Friday, July 4, 2008

A Perfect 32 Sample Buffer Rate... So Close and Yet So Far!

A couple of days ago, when Apple released Mac OS X 10.5.4, a lot of us had noticed a considerable performance boost with both Logic and BFD2. So, as a result, I decided that I was going to try and take this a bit further. Currently, I have been able to work with the latest revision of BFD2 with effects on with an I/O Buffer Rate of 128 samples. After the update, I decided to see if I could pull the buffer rate all the way down to 32 samples.

Well, I managed to get it down to 32 samples with the I/O safety buffer on for about 90 minutes, which allowed me to track an acoustic guitar along with a bunch of vocals. It was amazing because I never got such a good response out of Logic and BFD2 as I did. However, like I said, it lasted for 90 minutes. After that, Logic had a big crash. After restarting Logic, I found that I could no longer access 32 samples with BFD2. I got popping and sputtering and overall core overloads, which is really a big feat to do because I am running with 2 Quad-core Xeon processors at 3.2GHz.

Funny enough, I was able to get back my 32 sample buffer rate after clearing out all system and user caches. I managed to work with Logic and BFD2 for one song. As soon as I switched songs, I got the same problem again, without the crashing. I did do my duty and file things off as a bug with the developers. At least I have steps to show for it.

If anything, a 32 sample buffer rate would be so ideal because latency would be next to nothing. I probably could freeze the BFD2 track while I am recording my vocals and then track with the 32 sample buffer rate because the rest of my setup will totally allow it. Then, when I am done, push the sample rate up to the 1024 max that I use when mixing down.

Hey! There's a thought! No wonder I have grown to love blogging... it gives me a chance to just ramble and find a diamond in all of the dirt.

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