Reply To: a few interesting problems

In the past, at least, I have seen such extreme CPU usage due to denormals. The following suggestion only applies if you’re using other VST effects that you didn’t mention below (I’m not sure if denormals occur with Zynewave Reverb, but you could try anyway).

First thing I would do is try adding a very very quiet noise to each track, I think it should go before all effects? And see if that solves the problem. If so, you’re using a plugin that is causing the issue, and you should remove the noise from one track at a time to see when this occurs.

Another sign of this is if you’re playing the song and it seems to actually balance out and perform better, but when you stop, the usage zooms up to 100% and slows everything down.

You may also be using CPU-intensive plugins that keep processing regardless of whether the song has stopped or not. Finding this out would mean disabling each effect one at a time to see which ones have an effect.

If it is only the VST that you have mentioned, then it may also depend on what your computer specifications are. What kind of CPU power, and RAM, do you have? How many USB devices do you use? Most configurations should be fine, but much older configurations can have issues.

sfz is also quite an intensive plugin (though I would’ve thought it should only cause slowness if active, not while idle). What quality settings are you using on this?

In regards to your reverb issue, perhaps your bounce is not being directed to the reverb as well? That could be the first place you look, though you may have already tried this.

Problem 3 can be worked around by exporting a loop, so that it doesn’t get to that part. That’s not a solution though, only a workaround. Were those events split from another event? And if so, did you add the notes at the end of a long event? Because then it’s possible, I think, that they’re being played from an existing event, although I’d expect events to only play notes inside the boundaries of their visible portion. It might still be something to look at. Also, were there any ghost copies of this event put on other tracks, possibly ones you don’t display?

You could try rendering each track separately and see which one it is that has these “ghost notes”.

I hope that this can be of some help. It’ll be good to hear how you go with these issues.