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Subject: SX?

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Original Message 1/26 26-Aug-02 @ 11:58 PM - SX?

cutoff_freq

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ok, so i tried SX about a month or so back.... i wasn't impressed. sure, it has lots of nice features, you can see your little fader guy in the arrange window, pretty nicely laid out and all. but to be honest, it ran like shit...

i have an Athlon 1800XP with 512 of RAM and 2 7200rpm harddrives. i could get a handful of pluggins going, a soft synth or two, and the audio engine would get all dodgy - every time i bring up the mixer, it would slowly draw in one strip at a time while the audio stuttered. when i tried to save on the fly, it would stutter. so overall the performance during playback was pretty wank.

the redraw issues might have something to do with my dual-head Matrox Vid card, but regardless, this is a system where i had Logic 5 running perfectly smooth with over 20 plugs, some of which were Waves, and about 5 or 6 virtual synths (including Absynth!).

so, overall, i was not impressed. originally being of the frame of mind that i best start learning Cubase SX since Emagic has shacked up with Apple, i gave it a shot. but now im convinced that i can still get a good year out of Logic 5.2, barring no more PC updates, before i need to jump ship to either Mac, Cubase or even back to good ole Sonar.

am i the only one having these problems, or are other Cubase SX users banging their heads against their desks?

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Message 2/26 27-Aug-02 @ 02:03 PM Edit: 27-Aug-02 | 02:04 PM - RE: SX?

dARKSTATe

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Dude.. you must be *really* unlucky then coz I've had no such problems with SX, and neither have the other producers I've built XP/SX workstations around (using Matrox G550s as well)

- Their machines are very similarly specc'd to yours and the thing runs like a fucking dream (large track counts, plenty of plugs etc.etc.)

I'm guessing you've also applied ALL of the known XP/2000 config tweaks out there (switch priority to background services etc.etc.etc)

It might be worth searching around to see if there are any compatibility problems with your mobo and xp/sx etc... Or perhaps between the matrox and the above! I just mean, that I got the matrox working with an EPoX VIA 333 based mobo just fine, but that doesn't mean it works well with other configs..

Fingers crossed for ya man, SX is worth persevering with.. (so far so good at any rate!)

Marc_D

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Message 3/26 27-Aug-02 @ 07:30 PM - RE: SX?

psylichon

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I tried SX and saw nothing that would convince me to leave Sonar. I was hoping for better VST/VSTi integration, but Sonar runs my VSTs better in DirectX with the FXpansion wrapper than natively in Cubase! And while I didn't exactly stress SX to see its horsepower, I did notice clunkiness like you described on playback.

I can't see why people don't like Sonar. All the power is there, is it an interface thing? I think Cubase's interface is horrible. Way too many windows. I'm sure I'm biased, though. If you get used to Sonar, it's very very fast. I have almost the same system as yours, and I get 30 track mixes with a full-on Waves and Autotune compliment with no problem. I can even save it while it plays!

psylichon

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Message 4/26 28-Aug-02 @ 12:32 PM - RE: SX?

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For me it's purely the fact that I'm familiar with Cubase, and going to a different sequencer just takes too much time. I really like SX though, definitely an improvement over R5 and I've had no problems with it.

Si.

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Message 5/26 01-Sep-02 @ 06:21 AM - RE: SX?

brett

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the switch to cakewalk took a few days. they call it cakewalk for a reason.

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Message 6/26 04-Sep-02 @ 08:13 PM - RE: SX?

dude56

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got sx running on a vaio pentium II, 333mhz, 128 ram, win 98se, latency at 46ms with the internal souncard and directx asio, evulution 255c usb controller, lots of audio tracks (20+ though all loops, but some are 16 bars long) battery, A1 synth, vb, and pro52 plus a couple of plugins and it runs perfect at about 40-60% cpu.

Some sounds in pro52 or A1 will overload the cpu quickely.

the same song which i started in vst5.1 will not play with the directx asio drivers, only with the mme asio set at about 750ms so i reckon the code is far better optimized

make sure you have absolutely no other backround tasks running

cheers

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Message 7/26 04-Sep-02 @ 11:53 PM - RE: SX?

dud56

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sorry, i meant the same song will not play in vst 5 at 46ms, whereas it runs smooth in SX

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Message 8/26 05-Sep-02 @ 04:08 PM Edit: 05-Sep-02 | 04:08 PM - RE: SX?

dARKSTATe

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SX is good.. and it *WILL* get better! If the experiences I'm having in the tracks I'm producing are anything to go by, its gonna kick some SERIOUS arse (unless Steinberg get bought up too of coz!) ;-)

The learning curve from 5.1 to SX is a piece of piss.. but I'll say that I've been interested in Sonar, I've just never had any excuse to switch DAWs.. I think many people are the same, so it almost becomes a moot point to do the "My DAW is better than your DAW" thang.. ;-)

Marc_D

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Message 9/26 05-Sep-02 @ 07:53 PM - RE: SX?

influx

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hey dude56...ever think that MAYBE your system is just not up to spec for SX?

I mean..it is designed to run on XP or 2000...and on a far more powerful processor than what you have...of course its gonna be sluggish!

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Message 10/26 05-Sep-02 @ 11:17 PM - RE: SX?

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absolutely, no way a p2 is up to the job, you want to sort yourself out a good cheap fast athlon upgrade.

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