You may sometimes experience audio crackles, dropouts or glitches due to multiple processes on your computer which cause CPU overloads. Here are a couple of methods to optimize the CPU usage on your computer:
- Increasing the audio buffer size
- Reducing the polyphony
- Splitting your performance into several plug-in instances
- Freezing tracks in your DAW
Note that the CPU meter in your DAW usually displays the amount of the CPU used to process the audio signal, not the overall CPU load. You can monitor the current overall CPU usage in Activity Monitor on Mac, and Task Manager on Windows.
In standalone mode:
- Go to File > Audio and MIDI Settings in the menu bar at the top
- Increase the Buffer Size under the Audio Device tab
- Click OK
In plug-in mode:
- Go to the Audio Settings of your DAW
- Locate the Audio Buffer Size then increase its value – please refer to the user manual of your favorite DAW for more information
In UVI Workstation:
- Go to the Multi page then the Mixer tab and locate the Poly column
- Double-click the number to enter manually the new polyphony value, or click and drag down to the desired value
In Falcon:
- Go to the Edit page then the Program tabs and locate the Poly parameter
- Double-click the number to enter manually the new polyphony value, or click and drag down to the desired value
Splitting your performance into several plug-in instances
Neither UVI Workstation or Falcon support multi-threading, this means that each plug-in instance will work on a single processor core only. When experiencing CPU overloads, we suggest splitting the performance (e.g. your Multi) into several plug-in instances in order that performances will be processed across several processor cores.
For instance, here is a Multi set with 3 distinct parts (Bass, Lead, Pad).
Let's split this Multi into 3 UVI Workstation instances, meaning one instrument per instance.
Most of the DAWs available on the market feature a 'freeze' command which renders a track to audio to relieve the CPU load. Please refer to the user manual of your DAW for more information.