Crackles, stutters & RAM

[fastlanephil]

Iv'e been trying to put my sections together that are rendered to audio but when I finish splicing it all together and play it it's full of crackles. The activity monitor is reading
1. Wired: 120 MB of RAM
2. Active: about 425 MB of RAM
3. Inactive: about 340 MB of RAM
4. Used: a bit over my 1024 MB of RAM

I have a GB of RAM and i'm not sure what those numbers are telling me

With the tracks rendered to audio and the MIDI tracks archived and Ambience reverb on an Aux Buss does it sound like I could use more than 1 GB of memory. Meaning, are the crackles probably caused by access of the HD instead of RAM or could something else be causing the problem. I have 17 tracks of audio. Manipulating the audio buffer doesn't help.

Thanks for any ideas.

[Scoot]

Just a thought..........have you listened to the bits before putting together?

Is it happening all over or in particular sections?
If it's particular it could be the sample rate it was rendered at.

I rendered an effect at what I thought would be ok at 16 bit and it was absolutely nasty. Raising it up made it crystal clear.

[Jerm]

How much hard disk space do you have left?

This is probably not a ram issue. You should listen to each track to determine where the cracks are coming from. If it only happens when you listen to all 17 tracks then you may need to mix them all together and then listen to the result. Or perhaps change your disk buffer size or get a faster hard drive.

[fastlanephil]

I seem to have it under control now. Most of my sections were basically the whole piece so I cut what I didn't need so there wouldn't be too much scrunching down as subsections. I was still getting the crackles in the beginning of the first subsection but not as a section. The same instruments are used plus five more where the crackles stop. I start with solo french horn and I can hear a little soft snapping from the loop but it's not the same as the crackles. The french horn isn't playing after it's solo but returns when the crackles stop so that seems to eliminate the horn as the problem. I turned off Ambience again and the crackles were gone this time. I tried that before modifying my sections and there was no difference. I substituted Apple's AUMatrixReverb (cut back on the Cathedral setting- large density) and it sounds pretty clean now.

Now, after I get it tweaked out a bit more what is the easiest way to turn the track with the subsections in it into a stereo track for export as an AIFF or MP3. I thought I could use wiretap and then import the AIFF from it back into Metro for editing if needed.

Thanks.

[Jerm]

I seem to have it under control now.... I turned off Ambience again and the crackles were gone this time.

Sounds like Ambience may be a processor hog.

what is the easiest way to turn the track with the subsections in it into a stereo track for export as an AIFF or MP3.

All you should have to do, assuming everything is either audio or softsynth, is:

• Save as (to create a backup)
• Expand subsections (to place everything in a single section)
• Mix Audio tracks (to create a final mix). Make sure your master volume level is where you want it since only its initial position is incorporated in the mix.
• Export audio track. If you have the LAME quicktime encoder + framework, you can export directly to MP3 using the export via quicktime option.

As you can see there is no need to ever leave Metro to do this.

[fastlanephil]

Yes, I read about expanding subsections but I guess it sounded just too easy. It sure beats having to loop around to audio every instrument one at a time. Ambience has a nice effect for orchestral instruments but is probably not real OSX efficient like GPO which I also used for a cymbal crash that ST2 doesn't seem to have and may be contributing to the problem. I would ask them about it over at Northern Sounds but my posting privileges seem to have been revoked. It's pretty apparent that Windows is considered the gold standard over there and if your using a Mac you'll just have to make do.
Thanks again for the help.

[Jerm]

If you have a good cymbal sound in GPO that is using up too much processor, simply render it to audio and delete the GPO track. This will improve CPU usage substantially.