Upgrading my pc (again) Currently Have i9 9900k 8c/16t liquid cooled - SSD drive 32G of RAM - RADEON RX55000XT 4GB GDDR6 and still cant get anything done. Ive optimized my pc for audio Have no viruses - no virus software running to slow it down - I do use a lot of plugins and a lot of instances of kontakt but Im literally ready to throw the thing out the window. literaly nothing is more frustrating than knowing what you want to do and cant do it. My RAM is undoubtedly being overloaded on top of the CPU issues. upgrading to 128 G of RAM and a faster i9 with 24 cores and possibly a new graphics card. People were saying that Graphics cards matter once you reach a certain number of plugin interfaces & graphics and whatnot. I would rather not spend 500 extra dollars on a graphics card if i dont need it. Is there something I'm missing? I've seen people on here that have i7 processors stacking like 10 15+ kontakt instrument stacks ontop of each other with no problem. Lol I do not believe this at all.

 

No, you don't need 500$ graphics card for audio. Few years ago I was working on quite large project and my graphics card was GeForce GT 710. i9 7900X processor and 32GB of RAM. Only problem I had was running out of RAM.

 

Last edited: Aug 26, 2023

Indeed, no graphic card upgrade will change your problem. With Kontakt it's more about the RAM (your CPU is enough, but never a bad thing to upgrade if you can afford it, for others plugins). You'll gain more with some optimization, like purging the unused sample and stuff like that.

Also, a good soundcard with great audio driver can be a big improvement with latency, not just with the soundcard own plugin (like UAD for exemple) but also the way its driver deal with latency (it's not always about the price, I saw some cheaper soundcard doing better than +2000€ soundcard).

Graphic card have a little impact on latency, maybe it can improve when you don't have a separate graphic card, but it doesn't seem to be your case so an upgrade won't give you more performance for audio. But if you can afford it and got nothing else that would benefit that budget (like good speaker or a soundcard) then go for it, some company are doing some research on GPU plugin, and seeing the development of AI stuff mostly based on that, it's just a matter of time for it to be completly stable and integrated with audio.

Also, a good cooling system can do wonder for your CPU/GPU (don't just focus on CPU cause everything that produce heat inside a machine can have an inpact on other element, like a bad cooling for your GPU will impact your CPU cooling performance, and vice versa).

And finaly, if you already got SSD for your Kontakt bank, then you're good, if it's just for the VST part, then take one for the bank (their price are droping lately, you can find 4go at the price of 1go a year ago). Good performance are important there too, but the impact is more on the first loading (after that it's the ram that do the work, unless it's full).

 

Hey thanks for the input. So even if just the RAM is being overloaded my CPU meeter will jump? I have liquid cooling and 7 Fans in my system now. I dont know much about sound cards. Im using asio4all driver now. what would you recommend as far as sound cards?

 

As far as I know, the main thing is to make sure there's at least some kind of dedicated gpu, either on the system board or (probably preferably) on a card but it doesn't have to be really powerful for running DAWs and plugins, it just needs to make sure the cpu isn't carrying the load itself. Honestly, I didn't think this was an issue any more in modern pcs, or laptops, but I don't really keep up so maybe I'm way off.

 

sounds like bad work habits, you can't expect miracles,
are you streaming Kontakt libraries directly from SSD or wasting RAM for them?
what audio interface you use?
what DAW you use?

you can rather easily measure computer's resources load to determine where the bottleneck is,
starting with measuring DPC latency is a good start,
observing temperatures to notice potential thermal throttling is important too,
many people don't understand audio work needs consistent performance, not cpu frequency boost spikes

 

there is your answer

 

Since you mentioned "SSD drive" with no further details, you probably just got whatever, which considering all samplers these days stream directly off the SSD, is not the best of ideas. I very much doubt you're running out of CPU unless you're running well into hundreds of tracks, or not being smart about it by say, disabling any reverbs and other effects inside your Kontakt libraries, opting to use an external one on an aux track.

Purging only frees up RAM, and only until you play the note that was purged. It does nothing to performance, unless your bottleneck was running out of RAM. Having multiple instances of the same instrument does not consume any further RAM, so with 32GB I'd say it's very unlikely to run out unless we're well past 200 tracks.

That said, it's not really about RAM at all. Kontakt loads just the very start of the sample into RAM, and everything is streamed directly from disk on-demand (provided DFD is selected in the instrument settings, which it is for every library but very old and/or freelance ones), which is how they can have a piano weigh 200MB in RAM yet use 18GB of disk space. Having a fast enough drive to feed all the tracks the data they need on the fly is way more important.

Latency wasn't mentioned as an issue, and indeed it has not been an issue for years now. UAD is a borderline obsolete platform and it's already been shown that the same plugins run just fine on the CPU, which was demonstrated to absolutely demolish any UAD DSP in terms of plugin counts. They know it and that's why they went native.

It's not 2002, computers can handle audio and have been doing so very well for at least a decade now. Yes, at low latency, and low enough to record with reverbs, delays, autotune, and a whole band playing from virtual instruments at once. My i7-8800K has no problems running at 64/128 samples for both recording and mixing, usually ending up at about 80 tracks on a typical song.

As mentioned above, this is straight up a lie. RAM is almost not used in Kontakt since it uses DFD, and so does every other major sampler on the market (UVI, IK Multimedia, EastWest, they all do it)

Forget the fans and liquid coolers, the stock Intel cooler should give you 95% of the performance anyway. You're splitting hairs and looking at the wrong thing. As for ASIO4All - yes, absolutely. It's horrible, and it uses your CPU to get around the mess that is audio on Windows. ASIO is a way to bypass it and get straight to the soundcard, which is why it's pretty much a must for audio on Windows. Get a real audio interface, there's no reason not to in 2023 given you can pick one up used for $50 that'll easily do the business.

 

Just for reference, there's no shortage of word-class studios running Mac Pros from 2012/2013 every day and getting some of the best music made. On CPUs half the performance of yours.

 

When you are finished working with a particular channel - render in place.. (or bounce to audio/).
Dom explains it in a short video for cubase:

With the current trendy buzz of putting AI into everything it won't be long until GPUs are going to be essential for workflow.

 

Upgrading to 128 G of RAM ??? First look if your Mobo and CPU support this. CPU yes 128MB at DDR4-2666 Mobo ?? Maybe a BIOS update has a fix

 

I remember that the rule for a graphics card used to be 1GB of GPU ram per monitor. It would be safe to at least go with an older 4GB RADEON card of some sort.

 

Last edited: Aug 27, 2023

The machine sounds pretty nice to me. When Liquid-Cooled was decided, and you started adding parts that have the same names as in cars like water pump, radiator, coolant; you just skipped the new stereo/radio?

More serious though, I would just get a decent GPU, but not the bare minimum. GPU will not make much of a difference for anything with audio, but one that is really mediocre spec could possibly not meet the minimum requirements for updating later on down the road. (my mac pro is exactly like this still, but idc).

 

Wait what? You're not using an audio interface at all?

Yeah, surprised nobody else caught this. The interface is directly tied to latency.

By the way, what is your actual problem? You haven't mentioned the symptoms. Everybody is assuming what the problem is so far

 

Not trying to add insult to injury but just illustrating a point;
I have same proc as yours, 64Gb ram, RTX 3070TI (because I do video work as well on this machine) super optimized win10 21H2, RME audio interfaces and driver and have not experienced the issues that you're describing. Mine's all air cooled in a super efficient case but that shouldn't make a difference as long as everything is running smoothly temp wise. Also NO internet ever touches my production machines, which can make a difference.

Rather than spend more ca$h on computer gear (unless you have the $$ and you want to) I would suggest maybe looking into a better audio interface and drivers. And graphics cards can make a difference depending on how one optimizes the drivers. In my case I run an nvidia gpu only because I do video production on the same machine. If this new build were just for audio only I would have gone with onboard chipset video (non-nvidia) or a AMD gpu. Your rig there should be well up to the task of most any pure audio project.

A few suggestions to try if you haven't already - ditch win11 and run win10 (20H1-21H2 depending on what kind of requirements you have software wise), preferably a Ghostspectre build - if your audio interfacing is dodgy my first suggestion be to would look into RME interfaces - they have the best drivers and the hardwares are rock solid performers - the best value for the money IMO. Also some extra RAM might help as well - consider upping your spec to maybe 64/128GB. It can help with multiple plugins and loading up big sample libraries next to one another. One last thing you can try operationally - as you perfect tracks one by one bounce them down to audio and let go of the vst's. If you want to be able to go back and tweak you can always make reference copies of your project(s) before you bounce. Bouncing down to audio free's up a lot of overhead that would otherwise be taken with multiple vsti's sitting in ram taking up space that could be used more efficiently...

 

Last edited: Aug 27, 2023

You've got a top of the line processor, have you looked into overclocking? If you think you need all that extra juice that (K) model could be boosted up to 5Ghz! But.. i think the problem lies in not using proper drivers and probably wrong configurations, i would try to optimize the setup from scratch. GPU's wont make much difference for audio unless you want to use that new DSP plugin that processes audio with GPU.
Also, get RME soundcard, the best drivers around!

 

Why don't you recommend Win 11? In a few years there will be no Win 10 support for new software. Maybe you are planning for the computer for the long term...

 

It's 100 percent pilot error. The pilot needs to learn how to use their tools more efficiently, not add new variables to the mix.

 

i doubt it. I'd buy a interface from a reputable retailer with good return policy. Take the card home, install it, test. If that doesn't immediately fix the issue using a new driver, there is something wrong with the build. Take the audio interface back if you do not want to keep it and do a return. I would do some of the online benchmarking tests. If it is getting scores which are comparable to other current generation machines, I would reseat the RAM and all the simple things you can check like memory testing etc. If I was still having difficulty, I would rule out the OS almost completely by putting a Linux distro onto a usb flash drive. I would not set it up as a persistent install on the pen drive, just a standard live boot scenario with basic tools like lspci, hwinfo, etc. You need a systematic approach or you will end up chasing your tail and throwing parts at it.

I don't think some normal user error could result in a machine of these specs to be barely usable.

 

@ Nick Bellagio:
Can't find your audio interface mentioned anywhere in this thread.
The quality of the asio driver is definitely more important than the gpu.
And you should post what kind of latency you expect for 'I can work on that machine'.
If you don't play in real time and don't need 3ms Increasing latency will most likely fix your problem instantly.
The better the asio driver the lower latency you will get on the same load.
As you can read here:
https://original.dawbench.com
I personally don't think asio4all is good enough for a proper daw, but then again I don't think 80% of all pro audio interfaces are good enough for proper daws. So..