RAM Memory?

[bertie]

hi Bob :)

Currently my PC has 384Mb of RAM. I know that SAWStudio requires a minimum of 512Mb of RAM. Anyway, i have a 25 track session and my MT Load meter shows 52% and SRC Load meter shows 26%. Is it possible that if i install more memory in my PC these percentage meters will drop down?or it's a metter of CPU power:confused:

I have a soundcard that supports max of 44100Khz 16bit but it's driver can make this soundcard to work within SAWStudio in the rate of 200.000Khz
but only with two channels loaded in MT, but i tried the same soundcard in another PC with more RAM and i managed to load 8 tracks in MT wih the same 200.000Khz rate:confused:

What is going on? :) :confused:

Bertie, (lifetime SAWStudio user)

[Bob L]

Once your MT loads climb above 50%, the cpu is now fighting between the disk gathering threads and the MT processing threads and the MT threads are a higher priority.

The disk routines attempt to gather data in front of the playback position and then the data is assembled by the MT threads according to the latency settings.

The more time it takes for the MT threads to get their work done assembling the next buffer, the less time is left for the disk threads and eventually the engine chokes.

If physical memory is not available to hold the entire session in ram, Windows attempts to fake the ram by swapping data into the swap file on disk... when this happens, certain sections of the data buffers may be swapped out, and at a certain point in the process when SAW asks for a certain piece of data, Windows is caught with having to actually swap it in from disk... this will usually fail in the realtime moment of playback because this is a very slow process.

So, having more ram prevents this from happening and can seriously improve performance.

If you get your machine up to 1 or 2 gigs of ram, and then use the Region memory caching option, you can usually fit some very large sessions completely in ram (SAW builds up each region it can in ram in the background and tries to keep it there) and when you start playback, the disk is no longer in the loop (or mostly removed if the whole session is not cached), which can really speed things up and allow playback of sessions that cannot gather data fast enough live from disk to make low latency buffer loop times.

Your soundcard trying to do live samplerate conversion on the fly when you run at higher samplerates than the hardware is capable of, is also adding a tremendous amount of processing time to the loop, stealing the cpu away from SAW during playback... this is really not a good solution anyway for higher rates... the algorithms for good rate conversion are extremely complex and cpu intensive, so your quality using the drivers emulated rates in realtime is probably questionable at best.

Bob L

[Bruce Callaway]

Hi Bob,
I recall some discussion on this topic and with the outcome being that with todays much faster CPUs etc, region memory caching did not produce any improvements as it was meant for older slower machines hence was best turned off. Sounds like this view was wrong. Should it be used for 1 - 2Gig RAM regardless of the PC specs?

Thanks
Bruce

[Bob L]

Bruce,

Region Memory caching is an option to be used when it offers benefit.

Even with today's high speed machines, many professional sessions can reach pretty intense cpu levels as the final mix rolls around. If the MT load percentage is up around 40-70% in a heavily loaded down session, playback startup times can take a few seconds for the MT to preload before playback begins. If you are constantly jumping around tweaking the mix, this can start to affect your efficiency.

If you have the ram, turning on Region Memory Caching may very well be able to load most or all of the regions in ram. Then playback starts are virtually instant from that point on.

Also, if a session is very intense, with lots of DX or VST plugs or 50-60 channels of eq and compression and gating, then even today's machines may have trouble giving you a live playback without stopping or glitching... ram caching can make that playback possible.

In general, Region Memory Caching is an option I would not activate, unless necessary for these heavy types of sessions.

When you are doing serious manipulation and editing of regions, I would also recommend leaving the option OFF until regions are pretty well established as final. There may be certain issues with complex region manipulation that may cause trouble when the Regions are cached, although I have done my best to chase down the bugs that have been reported.

I have not heard of any recently, but that could be because most people do not use the feature. :)

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

Your soundcard trying to do live samplerate conversion on the fly when you run at higher samplerates than the hardware is capable of, is also adding a tremendous amount of processing time to the loop, stealing the cpu away from SAW during playback... this is really not a good solution anyway for higher rates... the algorithms for good rate conversion are extremely complex and cpu intensive, so your quality using the drivers emulated rates in realtime is probably questionable at best.
Bob L

Good to know. Thanks Bob.

Re: Windoz disk caching. Do you have any thoughts on completely disabling virtual memory on a machine that has plenty of memory, and is only running SAWStudio (no photo editing being done ;) )

Is this asking for trouble in your opinion? I've done it and haven't experienced any problems so far.

Regards,
Dave.

[Bob L]

It has certainly seemed to cause issues in the past with many users I tech supported, when they disabled the swap file completely... I have never bothered trying it in XP... it does not seem like Windows is happy without its swap file.

You can force the min and max swap file sizes to the same value though and that at least stops Windows from re-sizing the file, which can be a slow process.

Bob L

[Bruce Callaway]

Region Memory caching is an option to be used when it offers benefit.

Thanks for the clarification Bob.

Cheers
Bruce

[Naturally Digital]

It has certainly seemed to cause issues in the past with many users I tech supported, when they disabled the swap file completely... I have never bothered trying it in XP... it does not seem like Windows is happy without its swap file.
OK. Thanks Bob.


You can force the min and max swap file sizes to the same value though and that at least stops Windows from re-sizing the file, which can be a slow process.
Bob L
Yes, I almost always do this for my DAW's. Thank you.

Dave.

[Sean McCoy]

Bob-

Two questions regarding this thread: Have you found any advantages in the more recent crop of machines that can hold 4 GB of RAM? Can SS benefit from the extra memory? Also, you mentioned XP, which made me wonder what your current view is regarding XP vs. W2K. I still much prefer the look and feel of W2K, but XP is inevitable. (or is it?)

[canipus]

W2K is basically NT5.0. The way audio is handled by that OS is less efficient than Win 9x. By efficient I am referring to the number and latency of internal buffers. When MS developed XP they deliberately revised the buffer size and handling to make XP more akin to Win 9x in terms of audio processing. XP is simply more efficient at handling audio data streams. For this reason most audio developers are moving development to the XP platform away from 2k. This is also the reason you saw very little audio development for the NT4 platform. NT5 is better than NT4 in this regards but nowhere near as efficient as the use of the 9x buffer handling that was incorporated in XP for multimedia.

[canipus]

Sorry, forgot to answer your question on the RAM. Generally more is better but given the choice between spending out on say 1.5GB of dual channel architecture RAM versus 4 GB of single channel DDR I would go with the dual channel because it has faster throughput. On the other hand if money is no object by all means go for 4 GB of dual channel DDR. However, watch your mobo specification carefully when populating all the RAM slots. i.e. read the hand book - there is often a hidden gotcha when populating all the slots. Only the very latest mobos have got over the restrictions for using 1 GB DIMMS in all 4 slots.

[Bob L]

If you can go to 4 gigs, have at it... the speed is not as important as having the size... SAWStudio's Region Memory caching could put most sessions completely in ram and even the slowest ram will be light speed compared to disk.

I disagree with the Win 9x ideas... Win 9x is a nasty environment for SAWStudio due to the thread priority issues as well as other background issues that seem out of reach of the app to control.

I still use Win 2K in my older production machines, but have come up with some nice XP tweaks that make it operate quite well... while also looking exactly like Win 2K.

I have been using XP on all the newer laptop systems I have been building. It is actually start to work quite well, as long as you stay completely on top of all the background auto update stuff... and turn it all OFF.

I do everything I can to stop XP from doing anything automatically. :)

And that will certainly keep you on your toes.

Bob L

[TotalSonic]

XP is simply more efficient at handling audio data streams. For this reason most audio developers are moving development to the XP platform away from 2k. This is also the reason you saw very little audio development for the NT4 platform. NT5 is better than NT4 in this regards but nowhere near as efficient as the use of the 9x buffer handling that was incorporated in XP for multimedia.


Canipus -
Respectfully, I disagree with this. I've seen when using SAWStudio playing back the same session using the same hardware using a Win2k / XP dual boot haveabsolutely no performance gains from using XP whatsoever. The reason developer support is emphasized towards XP is because MS has announced that it will discontinue support of Win2k in the near future, and developers always try to work with the latest more marketed OS. For SAW rigs I still feel Win2k is a viable choice for those who never want to bother with XP's activation scheme, as I've yet to see a pro card that didn't have both XP & Win2k drivers. Obviously - this will change at some point - it just hasn't happened yet.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Oz Nimbus]

I still use Win 2K in my older production machines, but have come up with some nice XP tweaks that make it operate quite well... while also looking exactly like Win 2K.


Bob L


Any chance we could get a listing of those tweaks?

-0z-

[MMP]

A good place to start is:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

MM

[Bob L]

Tweaks are so personalized and subjective... I never published mine because I did not want all the backlash.

So many people are so concerned with many things that don't concern me about their fancy mouse or trackball and desktop and so forth... my systems are simple and clean with all the fancy stuff turned OFF.

I go for performance and screen real estate and get rid of all the fancy window enhancements etc.

When I hear of people using SAWStudio at 1024 x 768... I cringe... it is such a different experience at 1280 and 1600 and higher... night and day difference... but so many people try the higher res for 10 mins and tell me the text is too small or whatever... I say, live with it for a few days and all of sudden, going back makes the text look too big and gamelike... again, these things become personal and I don't like to argue about it all.

There are lots of techinical sites around that give you all kinds of service tweaks for 2K and XP, I do simple things to clean up a lot of the background kludge that is Windows... many people love all that stuff going on... and therefore will not want to turn it off.

I would say to tweak the machine for SAWStudio... just doing everything you can to simplify the desktop and background apps is a good starting point.

Get stuff off the taskbar and desktop... leave the desktop for program shortcuts only... no virus checkers and internet watchdogs running in the background... turn off auto updtaes and DON'T install every new Windows Security patch and DirectX update just because MicroSoft says so... get rid of CD burning installs that keep the CD available as a drag and drop burner... no good... tremendous hooks into the disk subsystem that affect your disk performance... eliminate the use of extra disk drivers for large drives... stop at 120 gig drives which do not require extra drivers... things like that can make a huge difference.

The biggest issue is to watch when you install new stuff... always try to do a custom install if available, rather than the automatic typical install... turn OFF everything you can in the install... do not install every demo program that comes with the new app... keep it as lean as possible... avoid, at all cost, littering the registry with tons of extra un-needed entries... which requires constant attention on your part, because now-a-days... almost every app or demo can add hundreds of registry hooks and dlls... this stuff can kludge a system down within days if you are not careful.

It really requires you to constantly police what goes on your system as a full time job... keeping a Windows system lean and clean is not a simple task... but one that is well worth the effort and the performance benefits can be very rewarding.

Just buying the fastest hardware and the latest motherboards and disk drives and special hi-tech sheilded cables and so forth is only a small part of the picture... when it comes to DAWs... the OS install is 90% of it in my opinion.

To give a simple example from a real experience on the latest system I am setting up for a current customer... he hired experts to build the machine for him... everything top of the line... incredible job on quieting down the system noise with a special modified case and fan system... hi-tech Serial ATA drives and cabling... etc... looked like it should be incredible...

The system comes to me... I do all my normal tweaks... order and install an RME Hammerfall and DigiFace and three converters... I install SAWStudio and start testing... 1 track of a stereo file... buffers down to 2 x 64... playback and move the mouse... dropouts... noise... glitches... spitting and stuttering...etc... a horror story... this is a 3.2 gig cpu with all the works... what a mess...

Another issue... the overlay video output to the Matrox Parhelia card external TV monitor output... DV files with overlay turned ON... running at exactly 33ms per frame in my Running Seek Test on the Video Viewer... absolutely shutting down SAWStudio's abilitiy to do any audio at the same time within the MT loop... I happen to have seen the same video card a week earlier on another machine doing the overlay at 6-8 ms per frame.

I do everything I can for 2 weeks to chase down the problem... tried different mice... came off the USB... went to PS2... etc... no go...

What I did notice was the latest DirectX 9x install... every security patch Windows update... every other MicroSoft recommended patch... these people thought they were being ontop of things and current with handing over the machine to their customer... unfortunately... as a DAW... which is all the customer is going to use the machine for... completely and utterly USELESS!

I finally gave up... formatted the drive... re-installed my way... performed the same tweaks I had done when I received the machine... left DX 8.1a on it from the original XP install... installed SAWStudio and the RME... tested again... now 72 solid tracks (mixture of stereo and mono)... 72 eqs... 72 compressors... 72 gates... all running at 2 x 64 buffers MME... not even the slightest hiccup when I bashed the F-Keys and slammed the mouse as fast as I could all over the place.... this kind of experience is very much a reality...

Overlay video output... now holding steady at about 8ms per frame...

Same exact system hardware... different Windows install... kept lean... completely different results.

In this case... most would not want to believe my story... until you experience it for yourself.

If this were the first time I had seen an RME card, I would have boxed it up and sent it back, blaming it for lousy driver performance... but I know RME cards and there was no doubt in my mind that the problem was somewhere else.... exactly what patch or combination of pathes or DX updates caused these issues... I still don't know... but now, at least... my customer can go away happy and start producing music on a killer SAWStudio rig.

Bob L

[canipus]

Bob,

Can you clarify this, when you reinstalled you just put on the original XP release no SP1 or updates correct?

[canipus]

The reason developer support is emphasized towards XP is because MS has announced that it will discontinue support of Win2k in the near future, and developers always try to work with the latest more marketed OS. For SAW rigs I still feel Win2k is a viable choice for those who never want to bother with XP's activation scheme, as I've yet to see a pro card that didn't have both XP & Win2k drivers. Obviously - this will change at some point - it just hasn't happened yet.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows 2K and XP are two totally different technologies.
2000 is NT5. Of course its no longer being supported. It's N>>>T. They are not supporting N>>T. Do your homework and you will see the 2000 announcement is in line with the earlier announcement to discontinue NT4.

2000 was introduced as an enterprise level replacement for 4. Its audio handling was better than 4 but nowhere near the rewrite under XP. It doesn't matter that you can't see any difference between 2000 and XP running SAW Studio. The fact is that hardware extraction layer, kernel, sub system, mutimedia processing, buffer handling, threading whatever is totally different and more efficient. It friggin well beggars belief that people on forums always make statements on technology based on their own computer and experience without having an inkling on the real facts. XP is more efficient. period. The fact you can't see it doesn't mean that it isn't. Using SAW Studio (one application (assembly level at that), is not an arbiter for making a technical determination on an Operating System. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer I was teaching NT 4/5 and early XP IT technology in Austin TX before going back into the music business and I'm telling you flat out XP is more multimedia efficient than the NT (New Technology) kernels. - and I don't give a rats arse whether you agree or not.

[Bob L]

Ok,

How about keeping calm... we all have our own experiences...

The example I quoted above was fixed by a straight install off the XP disk that came with the system... it already included SP 1a, I believe. By holding back on all the recommended auto update patches and fixes... and 'improved code' ;) , I managed to save an otherwise useless DAW. In fact I came very close to deciding that the Intel motherboard was just not going to fly here and was about to pack the machine up and send it back.

My feeling is this... I don't care what Microsoft and other techies tell you about one OS over the other being more efficient... in the end... it doesn't matter how good the code may be written in XP over the others... if the results turn out like my example above... then it still equates to a useless DAW.... no opinions about it... XP is much tougher to tame and attain the performance specs than the earlier OS's.

And, in the end... my personal experience is the same... virtually no real observed performance difference on a well tuned XP or a well tuned 2K... so it really doesn't seem to make much difference how much more multimedia savy the underlying code is claimed to be... no performance benefits means... who cares. :)

Now, there are other improvements in XP... network improvements, perhaps video file handling improvements... but all of these improvements come with the incredible overhead of XP and all the rest of the Klunk that comes with it.

I'd be happy to go back to NT4... I attained some of my most stable systems there... but alas... that's long gone... but not because of better performance and design... simply because of marketing manipulation.

At least IMHO. :)

Bob L

[swing]

Here are some pages with tweaks I do for XP users - I'm not letting w2k go in my own system yet:

http://www.musicxp.net/
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Mar02/articles/pcmusician0302.asp
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
http://www.philrees.co.uk/pc4music/optimisation.php

As always - think while tweaking.

If you just have one puter do another hardwareprofile and systemlogin with this stuff and you can eat you cake and have it:)

swing

[Oz Nimbus]

I generally try to keep a very clean system, however, I was curious if you had some inside info I might be missing! :) :)

Actually, Maximum PC has thier yearly "tweak XP" issue out. I've leafed thru it, and there's some very useful stuff in there. Hopefully I'll finally have some time this week to apply some of it. *hopefully* this will help me track down my crash bug.

[canipus]

I'd be happy to go back to NT4... I attained some of my most stable systems there...

Bob the thread and my comment was discussing efficiency not stability - of course it's nice to have both but I made NO reference to the stability of NT4 so I don't understand why you're distorting this thread. There are internal buffers within NT4 with a fixed latency and the buffers count is higher in NT 4 than other MS systems. It was very difficult for developers to circumvent this latency tho' I'm not saying it's impossible. It just depends how much someone is willing to write code to circumvent the way Windows does things (the windows file handling system being an example of custom code folks have had to rewrite to get media applications to work on this platform. I'm saying based on what Redmond's media developers told me many times when working for Microsoft that's the situation. I know you're a very clever guy so I'm not going to use your experience as the reference point. I think if you take any "standard" (non Lentini) application such as that from Sonic Foundry, Adobe, SEKD, Sequoia and so on and look at how quickly they by passed support for NT WHEN NT WAS STILL A CURRENT PRODUCT, that proves my point. It was a very difficult system to optimise for audio using the standard tools without rewriting a lot of specialised drivers and code. This OS was not designed for audio or multimedia and was not optimized for it.

Of course its stable as a platform. It was 8 years in development and was designed to be as stable as you can get in a client server enterprise domain environment to replace UNIX. I'm not talking consumer experience or marketing. I'm talking about the situation from several years working and training companies directly interfacing with the Redmond NT development team.
You find it a stable platform. Good for you! So do I. In nearly every corporate installation with which I have been involved it has worked as well as UNIX if implemented correctly. However, I was NOT commenting on platform stability.
I don't intend to make any further comment on this useless thread.
If you want to disagree feel free. I imagine you will find yourself at loggerheads with the entire NT4.0 Redmond development team.

[Bob L]

I have no energy about it... simply my observations and opinions based on those observations.

I liked NT, I liked 2K less and XP less... but for other reasons than performance....

My code, which incidently is what this forum is about, is able to obtain pretty much the same performance spec on all three NT architectures, regardless of the supposed extra latency buffers in NT... I don't find that to be so... in reality, I can still do 2 x 64 buffers on a good driver with SAWStudio on NT... so I say hogwash to whatever you have been told... is it just possible that either that information was in error... or, it really doesn't matter with a little more attention paid to good programming.

I am not about to base my judgements of the OS on what other code writers have trouble with... that is precisely why I don't code like many of the other developers.

I'm not sure why you seem upset about this discussion. We are all entitled to our opinions based on the information we use to make those opinions. You have what Microsoft told you... I have what I observe as an assembly language programmer trying to write code that makes extensive use of these supposed awesome new multimedia code routines in the newer versions of Windows.

I must say, I don't find them more awesome... simply much more cumbersome.

But this is not an attack on you or Microsoft... simply an observation after spending countless thousands of hours down deep inside the Windows Multimedia functions creating an application like SAWStudio.:)

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

I'd be happy to go back to NT4... I attained some of my most stable systems there... but alas... that's long gone... but not because of better performance and design... simply because of marketing manipulation.
Bob L

... or the realities of 'the market'...?

Yup. I was always very happy with my NT4 setups. Too bad we're 'forced' to move forward when there's no need.

Thanks for the tips Bob!

Um, speaking of tweaks, does anyone know how to turn off the auto CD notification in XP? I've performed a number of tweaks from the various websites and disabled a number of services but that one seems to be sticking around. It really annoys me and I would love to disable it.

Is it possible?

Thanks,
Dave.

[Bob L]

I do it from the registry editor...

Start button/Run/Regedit

Got to HKey_Local_Machine/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/CDRom

Modify the AutoRun paramter to zero.

Reboot.

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

You're the man, Bob! Thanks.

BTW: If you are still willing to share your 'secrects' for tweaking XP, AND you have it in some format that is easy to email (i.e. not too much trouble for you)... I would love to put them to use here. I'm just getting ready to put together a new machine and... Let's just say you certainly won't get any negative feedback from me! :D

Dave.

[Bob L]

I would have to consider listing them out in a readable form... but not sure I want to go there yet. :)

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

Understood.

Thanks,
Dave.

[TotalSonic]

Windows 2K and XP are two totally different technologies.
2000 is NT5. Of course its no longer being supported. It's N>>>T. They are not supporting N>>T. Do your homework and you will see the 2000 announcement is in line with the earlier announcement to discontinue NT4.

2000 was introduced as an enterprise level replacement for 4. Its audio handling was better than 4 but nowhere near the rewrite under XP. It doesn't matter that you can't see any difference between 2000 and XP running SAW Studio. The fact is that hardware extraction layer, kernel, sub system, mutimedia processing, buffer handling, threading whatever is totally different and more efficient. It friggin well beggars belief that people on forums always make statements on technology based on their own computer and experience without having an inkling on the real facts. XP is more efficient. period. The fact you can't see it doesn't mean that it isn't. Using SAW Studio (one application (assembly level at that), is not an arbiter for making a technical determination on an Operating System. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer I was teaching NT 4/5 and early XP IT technology in Austin TX before going back into the music business and I'm telling you flat out XP is more multimedia efficient than the NT (New Technology) kernels. - and I don't give a rats arse whether you agree or not.

Hi Canipus -
as I'm not a developer my interest in running a PC is not to run an OS (which once is installed I don't give "rats arse" about!) but to run an application. In my case the truly one most vital application I run is SAWStudio. In the case of SAW - unlike some apps like Sonar which depend more on the WDM kernel mixer - from all the evidence that I've directly seen - it's easily demonstratable that there are no performance gains from the "upgrade". So for my rigs which I depend on day to day for my income I use Win2k as the XP activation system is repugnant to me for a number of reasons. I don't necessarily recommend that others also do this - but I was just trying to point out that in the case of people whose main interest is running SAWStudio - all of the points you made regarding the improvements in XP code over Win2k - are non-factors. Obviously - YMMV!

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[mghtx]

I completely agree with the idea of keeping ones DAW as simple as possible. A basic OS installation with the fancies turned off is the way to go. It's a DAW....stay focused on that fact. If you want to do someting else with a computer then use another computer.

I don't see why there would be a difference between W2K and WXP.....WHEN USING SAW. Why? Because of the way SAW is coded. SAW is so efficient. It's like the Linux of the audio apps.