How To Reduce CPU Load While Mixing

One of the most frustrating things to happen while mixing is to have your computer fan hit full blast and have every attempt to playback your audio be met with clicks, pops and lagging. There are two approaches to prevent you from hitting this wall, one involves a lot of money, the other is free of charge. Although some of these tips may require a basic understanding of routing and your DAW settings, they will guarantee a smooth mixing session from start to finish without any interruptions.

Buffer Size

Buffer Size is the amount of time it takes your computer to process any incoming audio signal. This means that there is a set amount of samples between when the DAW processes the audio and the audio being played out of your monitors.

• Generally you would want the lowest possible Buffer Size for recording and editing.

While in the mixing phase you can set the Buffer Size as high as you want because you are no longer monitoring live singals. This will allow your computer more time to process the audio and allocate more processing to plugins.

• A good starting point can be 512 samples, but if you are getting clicks and pops don’t be afraid to max it out. You will notice a short delay when you try to playback the audio but that is due to the large buffer size.

Bus Processing

Bus Processing can greatly cut the amount of load on your workstation while mixing and also keep your tracks sounding consistent.

• If you have multiple tracks that are being processed the same way, such as double tracked guitars or vocal dubs its better to create a master bus for these tracks and then perform the processing on that bus. This will reduce the amount of plugins used and prevent phasing issues.

• Bus processing can also be done with effects such as reverbs and delays. If you have the same type of effect running for multiple tracks you can reduce your load by sending these tracks to a single effect track. Instead of using the fader on the effect track to control the effect volume, you can instead use the sends to do gain staging.

Printing/Freezing Stems

Guitar Amp Sims, Reverbs and Delays have a tendency to use a lot of digital signal processing and as a result will often send your computer into overload. It’s always a good habit to print your final tones into a new track and use those for mixing.

• When printing make sure that your tones are final on the track. If you are using a DAW with Selection Based Processing, you are able to print your stems without losing the original track.

Freezing a track is a good way of printing your final plugin chain without losing the track. The difference is that it will still allocate some load in order to process the plugins although the amount will be greatly reduced.

Input Monitoring

If you are using the same project for recording and mixing there is a possibility that at some point you forgot to turn off the input monitor for a track. Although it may seem harmless at first, if you are using multiple tracks it will take up a good amount of available RAM to keep these monitors running.

Its best to just make sure each input monitor is off before moving on to the mixing stage.

Deleting Unused Plugins

Although this one is more of common sense, we do have a tendency to keep plugins in the chain for “what if” scenarios. A general good rule of thumb is if you have a plugin bypassed and are already completed working on another track you should try to go in and delete all the unused plugins. If you feel that you will lose a good setting, be sure to save the plugin preset to your daw so that you can easily open it if needed again.