Am I expecting too much from my MDD G4?

Hey all... The time has come for me to finally use my PT LE system for a major project - our band's album. Up until now, I've done acoustic albums, and things that have generally not taxed my system too hard. This past weekend we started tracking drums, and while that went okay, i'm now starting to realize that I may be in need of one of two things: 1. an upgrade of my Mac, or 2. the use of an HD-equipped studio. So I'm putting it out there to the DUC users, who have been very helpful in the past, to enlighten me on a few things... I'm currently using very minimal hardware, I have: Digi 002R Digimat LT Preamp Behringer HA4700 Headphone Amp Dual 1.25 G4, MDD, 1.7GB RAM, and a dedicated 200 GB Audio Drive One of the partitions is running PT6.7 on 10.3.8 and a separate partition uses PT7.1 on 10.4.6. One of the main reasons I upgraded to PT7 was due to the fact that I can supposedly harness the power of my 2nd CPU. When I'm tracking and editing in PT6.x everything is smooth...meters respond normally, etc. In the process of editing the drums, I'm using a fair number of plugins, RenEQ, RComp, AC1 and a C1 gate on most of the drums, and two Aux tracks with TL Space on them for various reverbs. In 6.x, the CPU meter is pretty hot, almost maxing out...everything runs great until I un-bypass my Amplitibe LE plugin on my scratch guitar track. Then it goes down on a -6096 error. (In addition, my buffer size is set to the max of 1024 samples.) Enter PT7.1...I have already configured it for 2 CPUs, and all other settings have remained the same. (FYI I have not disabled Dashboard, and Spotlight Indexing, as outlined in the Trobuleshooting thread on the DUC). When I start the transport, I immediately get the -6096 error until I bypass my two instances of TL Space. I can then un-bypass my Amplitube, but at this point the meters are jumpy and the the transport timecode is jumpy as well...like the CPU is thinking about whether or not to run or kick me off... I have taken steps to upload the optimized versions of all the necessary plugins, and still I'm disappointed. I figured that with the 2-processor optimization my CPU meter would have been a little happier, and I would be able to utilized the supposed RTAS enhancements for PT7.x. Back to the original title...am I doomed to mixing the drums to a submix, or are there things that I've missed that will allow me to keep working in PT7, without upgrading to a Dual or Quad G5 with a gazillion GB of RAM...Don't get me wrong I love the setup I have, but I just need to know if I'm expecting too much... Thanks in advance for any replies, Jeff D. Michel

Try setting it to one CPU, yo may be surprised

I have a MDD Dual 867 with 1.5Gigs Ram and tons of hard drive space. There is a limit to what you can do with 7.1. I have found that the Digidesign plug-ins stress it the least, and when I start adding on third-party plugs, at some point I'm going to hit the wall. I haven't gotten close to a full band tracking, that's not what I'm using it for. I am only tracking guitar and vocals for songwriting, although I like to stack guitars pretty thick. I have to use submixes for them or else the dreaded CPU error comes up. Not a problem for me, I would submix anyway, but there is a limit with these machines. Right now is a funky time because what do you do? Upgrade to a G5 and have it outdated in two months? Buy a MacBook Pro and have a lot of your 3rd party plug-ins not work? It's tricky. I went with option 2 and am still running the G4 just because I'm such a lousy singer and I NEED Auto Tune. I can wait for the UBS and run the G4 in the interim. Best of Luck! peace

I don't think you're expecting too much at all - I'm on a dual 1.42 w/ 1.5gb ram, version 7.1. I track full bands all the time, usually 12-13 inputs simultaneously and the cpu isn't stressed at all. Mixing is usually 30-40 tracks (MPTK) and, under the influence of Charles Dye, I'm not exactly light on plugin useage. That said, I also haven't had to submix & bounce drums since my 867mhz days. I think you've got a config issue and the first place I'd look is plugin versions. I made sure to download the latest installers of everything I own when I rebuilt the box for 7. Hope this is useful, John

Audiosuite some of your plug ins that you know for a fact you will use. Save a playlist of the unaffected track, just in case you want to change it later. This will free up some CPU power. sdf