Mac Performance

I was wondering if anyone had tips or links to places that discuss how to tune up and tweak your mac for optimal performance with DJ software. I feel like my computers been running a little sluggish lately, so any tips or advice would be great

 

You might want to avoid running other applications while playing with Traktor, or other DJ app. Don't actually go surfing the web while DJ'n (although I can on mine).
You'll definitely want to make sure you have enough RAM, and I've read/heard that it's good to have empty HD space. I believe you might run sluggish if your HD is completly full, but how much space you should leave open, I have no idea.
As of right now, I have about 33GB of free HD space, 3GB of RAM, and no problems running Traktor 3.3.1.
Maybe someone else will add to this, but you can also check out the apple forums to see if they have more info. There are a lot of people at the studio-central.com forums that know a good deal about this kind of stuff too, you might want to check that out.

 

Thanks for the feedback...guess I should stop checking my email and playing Counterstrike while Traktor wows the crowd for me :lol: j/k I don't run anything while Traktor's running, it runs the program well enough without any dropouts or anything...just seems to be slowing a little, guess I'll check the apple forums if nobody else here has any suggestions of how to clean things up a little, I still have 33 gb or hd space left

 

Possible optimization tips.

This is no exaggeration or illusion of my mind. I have run Ableton Live with Kore 1 as an effects processor inside of Live with Traktor 3.3,. I was using a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro with 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. The A/D D/A converter was the Audio 8 and the mixer was an Allen & Heath Xone:92, and the set was around 6 hours.

Some idea's for you:

Remove all languages that are not relevant to you.
If speech recognition is not important, then turn it off.
If bluetooth is not important, then turn if off.
No screen savers.
Disable Dashboard.
In system preferences is their a lot of unnecessary items in the OTHER category?
Then of course the Traktor 3.3 manual is great for finding ways to optimizing whatever kind of computer you are using for running Traktor.

Hope this helps.

 

Slugish performance / crashing / have to rebot twice to hear audio?

Yeah my powerbook has been really slow recently and a bit unstable.
The past couple of gigs its taken 2 rebots to get sound with FS2, not what I need when I'm about to play. Also my disc drive has been having trouble playing disks, it justs spits them back out again.

So not sure if its a problem with Traktor software or my laptop.

I have added/analyzed a lot more tracks recently about 71 at 1536 kBit/s,
110 at 1411 kBits, 600 MP3's so I only have 800ish tracks.

I also noticed that I have a lot of double tracks on my computer and may have analyzed/imported tracks more than once, will this confuse it?

I still have 25GB free space so not sure why its being so sketchy.
If anyone could enlighten me I would really appreciate it.
Cheers
Tina Hart

Ps why does'nt my playlists from Itunes show up in Traktor?

 

That whole spitting discs out sounds like it has to do with the disc not being liked by the drive it's going into (maybe scratched CD's?), or the drive itself being a turd.

How old is your Macbook? What are the specs on it?

 

I bought it off ebay Sep 2006 and think the guy before me bought it in 2005?

PowerBook G4 17"
Machine Model: PowerBook5,5
PowerPC G4 (1.1)
CPU Speed: 1.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB

Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.8.4f1
OS X 10.4.10

 

i have two g4s one is circa early 2004 .. other is late 2005 last one before intels. i definately notice problems when hardrive gets under 15 gigs free space.

these are things i have done that increase usability and efficiencey.

do not use animations in dock/make dock static(no hide)

use solid background for desktop: i use grey cause it matches traktor.

keep desktop tidey-move all items on desktop to folders in finder.

remove icons from header: modem/volume/clock/bluetooth/battery etc.

turn off screen saver

empty trash

turn off airport/bluetooth

select do not put hardrives to sleep in energy saver. this can cause more battery consumption so i only use this when its mision critical. basically my battery setting is set up for browsing and power adapter is for performance. also select never on the sleep and display options.

in addition i have gone through all the system preferences and turned off anything that might make my mac think more. The activity monitor is a good tool to watch when making these adjustments. Especially important is the universal access stuff.

in addition i have also done these settings in traktor to improve performance.

reduce library size--My organization is all finder based now so i only load the sets of songs that i will be using in traktor into traktor. The rest of my music i listen to in beatport and COG. Cog works well as a standalone and one shot player.

preferences/traktor

use maximum latency in audio setup

disconnect inputs when not in use

select minimal cache sizes. i use 8mb for c&d and 32mb for a&b --siince c & d are usually just landings for looping tracks dropped from a and b this works well. larger cache sizes increase overall track mobility(basically needle dropping and searching) but also increase ram consumption which reduces ram for processing effects and gui.

use minimal time stretch quality. this is a big one. if your machine has minimal processor use the basic setting (non-adaptive).

you can completely turn off analysis which also uses processing. pre-analyzing tracks is a good idea before performance. then turn off analyzation.

turn off all file info or at least what you don't need this includes cells in the browser.

turn off markers - this deccreases gui processing -- also end warning.

in addition you can configure your layout with less stuff to increase performance. watch the activity monitor while you are turning stuff off and hiding things.

reset deck and mixer controls. eq adjustments/ turn off effects limiters etc. turn off messages if you have that version. also hide the favorites and use the classic eq. i also hide the browser buttons and use right clicks to access those functions.

if you double click on an eq when you are done using it it resets it. i think this uses less processor as well.

mimimizing the decks also reduces processor substantially. no moving wave in gui no processor.

when you are using traktor anything that is affecting the audio is using processor anything that is giving you a readout in the gui or a blinking light is using processor. information in the browser window increases processing as well as being able to see the browser.

when i have traktor fulley minimized. it uses 16 % of my processor at idle when its playing one track 26%, two tracks 32%. when i start bloating it out with other features running -- it quickly consumes all the processor.

here is also a picture of two decks playing -- it is using 25% of the processor and i am controlling the channels with hot keys. same functionality as fulley expanded layout. no gui for looking at settings though!

 

good post sig!

this is my experience too, and i think it's high considering the spec of my machine. two decks playing in traktor (key locked) run at 32% cpu, not key locked it's about 27%. loading a new track gives a cpu spike in excess of 40%.

just for comparison two tracks playing in ableton in complex mode (more or less equivalent to key lock in traktor) run at about 18% cpu - often 17% and under.

it makes me laugh to see the hoops we try to jump through to optimise laptops to run traktor - after all's said and done it's a dj app, not the homeland security system. i've seen several users here who are strangely proud about the extent to which they've stripped down their laptops in order to run the program without glitches - it's a shame that this should be necessary. i have no problem running some basic and sensible optimisation measures but i reckon ni should be working on some optimisation too. the app is hungry, but not efficient.

the truth is there's not a huge amount that you should have to do to keep a mac happy, bar some basic housekeeping with a program such as onyx - and giving yourself as much headroom as possible when performing by switching all other apps off.

 

yes definately. these performance lags are nonesense. IF NI doesn't put together a worthey and efficient player in traktor four Im pretty sure that the open source programmers are going to get some business designing or hacking a player that takes advantage of our high quality and expensive computers. Traktor is such a good app that almost hits the dj thing square. It's just totally in-efficient and layed out a little funkey! I feel like I shouldn't put any more cash into these computers,interface, and software modules until some-one shows me that im getting a real improvement with my upgrade. Man! if i could get the sample transport in ableton to behave like traktor id be in heavan. has anyone hacked that together yet! Even a traktor plugin! ughghghgh.

heres a video to watch about planned obsolescense and percieved obsolescence- both of these paradigms go in to the design of software .. which i think is BULLSHAAAAT: Im tired of babylonian motivation wasting my time and frustrating me beyond my limits of temper. Not to mention launching me into further limbo with every minute I spend getting more involved with "progressive" dj applications.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/downloads.html

Im sure the concepts in this video are well known but it just makes the points well and DANDY.

ok my rant is over.. back to music..

 

there's a lot of truth in that.
have you seen deckadance by the way? looks quite cool and can be used as a vst plugin with ableton. interesting idea anyways..

 

i think I investigated decadance at one point but i ended up not using it for some reason. weather it be financial or a recommendation from another user that it was janky or something. I guess I should look into it again.

Ok .. so i just looked at that app and it isn't supported under mac os. I am building a production machine though and it is a souped up IBM think center running UNix ill be able to put deckadance on there. ITs interesting because tucows had something to do with FL studio. I was very into fl 3 back in the day. And so were some of my favorite artists like phonecia, jeswa, etc. Tucows--hmmmmmmm meat and potatoes those boys are getting a heads up on myspace. !

When I first started moving over from vinyl to computer I had a huge gig with a fashion show. I needed to mix 150 popular run-way tracks into 15 and thirty second segments and have those malleable for time because of choreography and production variables. this was sort of like a theatrical paradey of fashion industry. (before americas next top model!)

we called it "the it girl"

i had no editing software except garage band and dj 1800. My system for remix was to cut things up in garage band and i was time stretching pieces with dj 1800 and jacking with an external cable back into garage bands input. This is basically what Im asking for with the plug-in the ability to use traktor as a player module that enters sound like an instrument into the daws mix bus. And then i can assemble mix compositions there. NOt very complicated. But still impossible without the JANKY external jack work around!

blah blah blah blah

Still hands down the macintosh ! such a great user friendly system... and these older machines are so very stable. I have macintosh computers from the late eighties that still run perfectly. Very easy to set-up and manage. TIna Hart if you have the time and get to know the variables of the mac system it can really help your work flow!

 

Have you tried this app: http://jackosx.com/ ?
Quite handy.

 

so ... this morning I reinstalled jack osx after discarding it a year ago. And have sorted through it and figured out how it works. It really is pretty confusing. to set up. My bad noise and feedback issues were due to the jack server utilizing the input and out puts of my soundcard in the initial set-up preferences. ... Its pretty straighforward after i figured out that you have to click on the entire the application's button or area and then those are added to the current connections window. Now i have four digital streams available to my ableton bus directly from traktor running on CORE and ALL internally ! using the sync player as a test module ive been switching between the jack router and the internal device on the mac in order to discern sound quality. And I am not noticing any negative sounds now. coooooollll!

 

What about upgrading to leopard. I am thinking of doing that soon, but am worried as T3 is running sweet and I dont want to mess it up. So has anyone got any tips?

 

im staying away from leopard for at least a year. LEts put it this way. Last year the entire platform changed to intel processing, and there have been ten times as many hardware issues running tiger on the intels and apps running on tiger on the intels. Now they are starting to get those issues resolved and theres a new opeating system on top of that. My friend has a macbook and she just installed leopard cause her brother thought she should have the newest of the operating systems and he's probably scared to put it on his own machine... or its pirated .. now her keyboard quits every three minutes for three minutes. Dj work requires a certain degree of consistancey! Leopard came around just in time for christmas by next christmas it will be perfect. Im still on a ppc mac. IT runs good. 10-4-11 is as good as it gets right now. IM not changing anything. IF the 3.3 shenanigan is proof of anything in our platform right now its good model to base decisions on. Sit back and wait for the tide of mistakes to wash a-shore before you go surfing.. ha any-more metaphors and im gonna drown. Ive been on macs since the late eighties and I trust the system but these recent developements in the company and their so-so performance makes me feel un-easy about their new products. Patience. you don't have anything to lose by waiting for leopard to get sorted out.