Hey everyone

Just wondering what kind of RAM you guys use in your setups. I am asking because I'm having some audio dropout/clicking and popping issues and trying to find out what the deal is. I have the 2013 mac pro with 2.7 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon E5 so I don't think I'm getting hung up @ the processor. I got SSD storage all the way around as well so that should be good... The project has hardly anything in it yet, it's 16 bars long, 6 tracks with some moderate processing with plugins, maybe 10 or so. My ram is this: 32 GB 1066 MHz DDR3, I never use to have this problem until I switched to FL studio. I've got the buffer length maxed out right now too. At the same time I also downgraded a 128gb ram kit from Crucial to 32gb so I'm thinking I fucked something up with the latter... Anyways, I guess I'm going to try and eliminate hardware issues and switch out my RAM. What are you all using?

Cheers

 

RAM is the LAST thing you check when you have dropout issues.

Don't use FL. FL is bad with multithreading IIRC.

I think BECAUSE you have so many cores it's causing problems.

https://www.google.com/search?q=turn+off+hyperthreading+mac

Maybe also disable power management features.

 

Well fuck me That is sad cause I've taken a liking to FL

I'll check out power features

ty!

 

I use Crucial DDR2 on a clunky MBP 2011 and have never experienced dropouts due to RAM. Usually, internal dropouts are caused by CPU overload or buffer size, not RAM usage. And maxing out your buffers won't always solve the issue -- you may actually need to scale your buffer size down.

 

I'm about to give the hyperthread disable a try, As far as the buffers go max setting is the only thing that is usable once the project grows past 16 bars. I really don't want to part with FL... :/

 

how much CPU load ?

 

I guess that also brings up the next question: what are you running, exactly, in terms of VIs and plugs? I hate to suggest freezing tracks or disabling your plugs and recording your VIs to audio, but it's possible you're running something that's eating your CPU, or that you're running a k'd plug that's glitching your CPU or buffers.

 

I tried out dialing down the cores and it seems that 4 cores does help but it's still around 70%and up to 90% in some areas, song is up to 32 bars now. I am using battery with just a kick snare couple percussion, addictive drums hats with it's internal effects active. the rest of the song is audio clips utilizing pro-q & the glue on alot of the drum tracks,ds-10 drum shaper on the drum bus, a couple trash2's & couple NI freak on other elements, 1 backmask. I have a feeling its to do with FL because I could never overload Logic with even 3x as many things going

 

It seems logical that FL is the "problem", maybe it is not yet well programmed/optimized for multi processing on Mac OS platform...remember it's quite new on MacOS.

Have you done some searches on FL forums, maybe they are other Mac users with similar problem

 

can be a problematic combination of your audio interface and DAW,
I hope you're not using onboard audio chip, do you?

 

first i would take a look at cpu meter.
open activity monitor,
in the CPU tab double click the Graph in the middle at the bottom,
now observe the threads as your project is running.
if there is one at a max, this is your problem, you overloaded it.

 

RAM overload results in a major freeze of your entire computer.

 

i'm using the schitt modi 2 & magni

i observed this, and while fl studio reads as high as 140% cpu usage on the main list, no single core is very high at all except for #1 which hovers around 60% full or so. the overall graph (not expanded) is barely anything


I don't think FL is optimized for the way i work, i have basically everything routed to everything in the mixer aka a kick channel runs to the kick bus which ends up at the drum master bus & i guess it says in the manual that that's how to make everything work on one core. hopefully they change that cause i can't imagine switching up that portion of my workflow

 

Yep.

I still wonder what the number of bars has to with it...

 

new section gets some new elements added, some new plugs automating existing elements, adding to the overall usage. i guess freezing is the only way around it or to have everything on it's own mixer channel (that seems weird)

 

this cpu has a lot of power for huge Track-count projects but single core performance drawback is the price to pay for so many cores.
its still decent in single core tho and can handle a healthy amount of plugs on one channel.

hmm there are a lot of variables in your situation, whats that ram you are using? is this ECC ram ?
use the original if possible, but at a later point, first do the fast and easy steps, exclude 1 by 1as culprit.

try again with onboard sound to exclude this hardware/driver/cable as culprit.

this can go up to 2400% on your cpu, means your cpu isn't taxed at all now. (from a multicore perspective)

thats ok, whats important is that its not going over 100% on one core, at any time.
only the the peaks are important.

to be sure, increase refresh rate of the graph:

Menu Bar/View/Update Frequency -> 1s

since you have 24 graphs, if its just one thats taxed,
drag the bars of other cores down, enabling you to increase the vertical size of the taxed core even further.
in order to have a healthy sized graph that shows the peaks.


this is important because you have to find out what precisely it is what you are hearing.

if its crackles of an overtaxed core, or something else, i guess its something else.

solo/mute stuff to see if the pops are coming from a certain source


any 32bit plugins in use ?
32 lives /similar ?
demo mode plugins?
you could try to use only native plugins, to see if it still happens
disconnect anything you don't need

 

16 GB

 

@ OP: Forget your question about RAM:
FL Studio - mac version is simply not very CPU optimized.
As already said: the mac version (although officially released) is still in heavy development, also regarding resources optimisation.
I read that the latest pre-version has some cpu optimisations but i assume there is still alot to gain in this area and i am confident that
Image Line will sort that out eventually, they are very active making the mac version better and better.

 

hi have ya got these set to on in the audio settings,
im on windows so not sure if they added this in the mac version.

 

yeah i have run thru all the suggestions mentioned, and thank you all for your suggestions, but no changes really except running @ 4 cores which was minimally helpful at best. none of the cores are maxing out, it is FL issue. I think Vanhaze is correct unfortunately !