creative workflow so my solution is to throw more hardware at it. :) So I'd eventually still be pushing 12GB even with trying to conserve RAM.

And if I had 24GB of RAM (which I will certainly get when 4GB DIMM RAM prices come down), I can guarantee I will find a way to use every last drop of it.

Right now, the other thing I'm looking at are SSD boot and sample drives. I think that's the next delicious upgrade. A little too pricey right now for me, but I can imagine how much they'd help something like Kontakt. So which will come first? I have no idea. Whatever bugs me first... slow load times or RAM barriers... :)

As for latency for my above test? I think it was 128 samples or 256... I usually start a project at 128 and move up if I have to. But I've been playing around so much with the settings I don't know what I left it at. I'm toying with starting at 64 now... just have to get used to Win 7 and the i7.

cmusicmaker


Ok....now I understand.

Thanks for taking the time to give so much detail. I think its always best to work the way thats best for you not anyone else and enjoy the process as much as possible. You clearly handle big (very big) projects and need plenty of sounds per project. Indeed it does appear that your heavier projects are at the impossbly high end of DAW usage! <g> 

It will be interesting to see if you do break the 12gb barrier with your most demanding projects in future. I guess if ram costs drop a bit I too will be upgrading as well. Defintely not yet though.

Thanks for the latency info as well.

I am also on W7 (x64). It appears hardware (CPU + RAM) has almost exceeded the needs of even the most demanding projects. In  2 or 3 years benchmarking DAWs might be a source of amusement more than anything else. 36 - 48gb systems with 16 -32 cores.
 
Thanks for sharing!

Glad to share with my fellow Sonarites!

As for DAWs being ahead of project needs, I think it's only for a few brief minutes in history.... someone will write an app or plugin that will suck up the resources soon. :)

Take a look at Trillian, for example, to see where things are headed... One of the patches I believe has something like 10,000 samples to cover all the articulations of a bass, plus round-robin variations. Something insane like that... (I might be off on the number, but it's way, way up there, record-breaking territory.)

Also take a look at WaveArts Tube Saturator, which is a complete model of a SIMPLE tube amp down to the resistor, and it is serious CPU user. A future plugin that models every resistor, capacitor, tube, etc., of a typical, complex amp will certainly hog up a lot of even the most powerful CPU core.... That's some serious math going on. Most plugin models don't go to that level of detail... they are good emulations, but not precise mathematical models of *every* part.... and now future generations of plugins will certainly explore that approach.

Anyway, I do agree things are good right now, and we're at a magical balancing point in the software needs vs. the hardware available. Truly, this is a golden age, and we are only limited by our imagination and skill.