I've noticed in projects that one CPU will be nearly maxed out while the other 7 are very low. I'd say they are in the 15% range. How come the application is leaning so hard on one CPU. If I put Ozone 5 on the main output it will either not play or just be unbearable to listen to. This is a pretty modest project at 96k. I've actually mixed much larger projects than this one and while the one CPU is pretty high and the others more moderate I'm sort of curious what the load balancing issue is all about. My system specs are listed below. Drivers are up to date. Most plugs are UAD and the Quad card is running about 80%. The rest are mostly bundled plugs with a few nomad factory and waves pieces in there. Not a much automation, Everything is 64bit.
 
Usually I will do "mastering" type stuff in a new session with a bounced mix but since the project is small I thought I could get away with it.
 
Any thoughts?

I think Ozone specifically is not written for multicore operation. Sonar can normally distribute the load from multiple plugins but not when it's a single one. Having the advanced version might help in this case since it splits into multiple distinct plugs. Upping your latency during mixing/mastering may help some.

Also, by default the first core will be taxed a little more because that is what the GUI runs on.

I've noticed in projects that one CPU will be nearly maxed out while the other 7 are very low. I'd say they are in the 15% range. How come the application is leaning so hard on one CPU. If

Thats normal operation as every project will need different resources. It also has to do with your sound card drivers and its driver mode and driver settings. There are variable that you need to take into account. All projects are not the same, so with that said, all projects will use CPU differently than other projects.
 
CJ

I think that not only is Windows drawing heavily from the first core (perhaps someone can shed some light on that) but also the fact that not every VST spreads it's load across multiple cores.