Hey all,
I know I’m not particularly active in these forums, but I’ve been using Renoise for a long time now. Only once in that time span has my computer been unable to handle the workload Renoise and I have been giving it, and that situation was quickly fixed with a new processor. Unfortunately, things have gotten a little more complex in the last several years, and at this point I’m a bit uncertain about how to remedy my current issues.
So, My Problem:
Having evolved musically with Renoise over the past 6 or so years, my work has gone from a much simpler FT2/IT style of production (with a bit of VST gloss) to a more full-blown DAW level of operation. Depending on the project, I can end up using dozens of orchestral instruments (from the EWQL Symphonic Ochestra) complimented by a slew of percussion, ethnic instruments, and synthesizers (both VSTi and sample-based) as well as live recordings, OR set up what is basically a full multi-tracked session of drums, bass, guitar, vocals, keyboards, and programming. In either of these scenarios, I seem to be finally coming to the point where my system simply can’t handle these loads. Whether it’s pops and clicks, or the dreaded “Out of Memory! Please try to free up some memory and try again.” errors that keep disrupting my saves, I’m losing a significant amount of productivity these days.
What I’ve Got Now:
Windows XP 32-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.40GHz
4GB DDR2 PC2-6400
GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB (not that it matters )
What I Would Like To Know:
In the future, what kind of hardware upgrades can I do to get the best performance out of Renoise? What’s the most RAM Renoise can take advantage of, and would it still benefit my plug-ins if I had, say, 8GB (for example, could Kompakt use the extra RAM even though it’s being loaded as a Renoise instrument)? I realize that WinXP is unable to use that 8GB – if I switch to Win7 will I have problems using Renoise or plug-ins (I don’t mind using a 32-64bit bridge)? I’ve been able to gather that a 64-bit Renoise is on the way, but not yet released. When taktik is kind enough to give us a 64-bit version, will that enable all the system RAM to be used by Renoise or will there still be restrictions based on the architecture of Renoise itself? Is getting an i7 processor over an i5 going to give me markedly improved performance, or will the difficulty involved in multi-core computing provide hugely diminishing returns on that investment?
Currently, what can I do to alleviate the issues I’ve been having? I recently started using Reaper as a ReWire slave so I can have my 8 drum tracks being streamed instead of trying to load them all into Renoise, and that seems to have helped. Should I alter my workflow so that vocal editing, drum mixing, and bass/guitar tracks are all loaded into Reaper? Is the reason this seems to help that Reaper streams the tracks from the hard drive rather than keeping them all in memory? Why does my 100MB Renoise file occupy 1.5GB of memory (surely flac isn’t that awesome)? Does increasing my Paging File help with memory issues (in my testing it didn’t affect anything)? One of my biggest questions is if my multiple large samples (3-minute, 48khz, 24bit) are the memory hog, or if some of my VST(i)'s are bringing me down due to too many instances or just crappy VST programming. I would presume that VST’s should be more taxing on the processor, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more crossover than I anticipated.
I apologize for the length of this post, especially if these issues are covered in-detail elsewhere on the forums or in the manual, but I couldn’t find a very comprehensive explanation of all this stuff, and especially how it relates to Renoise in particular. Much appreciation in advance for any advice, and thanks for being such an awesome community in general
Best,
-Troupe