Will pay $500 for a solution or fix

Report · Nov 22, 2024

Months ago, I recorded an album in Adobe Audition 1.5. I converted the sessions using Ses2Sesx and have been editing in 2024. After a couple days of editing, playback is impossible. It is grueling slow. To the point it takes nearly 5 minutes to start playing the session once I hit the play button. Then it's super slow and choppy. My sessions are 100+ tracks. I'm using plugins, but I don't feel like it's a crazy amount. Like maybe 4-5 per track and then another 5 on the bus. My computer shows the CPU is only using like 10% of it's power. I've noticed my sessions are taking up like 16 gb of ram. Is that normal?

Why is it loading it all in ram? Exporting a full song takes 25+ minutes.... Even exporting a 10 second section takes 10 minutes. It takes 5 minutes to open or close a project. Sometimes closing takes longer. The program crashes like crazy. Sometimes I have export 5+ times before it'll actually work. Most of the time it crashes on 0%. I've sent those reports in.... Probably hundreds.... I have no idea what's causing that.

I've tried ASIO and MME. Strangely MME at 500 is faster than ASIO at 2048.

My audio device is a Babyface Pro.

My audio clips are 16 bit 44100

I have a brand new Lenovo Legion I7, 32 gb of ram, SSD, and 4070 graphics. All drivers are updated. I've done hardware scans and all tests pass.

I bought an addition 32 gb of ram hoping it would solve the issue. It did not increase the speed at all. If anything it appeared slightly slower.

If I press the pre-render button on every track it helps a bit but it still stutters like crazy. It will play 100% with all plugins turned off.

I will pay $500 to anyone who finds me a solution where my computer will play sessions at full speed. Minor stuttering is ok.... But right now I can't even listen to what I'm editing. I've spent the past 6 months editing four songs completely blind. Had the software worked correctly I could have finished the entire album by now.

There is also strange behavior with scrolling through tracks. If I take my cursor and want to move it over let's say 2 minutes, it'll freeze for a couple minutes until it allows me to access that section of the track. Keep in mind that I'm not even playing it. I'm just trying to move the curser to that time period.

I also use Lightroom. It's functional but also slow and crashes. Restarting every 15 or so minutes helps with this... It seems every click/adjustment makes it slower and slower until the point it freezes or crashes. Almost as if some sort of temporary memory is being stored and then either maxes out or runs out of space. This does not happen on individual pictures. Only with large projects of say 500+ pictures.

Thanks for any help.

Report · Nov 22, 2024

"My sessions are 100+ tracks. I'm using plugins, but I don't feel like it's a crazy amount. Like maybe 4-5 per track and then another 5 on the bus."

Hmm... I do make that a pretty crazy amount of effects! 500+? Initially, what you need to do is pre-render the tracks, because this will get all of the effects for any given track processed before attempting to play the track. You might be surprised at how much difference this makes... (look for the little lightning bolt at the top of each effects rack)

Report · Nov 22, 2024

They aren't all playing at the same time though. Probably 15 play at once. 10 of those would be the instrumental layers which only have FX on the bus.

I've tried the pre-render/lighting bolt option. It only speeds things up maybe 20%. Still stutters like crazy and takes a couple minutes before the play button works.

I had similar sized sessions a couple years ago with 2-3x the amount of FX. Didn't have the stutters and the computer was 1/4th the power.

Report · Nov 22, 2024

A couple of things: they don't all have to be playing at the same time, they only have to be on a track to need pre-processing. They're running all the time - it's just that you've got the mix value set to 100% direct, effectively, when you can't hear them. They're still all there...

The second thing is that you haven't said, but I'm assuming that you are using W11 if this is a new machine. What that gets up to in the background when it's failing to do your work is pretty extensive. Do a Google search using the term 'turning off all the stuff you don't need in W11' and find out what you can improve. Also, note that quite a few people have said that the current version isn't as quick as previous versions. This may be the case - I don't know. But it could easily be down to the POS 'Operating' system...

Report · Nov 22, 2024

I played around with some stuff and seemed to significantly helped performance.

On my 100 or so tracks I had 1-3 plugins placed on each track that weren't in-use, but that were all turned off. I presumed since they were off this couldn't affect performance. I went through and deleted all plugins that were muted/not being used. This was probably 200-300 FX. Now my track plays at probably 90-95%. There's still glitching/stuttering, but it's to the point it 's functional and I can edit. Huge relief. Is there a glitch in the coding that's not properly skipping unused plugins? Or does a certain amount above a threshold freak something out? I'm confused if they aren't being used why it would slow things down so much. Removing these also fixed the 5 minute open/close times for projects. It now takes 10-30 seconds.

In addition to removing the FX, I removed any extra/empty/muted vocal tracks that I didn't end up using. this got the entire project down to 80 something tracks. Yet again since they were muted I presumed they would be skipped.

Report · Nov 22, 2024

It's quite simple; you just assume that if they're in the sesx, then they get processed. This is pretty much accurate - no amount of muting, etc will get around it, I'm afraid.

Unfortunately, it sort-of makes sense. You put an effect in a track, and you want to be flexible with its use - so you leave it available all of the time. One thing that might help you is to use clip effects rather than track effects - if you work it out carefully that might be more resource-efficient, because you aren't leaving the effect available for the whole track. If you try that, I'd be interested to hear whether this improves things or not.

Report · Nov 22, 2024

Clip effects? I apologize but I'm not sure what that means. Isn't a clip/track the same thing?

I place a couple FX on each indivdual track and then run them together to a bus.

I noticed another thing that speeds things up. I use a plugin called Soothe. It has different playback quality levels but you can set the export to much higher. Eco mode for playback is much faster.

Report · Nov 23, 2024

No, clips and tracks aren't the same thing! That's why one is called a clip, and the other is called a track... here's a clue:

(I reckon I'm earning my $500!)