"Processes" Bogging Down Audio App?

M

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
 
V

V Green

See inline-

mark4man said:
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 !!!
Click to expand...

this is NOT a snapshot of CPU cycles, this is % of the time that
a particular process took from total CPU usage, since the
last time you booted up. It's NOT an indicator of what process
is using the most CPU cycles at any given instant.

You need to actively do something with your SONAR app, THEN
bring up Task Manager and see what the CPU graph (Performance)
shows. That'll tell you (roughly) how much SONAR asks of the CPU while
it's actually performing a task.
 
M

Malke

mark4man wrote:

Hi, Mark - See my comments inline:
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.
Click to expand...

Whenever you want to know what something is, the first step is Google.
for instance, Googling RDSMIDNT.EXE tells me this is the Roland Midi
driver. All of the processes running are legitimate. Most of them have
to do with the Norton software.
SONARPDR.EXE: 263,956 KB
explorer.exe: 22,460 KB
Click to expand...

Explorer is the Windows graphical user interface. If you turn off
Explorer, you won't have anything useful to work with!
CCAAP.EXE: 13,884 KB
Click to expand...

CCAAP.EXE is part of the Norton software.
...but none took up any more than 2% CPU, except for:
"SystemIdleProcess", which was taking up 98 !!!
Click to expand...

Look up "idle" in the dictionary. This means that your CPU is doing
*nothing*! So
A) Does this list (& it's values) look normal?
Yes

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

Possibly. It depends on how badly written the multitracking program is.
What I would do is disable all non-essential processes and try running
the program and see how that works. Here are links to help you look up
all the things that you see running with Windows:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm
http://www.blackviper.com/
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/
http://www.windowsstartup.com/wso/search.php

Since you say this program requires a lot of graphics support, you might
want to get a better video card. The GeForce MX420 is pretty
light-weight. Or maybe you can turn down the graphics in the program?

If you do the audio work for a living, then I'd set up a dedicated
computer just for that purpose. Don't connect it to the Internet and
you won't need any networking services, antivirus, etc. Otherwise,
perhaps you need to look around for a better-written program that will
do what you want.

Malke
 
M

mark4man

Malke,

Thanks. You know, 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
 
M

Malke

mark4man said:
Malke,

Thanks. You know, 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.)
Click to expand...

You're very welcome. Apparently the SONAR4 people have gone the way of
so many good software programs - keep adding stuff until a good, useful
program becomes hugely bloated.

Good luck,

Malke
 
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