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Well no joy with reinstalling, exactly the same results, still get bass test tone running in the background, that only stops when i tick then untick the checkbox, the problem seems to be that spec is processing even with no audio file loaded and giving dsp of over 180 with everything else disabled, i'm now running out of ideas, unless its a c runtime error

Jim.

You're definitely seeing some unusual stuff. What version of Plogue are you running?

also please try cc or slice, vs. arctan.

I've been mucking around with SPEC on an older XP machine, and I see some places where I might be able to shave a few % points of DSP off in ArcTan, but only by muting features that aren't currently in use, so your results would depend on what controls you're using.

Outside of that, to minimize DSP load while live monitoring, bypass (right click, processing mode, bypass) anything you're not using. This might include:

ZPan, FreeMastering, ZAG, and Limiters. Obviously if you want to hear the affect of, say, the limiters, they would have to be processing.

As mentioned earlier if you're not using Per Track Automation you could delete or mute (right click, processing mode, mute) the preset manager.

Then when you go offline to do measure levels and apply gains/record you will set ZAG, the Limiters, and anything else you're using to processing.

That's about all I can do for you. The majority of the DSP load comes from the FFT/iFFT bidules in Plogue iteself. For Slice and ArcTan we need two FFTs and five iFFTs. You can see the effect of these on the DSP load by drilling down into SLICE or ArcTan and muting them.

I may be replacing one of my XP machines with an lowcost Atom based box like this: http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-Intel-Mini- ... B003N198UG

and if I do I can let you know how SPEC runs (if at all) on that.

Hi
well spent today flattening the machine, bit the bullet and installed win 7, as a result i get improved monitoring with spec simple layout, buffer size 1024, fft size 8192, fft overlap 4 gives a dsp of around 70, any higher takes it to around 115.

With spec main still can only use buffer size 1024, fft size 2.48, fft overlap 2 gives a dsp of around 90, but the sound is rough to say the least, with these settings in spec simple the sound is just as rough, so looks like its my hardware that won't play ball.

The only other thing is if i open up my soundcard biddle preferances, current latency details state: "biddle runs with 1024 samples (23.22ms) sized blocks, this driver runs with 10240 samples (232.2ms) -> compensating, setting might be improvable" , any ideas what this meansand how can i improve it?

Cheers and happy new year everyone.

jim.

It means you could use your audio driver to set a buffer size that would be closer to what spec is doing.

Have you tried the other audio devices, besides ASIO?

Have you tried using SLICE, vs. ArcTan?

Typically we don't use ZPAN with ArcTan, so you could bypass ZPAN, FreeMastering, ZAG, and the limiters.

To measure levels, set zag processing to on. If you don't want peak capture you can un-check that in ZAG, that uses a bit of DSP.

To Apply Gains and Record, set processing to on for the limiters.

I've been working to shave off some DSP but I'm not done yet. Well let you know.

...

After doing some shopping I decided not to spend money on the Atom experiment, and not to DYI at all, but I may borrow some hardware from work to do that experiment anyway. What I did settle on for a "what is the least expensive hardware to run spec on" experiment was this:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/eMachines+- ... Id=1243045

That's a 2.8 Ghz dual core. Memory speed isn't the fastest bet everything else seems good. Even the RPMs of the drive.

Don't know if you have any funds available but I'll be testing this machine later this week.