Having trouble with percussion in project.

[Etorna_Z]

Hello again.

I'm having a bit of a problem with my latest piece. It's a House project and all of the pads, leads and subbass sound fine, until my percussion starts up. The project gets all crackly and sounds a tiny bit like white noise

Note; I have a very bad laptop, the CPU goes 3/4s up when the song is playing, roughly half without percussion and lead. Even with antivirus, unnecessary programs and wireless turned off, it still is very laggy; I have fifteen ZynFX instruments, one of them is CPU heavy (the Flanged Wind Pad) and I also have several Automation tracks.

Do I need to do something to the percussion, such as limiting, mastering, or compressing (I've heard these terms before but I think I'm confused on what they mean) or is it just my crappy laptop?

Does anyone know how to fix this problem and explain these terms I don't understand?

Thanks in advance!

[brandystarbrite]

It seems that your track needs some good ol' mastering.

The first thing to do, is to Lower the volumes of all of the instruments and start from there.
Make sure none of them enter the red zone.

The red zone, in the FX master channel meter, or any of the other FX channels
means that they are clipping.

[slipstick]

If you are going into clipping then compression and/or limiting may help. Certainly a limiter, which stops the signal going past a fixed level, can get you out of clipping but it will often also completely change the character and dynamics of the sound if it's overused. For more info about compressors try https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showwik ... ter-basics A limiter is just a compressor with a very high compression ratio. The basic Calf Limiter and Calf Compressor in LMMS are plenty good enough to give you a feel for how these things work so why not give them a try ?

But if it isn't clipping it may be as you say that you're simply running out of power. No easy way to tell. But if that's the case compression and limiting aren't going to help because they involve yet more processing.

Other than getting a better laptop about the only thing I can think of is perhaps to split the project in two with maybe percussion and bass in one project which you balance out and then export as a .wav. You can than add that .wav via Sample Player to the other half of the project. It's a real pain but it can save a lot of processing power. It's effectively what in the old multi-track tape days we used to call "bouncing".

Steve

[Etorna_Z]

Thanks for replying!

Okay, I'll play around with compressors and limiters, but if that method doesn't work I'll either use a stronger laptop to check the project out or "bounce" it.

[Gps]

Adding more ram might help too. How much ram does the labtop have ?

[Etorna_Z]

My ram is 2.5 GB. Pretty crappy.

[Gps]

I am not an expert but 15 zynadd sub fx with 2.5 gig ram, can be the problem.

You could try to make it 4 ?
But with youre cpu at 75% I m not sure it will help.

[Etorna_Z]

Ahh, I wish I could do that, my friend, or even get a better computer. But it's money; money that I don't have at the moment.

[zonkmachine]

My ram is 2.5 GB. Pretty crappy.

Which OS/version are you using?
What computer are you on (brand, model)?