Well, in light of so many mixed experiences, cited by so many varied individuals, I have decided to just take my sweet time easing a total marriage with C8. But I must be honest with you: I’m thinking very seriously about buying a ring
After having spent the past week experimenting with various ASIO Guard Settings, re-configuring my HDs so that various audio files and samples are on different disks (to prevent bottlenecks), and having just disabled Hyperthreading, I was able to get really nice performance out of a file-originally created in C6-with a total of 146 tracks (including 67 Audio tracks, 32 Group Tracks and 42 Instrument Tracks). ASIO Guard was set to Low, and my ASIO Buffer was set to 10 ms.
At the apex of the song I counted 33 Audio tracks, and 15 Instrument Tracks playing very well together at the same time. The CPU meter averaged around 65-70% at this time. It sounded as good as it ever did in C6.
I was wondering if 33 Audio/15 Instruments tracks at one time was large in the general scheme of things-especially with all you Scoring Composers out there?
And, just as a general point of curiousity, at a time when so many people are not sure if C8 is a Dog or a Godsend. So I pose the question: how many tracks are you (happily) finding yourself able to play?
Realistically I am restricted to two tracks, one with my left hand and one with my right hand. Though I probably could pull a Great Balls of Fire using at least one foot, but that isn’t really “playing” per se, but more of a fun stomp, so back to my original line of two tracks.
Oh right, how well? Well, my four year old grand daughter screams (joyously, that is) when I do this, and the rest of the family usually laughs too, though I am not sure all that joy is in favor of me, so I suppose fair would be… eh, fair to say on that one.
Yeah, but as part of your description you said “active tracks” … In my case they are all active, but not necessarily playing. I use a lot of VSL instruments that have a spectacular number of articulations and an extremely powerful but complex Keyswitching system. So, I eventually found that for detailed control I prefer to use 1 MIDI track per Matrix instead of expression maps. So the base MIDI track will have a “generic” expression map, but a large number of additional MIDI tracks don’t have expression maps and are Matrix specific. And, they are drive 1 instrument. I wouldn’t get too caught up in track numbers.
So, for example I have a template for Dimension Violins, Violin 1 where the loaded instrument has 6 matrices. So, there are 6 MIDI tracks for the one instrument. Do that for Violin 2,3 and 4 … violas, cello’s, basses … Dimension Brass, Full Strings etc… and you get a poopies load of tracks really fast.
Thanks for the explanation. I was actually just getting ready to ask you (and I guess it is still germane to ask): and how has C8 worked for you with all of this (or have you fully left 7.5 yet?)
I’m curious I guess because I’m trying to see if there’s some pitfalls I might yet confront-gauging from others experiences. Especially someone like yourself, who regularly runs such complex files.
To me C8 is > C7.5 by a long shot. There are UI issues for sure, but for composition/writing it is awesome. I really, really like C8 for that as long as you can tolerate a few of the UI niggles. I really hate having a MAC UI concept in windows. But, the other stuff that comes with 8 has me putting up with it.
For mixing though, C7 and C8 suck monkey nuts. I’m not a pro by a long shot, but I do mix local band and orchestra events. Primarily for schools. I simply can’t do it in C7 or 8. I use C6.5 and/or PT depending on who it is for. C6.5 is light years better than C7+ for mixing. The new mixconsole and control room totally fucked mixing in the rear IMO. However, the mixconsole has some great features that I wish were in C6. But, the combination of a ruined Control Room, lack of keycommand focus between the console and the project and controllers, the god damned hover nonsense, tabs on the channel editor when I used to be able to see everything grrrrrr … etc … etc …
Obviously for this kind of stuff, YMMV … within that context I think C8 is a winner.
Do you do this at your home studio, or are you part of a larger studio? I guess I’m curious because I’m happy to see that there are people out there “tracking” with a DAW other that PT. PT is only the industry standard because there’s such a huge installed base (kinda like Windows), and that you’re tracking with Cubase suggests that perhaps Cubase is eating into that PT niche-which would be a good thing, from my perspective.
Wow–Ok.