MPC Ren high CPU usage for PC users causing crashes and popp

Im running the Renaissance on a windows 7 64bit pc. Im using a asrock p67 extreme with 32gb of ram, 1tb hard drive and a i7 2600K with the latest ren sofware update 1.3 and latest drivers.. I cant figure out for the life of me why my ren is tagging my cpu at 3 and 4 % causing the pc to click and pop when hearing sound from it. I would assume a machine of this type should be able to handle it. I use ableton and dont have the same issues, why the ren. My audtio buffer in the ren software settings is at 960 samples (21.8s) and latency is at 1440, which i increase it to from a lower audio buffer. Anyone have any clues or advice on how i can keep this from happening.

Changing your asio settings, to at least rapid and above normal... (also it doesn't keep the settings, so u have to change it everytime after starting up)
have fun! Make dope stuff!

SlingBladeChops MPC5000 wrote:Im running the Renaissance on a windows 7 64bit pc...with the latest ren sofware update 1.3

You mean 1.31, just to be sure?

I would start with changing the Title of your thread to relate to the subject at hand so more Ren users on Windows can see it and chime in.

I am running on a Mac without any issues. I will have a PC set-up up and running by the end of the week.

Title changed. I was able to fix my issue by removing all other ASIO drivers from my pc and using the MPC Ren ASIO driver. Originally i was using direct sound in my audio settings b/c i was getting errors trying to choose he ASIO for the MPC drivers. After removing all ASIO drivers (M-Aduio) i was able to choose the MPC ASIO and everything worked flawlessly. I will continue to test this for a week and post again if this is not ultimately the fix.

Note: Having multiple ASIO drivers installed can cause conflicts for win users. Realtek uses ASIO and so does MPC and M-Audio. Mac users dont have this issue due to the fact Macs dont use ASIO. (if im wrong please feel free to post)

good 2 know, i have another asio driver, from my propellerhead balance, and a old one of digi002.... i got to keep the balance driver tho' aslong i cant record vocals and stuff in the renaissance enviroment.....

also on this note, i made a song, with only plug-ins, and it seems after 11 plug-ins the mpc renaissance software isnt handling it anymore, it stutters, crackles, etc.....and eventually crashes, not really even able to mix down volume of individual tracks, and create different sequences, also the mixdown doesnt comes out right.....
in the left of the software there is a CPU meter, that goes all out, saying its using max cpu, but when i ran the windows statistics program, while playing the song, it says it uses 28% of processing power..... so ehm, whats happening here?? is the problem caused by then Ren/Software or my computer???
i have a BTO laptop
intel core i7-2630QM
8 GB RAM
(i will soon try to use only akai's plugins, to see how many of those it can handle, probably make a video of it....also made a vid of the song i was just talking about)

CPU meters in any DAW software are not actually measures of your total available CPU on an OS level. They are a measure of how much you are taxing the ASIO or Core Audio stream. This is why 99% of the time you can max out the meter in an audio app yet Task Manager or a Process Monitor will report the total CPU as something far under the 60-100% the audio app shows, like the 28% reported here.

Also in general operations each halving of an audio buffer is 2x the taxing on the ASIO or Core Audio stream. So a 128 sample buffer taxes twice as hard as a 256 for example.

The discrepancy between the meters is even more pronounced when an app isn't multicore capable. Programs like that can multithread which helps use more of available CPU power but they can't do it on all the cores. There's also the chance that some of the plugins that you might run don't multithread, all the more taxing on the one or two cores that are getting the majority of the calculations sent their way.

But to have an ASIO/Core Audio CPU meter be 1:1 you would have to be running a fully multicore/multithreaded audio environment, host app and all plugins.

Just wanted to give that general information that is related to some of the issues here. No solutions but these are things that might help troubleshoot how to get a good setting on an audio buffer.

MPCHolland053 wrote:good 2 know, i have another asio driver, from my propellerhead balance, and a old one of digi002.... i got to keep the balance driver tho' aslong i cant record vocals and stuff in the renaissance enviroment.....

also on this note, i made a song, with only plug-ins, and it seems after 11 plug-ins the mpc renaissance software isnt handling it anymore, it stutters, crackles, etc.....and eventually crashes, not really even able to mix down volume of individual tracks, and create different sequences, also the mixdown doesnt comes out right.....
in the left of the software there is a CPU meter, that goes all out, saying its using max cpu, but when i ran the windows statistics program, while playing the song, it says it uses 28% of processing power..... so ehm, whats happening here?? is the problem caused by then Ren/Software or my computer???
i have a BTO laptop
intel core i7-2630QM
8 GB RAM
(i will soon try to use only akai's plugins, to see how many of those it can handle, probably make a video of it....also made a vid of the song i was just talking about)

The Ren is a 32 bit app. So 11 plugin instruments (depending on type) can easily exceed the 4 GBs of memory allotted to the 32 bit Ren app.

JAH wrote:The Ren is a 32 bit app. So 11 plugin instruments (depending on type) can easily exceed the 4 GBs of memory allotted to the 32 bit Ren app.

Any piece of computer software in that scenario would crash and/or show an error message of a memory address violation as it would be try to access RAM that as far as the app is concerned (32 bit RAM limit) doesn't exist.

But no doubt he's probably on the edge, just pointing out you'd know if you crossed the limit through a total freeze/crash, error dialogue shown or not would depend on the app.

The problem is almost certainly too many plugins though as you mentioned. But it's all their operation threads together raising the ASIO/Core Audio usage that will max the meter and cause click/pops distortion before using the majority of the RAM would.

SlingBladeChops MPC5000 wrote:Note: Having multiple ASIO drivers installed can cause conflicts for win users. Realtek uses ASIO and so does MPC and M-Audio. Mac users dont have this issue due to the fact Macs dont use ASIO. (if im wrong please feel free to post)

Completely disable realtek drivers in hardware settings/profile.
I dont have any issues running multiple ASIO drivers but I haven't been ale to test the Ren on my PC yet (my studio machine) still testing it on an Imac

Metatron72 wrote:

JAH wrote:The Ren is a 32 bit app. So 11 plugin instruments (depending on type) can easily exceed the 4 GBs of memory allotted to the 32 bit Ren app.

Any piece of computer software in that scenario would crash and/or show an error message of a memory address violation as it would be try to access RAM that as far as the app is concerned (32 bit RAM limit) doesn't exist.

But no doubt he's probably on the edge, just pointing out you'd know if you crossed the limit through a total freeze/crash, error dialogue shown or not would depend on the app.

The problem is almost certainly too many plugins though as you mentioned. But it's all their operation threads together raising the ASIO/Core Audio usage that will max the meter and cause click/pops distortion before using the majority of the RAM would.

In 1.3, the Ren should flash a message to indicate memory has been exceeded. In the previous versions it would start acting flaky (distorted sounds) and eventually crash.

I had the exact same problem on my windows laptop (win7-64bit, 8gb, i5 2,4 GHz) with any MPC software version. I got so frustrated I just reinstalled windows and everything else that I really needed and now it works fine. Event projects with 10-15 plugins (using mainly the AKAI plugins...), they all play without any issues.
I actually don't have an idea why it didn't work and why it works now, I guess computers just become a bit f*cked up over the years.

I don't think I've ever seen a bigger difference in the experiences of software users depending on PC or Mac.

Maybe what I'm seeing is skewed, but it just seems MPC users using PCs have waaaaaaayyy more negative experiences than Mac users.


Yeahyeahyeah I know all possible opinions on Mac vs Pc. I just rarely see this wide of a divide in one software.

IMAKEMADBEATS wrote:I don't think I've ever seen a bigger difference in the experiences of software users depending on PC or Mac.

Maybe what I'm seeing is skewed, but it just seems MPC users using PCs have waaaaaaayyy more negative experiences than Mac users.


Yeahyeahyeah I know all possible opinions on Mac vs Pc. I just rarely see this wide of a divide in one software.

I have Windows 7/OS X dual boot (no virtual machine, an actual Windows 7 install), and a couple other PC's. I have over 200 non cracked pieces of retail software that are dual format and on both OS's.

100% identical performance and behaviors across the board.

But still a PC config. will obviously vary more than the 5-15 Mac variants of the last few years and may need to be slightly tweaked or a random background service that conflicts with something may need to be hunted down.

This chart is how to know what to do without breaking anything if you aren't that familiar with Windows under the hood.

http://www.blackviper.com/service-confi ... gurations/

Also anyone who hasn't already go to Computer/Properties/Advanced/Performance/Settings/Advanced. Processor scheduling set to "Background Services" rather than programs. ASIO is a background service that is actually more important than the DAW/program running it. Programs actually run exactly the same, but sometimes it can help keep an ASIO stream more solid.

These things may not solve the issues but sure won't make it worse and could help a lot I hope. I've taken off the shelf PC laptops and reduced the RAM/CPU usage at idle by up to 75% using these tweaks.

^^^

Thanks Metatron for the advice.!

I will give it a try.!

peace