Merging Technologies

It is taking me upwards of 45 seconds to rebuild my mixer and I get stutters and dropouts every time I move the mouse over a menu or touch a fader, making it near impossible to mix. Here are the details on the session:

32 tracks at 48/24 in PMF
using multiple iterations of Flux plugs and Altiverb on (2) aux strips
no automation yet
minimal edits and punches

I am admittedly using a very old USB Edirol interface on this system until my newer RME gear arrives, but it is an IBM Intellistation M Pro with a 3.6GHz P4 with 4GB of RAM and an ATI FireGL V3100 graphics card. The session is being run from a Glyph GT050Q via FireWire 400. The buffer on the Edirol is set as high as it will allow me to and I increased the playback buffer in Pyramix substantially as well, with no improvements.

Pyramix shows my CPU usage to be around 31%, so CPU power should not be the issue. There does not appear to be anything running in the background and other applications on the machine are very snappy and do not exhibit these types of slow-downs. I have occasionally even lost mouse control during a mixer rebuild. I have double checked and I am running the latest version of the Flux plugins which supposedly have updated support for Pyramix 6.1 (is this update imminent?) Any help is much appreciated! This project has a quick turnaround and I do not want to wast time getting it into another DAW (and Pyramix sounds better anyway).

In addition to the steps you have taken, you may need to optimize your Windows installation further. In the Device Manager, disable all wireless communications hardware, and while you're at it, disable the internal sound hardware (if there is any in your computer). Disable anything else you will not need while mixing, like a web-cam, printer, scanner, etc.

You may have some issues with your graphics card driver, which could be modified by changing your grapic card driver to "Standard VGA Driver" via the Device Manager (or use RIVATUNER to enforce a fixed clock rate and performance mode). Try "Low Power 3D" mode to reduce the processor load for graphics.

An additional improvement in latency can be achieved by going to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance "Settings" button > Advanced > Change "Programs" to "Background services".

To get a graphic representation of your DPC Latency load, download DPC Latency Checker from http://www.thesycon.de/eng/free_download.shtml. Reading the documentation there will also provide you with some more clues as to how to lower your processor load, which in turn may solve your mixer issues.

No guarantees, however, as I've never run into this problem myself. The most complex session I've run is a fourteen track recording with edits and plugins (not Altiverb, which I believe has some issues with Pyramix - I use SIR2 for a 0 latency, impulse response reverb plug-in, and have had no issues), but I'm only seeing a high of around 15% CPU load even then, most of the time hovering about 9% - this is on an Intel Core II duo processor inside either an iMac or a MacBook Pro (Bootcamp, XP SP3). Your processor load of 31% seems high, especially if you've set both the Edirol and Pyramix latencies to their highest values, so that's why I'm recommending that you look into the background load that could be occurring due to other hardware drivers. Other information about system optimization could be found at http://www.gearslutz.com/board/1961838-post3.html as well. Some of the optimizations suggested for laptops might be applicable for your situation.

I can confirm this I have noticed exactly the same problem on a colleague's machine. In a project using Altiverb, the mixer loads and unloads repeatedly and could take minutes to open a project. By simply removing the Altiverb plugin in the mixer, the issue dissapeared instantly.
If you need altiverb, I would only suggest that you use it on a stereo mix at the end, or on a simplified project with mixed down busses so it can be added in just before the final mix. I know this is a drag and won't solve the problem for every one but it might just help someone!

Cheers!

I have exactly the same problem and am using those two plugins the OP mentioned. I also came to the conclusion that it is Altiverb which is causing the problem, but I usually need at least three auxes loaded with them so for now I have just learned to live with this. On top of that PMX tends to crash when closing it (if it has altiverb in its project).

I am hoping that this issue will be addressed in the next version

Glad to know I'm not the only one. I'll be installing 6.1 soon and hopefully that may contain some code to remedy this situation.