XP "Processes" Bogging Down Audio App?

[mark4man]

People,

I recently upgraded my digital audio sequencer from SONAR XL 2.2 to SONAR 4.

The new version is a heavily graphic laden, sluggish performance CPU hog.

(sorry to be so crass...but that's about the size of it.)

After trying all kinds of fixes & system tweaks (& most of my XP audio tweaks have been in effect for 2 years), one of my engineering friends thought the upgrade may be more affected by "Processes" running in the background.

I brought up Task Manager > Processes, while SONAR4 was running; & found the following list:

taskmgr.exe
RDSMIDNT.EXE
SONARPDR.EXE
wowexec.exe
ntvdm.exe
symlcsvc.exe
svchost.exe
NOPBD.EXE
SAVscan.exe
nvscv32.exe
Crypserv.exe
CCproxy.exe
spoolsv.exe
CCEVTMGR.EXE
SNDSrve.exe
CCSETMGR.EXE
explorer.exe
realsched.exe
svchost LOCAL
svchost NETWORK
svchost SYSTEM
svchost SYSTEM
CCAAP.EXE
lsass.exe
services.exe
winlogon.exe
csrss.exe
smss.exe
System
SystemIdleProcess

The largest Memory Usage culprits were:

SONARPDR.EXE: 263,956 KB
explorer.exe: 22,460 KB
svchost SYSTEM: 17,976 KB
CCAAP.EXE: 13,884 KB

...but none took up any more than 2% CPU, except for: "SystemIdleProcess", which was taking up 98 !!!

My XP bible (Windows XP Inside Out, by Ed Bott & Carl Seichert), describes "Processes" as all active subsystems & services managed by the OS...so if something related to the system was causing slow performance in an app, this is where it would be found, correct?

So:

A) Does this list (& it's values) look normal?

B) Would these running processes cause an audio multitracking program to bog down?

Thanks,

mark4man
Dell Dimension 8250 / Windows XP Home
Intel 850E Motherboard/Chipset
Intel P4 2.53GHz CPU (512 KB L2 Cache, 533 MHz FSB)
1024 MB PC1066 RDRAM
Ultra 60GB Primary HD / Single Volume (OS, Apps, Files/Folders.)
Maxtor DiamondMax 9+ 80GB Secondary HD / Single Volume (Audio Data only)
Nvidia 64MB GEFORCE4 MX420 AGP
Echo Audio Layla 24/96 PCI Audio Interface
Universal Audio UAD-1 DSP Plug-In System
SONAR XL 2.2
SONAR4
WaveLab 5

 

[uzi9mm]

The list looks fine. Also when it says your using 2% of your CPU and it says 98% on the Idle process, thats normal, reason it says 98% becuase it is using 98% of the 2% that is being used up. Also when you said that your audio seems to be boggish, is the audio sound corrupted? like jumps and skips and other abnormalities? If so, then it must be either a buffer overrun or buffer underrun. To fix that you need to turn up or turn down the buffer length, try both to see whats best.

 

[mark4man]

uzi9mm,

Thanks.

When you said that your audio seems to be boggish, is the audio sound corrupted? like jumps and skips and other abnormalities?

No...it's overall operational speed & efficiency. I hit the Play button; & playback is delayed for over a full second. Normal graphic functions like scrolling & navigation cause slow redraw. Too many plug-ins running & dropouts occur (which is somewhat normal for a DAW...but the same projects in v2.2 run great.)

So, JFTHOI...I decided to test the previous version.

In SONAR XL 2.2, with the exact same multitrack project open...it was only using 113,260 KB's.

Less than half of SONAR4!

That's the problem...& I guess there's no workaround short of building a new machine with dual hyper-theading super everything (which I can't do right now since I'm trying to wrap up a CD.) I'll probably have to finish the CD in XL 2.2; & then migrate to another workstation (like Cubase.)

Thanks again,

mark4man