Before my question: I did search the forums, and tried the suggestion to set the performance to highest (rather than automatic) (i’m on a mac)
My problem:
I downloaded some entries from the mutant-break contest, and when listening (polderave in particular) - my computer was bogging down, w/ obvious clipping/distortion/general-mangling of the sequence during playback.
The best way to describe it? When you stretch a sample waaaaay out and you can hear the separation and space/noise between snippets, plus distortion and clipping. At first i wasn’t sure if this was actually how the song sounded , or whether it was my comp. when i adjusted the energy saver settings from automatic to highest, it got a lot better, but the heaviest processed parts of the song still did this
i also:
-fussing with the latency settings
-played with what was displayed during playback (i.e. patterns vs. mixer, etc.)
-tried fullscreen vs. windowed
I’m running this on a 1.33Ghz ibook g4 with 1.5 GB of RAM (OS 10.4.11), plenty of HD space, but no outboard gear, and using the stock apple sound drivers to listen
I’m fascinated by renoise and am/was/still-am considering a purchase, but was a little worried about the performance, esp since the computer I’d use it more on, is an old g4 tower from 2000 (upped to 1.4 Ghz, 1.25GB RAM)…my understanding was the CPU overhead was pretty low, so I’m sure there’s something else i can do to optimize performance, but need to figure it out before i plunk down the $80.
any help would be appreciated
Polderave (or any of BOTB’s tracks) are very CPU intensive.
Your CPU probably isn’t fast enough to play it. I have an iBook G4 800mhz and it can not handle a lot of tracks that my G5 1.8 Mhz CPU can. My iBook G5 1.8 Mhz sometimes chokes too, though.
Renoise is as CPU intensive as you want to make it. It can be low impact, or it can be high. It depends on the song style.
Your best bet is to render the track to WAV and listen to it like that. Which, of course, would require paying for Renoise It’s worth it though, but this opinion is biased. Everyone here uses Renoise so they aren’t going to tell you it’s not.
I think rendered versions (MP3/OGG files) are in the mutant breaks compo thread so if you want to listen in iTunes or something, grab those.
ahhhhhh, so it was just dumb (bad) luck that it was the first one that i downloaded to listen to! It did seem like there were a lot of embed-effects…so if i did have a pay copy of renoise, the render file wouldn’t have any problems with the lagging, i take it?
i thought it might be a track issue, as I muted some of them and it seemed to get better - good to know that…
I’m off to look for the rendered versions now…
also, while I’m on the topic, I’m in the market for a new laptop, and have been bouncing between the MB and MBP…does renoise do anything that would take advantage of the dedicated graphics of the MBPs?
do those ibooks use the internal airport wireless? i dunno i’m on a macbook. one thing i noticed about a week or two ago was that with macs, and the latest drivers for Airport (the built in wireless system), there have been issues with audio performance. it may or may not be your problem, but try turning airport off in the menu bar on the top of your screen, and then try opening botb’s track, and see if that works any better…it’s possible…
thanks for the tip - it does use internal (built in) airport…but i already had it off. I did however, have my verizon USB cellular broadband running while listening. I’ll give it a try here in a bit w/ everything off/disconnected to see how that affects it…
if that’s the ticket, i just discovered a little utility called rooswitch that lets you create multiple instances of application preferences, and you can batch them all together with an applescript…so i may use that to ‘optimize’ everything (i.e. turn off all the extras) if it makes a big enough difference.
I’ve been more than well-served by the little iBook, but this does make me jones for the MB Pro.
I’m still having some trouble - this time with a short sequence that I threw together trying to get a feel for the renoise interface. The file itself is only 120KB, but I’ve got some random plugs and overlap running (all built in efx).
if anyone would be so kind as to let me email (or i can post to ftp) this xrns file and they could open it on their machine. Its pretty much obnoxious…like i said i was just tweaking some of the effects…but i dont have any other way to test whether
a- I’m just (quickly) finding ways to max renoise out (i doubt this)
b- my ibook audio capabilities are that limited (i’m suspicious)
or
c- my loop is just that f-d up
this way I’d know if it was something related to my computer, or something with the settings…
, or whether it was my comp. when i adjusted the energy saver settings from automatic to highest, it got a lot better, but the heaviest processed parts of the song still did this
It’s worth it though, but this opinion is biased. Everyone here uses Renoise so they aren’t going to tell you it’s not.