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CPU HIT

alex mcginness

New Member
Hi, I thought that the UAD card was supposed to handle all of the processing load of the powerd plugs. Well, I loaded up 24 88rs plugs and the neve compressor....the uad card meter showed a load of about 42% for the three cards I have installed but the windows task meter went from the 8 to 12% load with nothing installed ......to almost 50%. with the plugs in.
Has anyone else noticed that the UAD plugs add load to their CPU?
 

imdrecordings

Venerated Member
It depends on your PC, Soundcard, buffer-size and most of all DAW host software. To answer you question, yes I have seen this and it will vary from system to system.

Edit:
Forgot to mention, I've seen way more munching after upgrading to a Quad/Multi core processor.
 

Fundy

Established Member
Well certain CPU functions will cause a sudden shift in processing power but perhaps you have a modern CPU with hyperthreading enabled; this can be an issue with certain set-ups.

In a way the UAD is a little like a graphics accelerator, it offloads the processing from the internal processing but it may cause some CPU hit when memory to disc transfers occur.

In theory, you have a potential of 400% power however I would check your computer is configured correctly or indeed your host application is correctly patched with any relevant fixes.

Latency can be another cause of CPU load issues as well. A perfect DAW should have no other services or unnecessary background programs running.
 

billybk1

Shareholder
Oh yes, the native CPU munching enigma. Scott is right, it depends on your PC, Soundcard, buffer-size and most of all DAW host software. I had (37) Neve 88rs channel strips going in SONAR 6.2.1, using about 45%
total DSP across (4) UAD-1 cards and the native CPU munch would rear it's ugly head when I repeatedly stopped & resumed playback. The Task Manager would show the native CPU go from about 20% to 60%-70% or more. I would also get an instant dropout when I reached the end loop point of an enabled loop region.
But then, using the exact same computer and project wave files, but using
REAPER, I was able to get (57) Neve 88rs instances going and the native CPU stayed steady @ 15%-18%, no mater how many times I stopped and resumed playback. In addition, smooth seek and project looping, during playback is flawless.

So guess which DAW host I use when I mix with my UAD-1 plugins?


Now there will always be some native CPU usage when using the UAD-1 plugins, but in optimal situations it should remain negligible, at worst.
Using REAPER, at 1024 samples (23.2msec) project latency, each UAD-1 plugin uses and average of .12% native CPU, on my Core Duo (e6300) DAW. Which equates to about 3% total native CPU usage for (25) UAD-1 plugins in a project. Which is pretty much insignificant.
 

alex mcginness

New Member
Thanks for the help guys. I tried your sugestion of raising the buffer size from 256 to 1024 and Viola!!!!!! 37 plugs running on three cards and only 18-22% hit on my cpu using Nuendo 3.2. I, am a happy camper :D
Once again, thankyou for your helpful responses.
 
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