Hi there, forgive me if I am sounding a little thick but I am about to throw my gear out of the window. Heres the problem. I have got this pc built for me and loaded Cubase SX 3 plus various VST's. The pc works fine until I get in to the production side of things then the computer slows down, crashes of even gives me the blue screen of death. Now i consider this pc to be a beast... or is it?... I just cant work out what the problem is. Can any of you wornderful people help?

Heres whats in the beast:

Intel 875PBZ Motherboard
Pentium 4 3.2GHZ
Matrox P65 MDDA8X64
4x MemoQ 1Gb RAM
2x 120Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200
Behringer DDX316
Frontera Dakota and Montana Soundcard enabling 32 tracks


Thanks in advance

Lovehotti

What's the operating platform? Windows XP or Vista?

From what I've heard Vista doesn't work well with anything.


Have you downloaded the updates for Cubase SX3.

http://www.steinberg.net/index.php?id=888&L=1

No problems with the SX3.1 and XP here, runs flawlessly.

Watch your CPU usage when you pile on the VST Effects, 32 channels with effects will make it struggle.
Freeze the tracks that have many VST effects, heck freeze all tracks with VST effects and that will really cut back on the CPU suckage.
If your using lots of VST EQ effects try to get what you need from the track EQ instead and remove the VST EQ, doesn't work all the time but it never hurts to try.

There is a CPU usage meter on the transport, try to keep that below 75%, lower is better.

Create an Effects channel and assign for repeated effects like compressors, verbs and delays and such.

Question, Why 2 different sound cards? I don't know for sure but running 2 different sound cards at the same time on the same application may be causing some freaking out with clocking and such......

Hope this helps

Hi Dutchman, thanks for your help so far. I am running Windows Xp Pro. And I use two soundcards to enable the 32 channels, thats what was reccomended is there a way to attain 32 channels with one sound card? Is this not a configuration problem?

Thanks again for your help so far!

Not so much the 2 cards but why not 2 of Frontiers Dakota cards? Is the Dakota your default Asio driver?
I have minimal experience with their cards but I'm sure Frontier would be helpful.