How to Save CPU In Studio One | Keep your DAW from glitching

hi i'm marcus lapp with the indie music lab have you ever been producing a song and it starts to sound like this [Music] well guess what i've got good news for you there is a way to fix this and it's much easier than you might think so let's dive into the three ways to save cpu in studio one okay tip number one to save cpu in studio one is transform your virtual instruments to rendered audio this is going to do most of the heavy lifting in most projects with maxed out cpu so if you start producing a track and you add you know addictive drums and five instances of omnisphere and a piano and then all the plug-ins that go on those you're left with a hot glitchy mess because you're overworking your computer and you've got a real problem on your hands that sounds like this [Music] so how do we fix that well first off and this is probably not going to feel right at first but you got to transform your midi instrument tracks to audio i know i know i know that's a tough thing to do but let me tell you if you get into the habit of doing this forget cpu for a second this would just make you a better producer because your ear will be more in tune and alert for distracting mistakes because you know that you're bouncing it to audio so it'll keep you in check and you'll make better decisions because you know that you're making final decisions on these tracks now how do you do this well it's really easy just go to your instrument right click and select transform to audio track now before i hit this what i always do is i'll select all the events that are in here and i'll right click and select merge events or just hit g on my keyboard and that merges all of those chopped up sections like if you duplicated a loop it'll merge all of it into one track that way when you bounce it to audio it doesn't have all those cuts in it and then once i have that done then i just right click transform to audio track and boom now what's really cool about this is it's not as much of a risk as you think because check this out let's say there's something distracting that you really need to fix with this track well guess what you can transform it right back to the instrument original instrument midi track and make the necessary adjustments and by doing that all you need to do is hit right click again and hit transform instrument track and it goes right back to its original state like so so i think it's a good compromise it's not a total commitment because you have the option of transforming it back to its original midi instrument state but psychologically it still feels like you've committed the track to audio and that's really healthy for you and your growth as a producer and it will make a massive difference with your cpu usage and uh like if i bounce all of these to audio notice notice where the cpu is now and if i bounce all of these to audio notice what happens and here it is with all these instruments bounced down to audio look at that okay tip number two is transform audio and midi tracks that have multiple plug-ins so this is the exact same idea as tip number one except now we're talking about plug-ins that eat up your cpu so let's say i've got a vocal and i just pulled in a vocal from my library just a little vocal sample [Music] and uh now i'm just going to throw a bunch of plugins on here and then i'll show you my process and the way i go about then bouncing those effects down to a rendered audio file okay so i threw a bunch of plugins on here i've got an eq compressor reverb delay saturation and an automated side chain and then that sounds like this [Music] so if you're producing this and you're like man that's perfect that's exactly what i was looking for i love that now i'm going to move on like no wait whoa whoa whoa if it's exactly what you want then bounce the freaking thing to audio render those effects print it to an audio track again it's the exact same idea transform to rendered audio again you can choose to just leave this option on there to preserve the real-time state if you know because there's always a chance that you maybe do want to go back and correct it but if you want to really live life on the edge a little maybe even uncheck that that way you have to stick to it that way everything else that you do comes into alignment with what you already have and so but you do have the option where if if you do want to fix something you can then transform it back so i'm going to go ahead and transform this to a rendered audio and then when i click here the plugins aren't listed here anymore because they're it's printed into the track now [Music] again if you want to fix anything or change anything you can just transform it back to real time audio and boom we are right back to where we started all right and before we get to tip number three if you found this video helpful and you want to know more about what makes a great sounding production i've got a gift for you in the description below it's called a five step guide for producing wow factor indie music in this guide i go through the five steps the five phases that a standard production of mine will go through and i have it all mapped out in there so feel free to check that out i think it'll be really helpful for you all right step number three let's go okay and finally tip number three is use effects channels on multiple use plugins now fx channels as they're called in studio one they're also known as sends return tracks and aux tracks depending on what daw you use but they all mean the same thing so to do this you have to set up an independent track by going uh to your mix window here and right clicking and adding effects channel and now you can add anything you want here so let's add a reverb just add a little plate right here so we add a reverb and i'll label this plate reverb now this track has nothing but plugins on it this does not have audio on it all it is is a standalone return track that will allow you to send as many sounds through this reverb as you want to and this is especially useful and will save you a ton of cpu because let's say you wanted to use a similar reverb or even the same reverb for multiple sounds that you have instead of adding little plate to like instead of adding that to three different ones right instead of adding the same reverb to three different tracks it's like why not just have one reverb and then and instead select sends and send it to this plate reverb so now these three sounds right here are all being sent to this reverb right here if we turn all them off and on and obviously you can adjust it however you want you can even adjust the panning right and left and yeah you can just adjust it to taste uh you can automate the amount as well so that uh let's say certain sections of your song you want less reverb you want it to be more dry and then in a bigger section of the song maybe you want to send more of the track to the reverb so you get more of a rebirth of a reverb sound and so in order to do that all you would need to do is right click at automation send level and then you can come in here and uh let's say we just don't want much reverb here so we'll start off just like that and then maybe here we're just going to blast it right so and then you can bring that back down you can automate it [Music] so yeah and notice again i'm using one reverb for all of this so these three tracks are all being sent to the exact same reverb instead of using three reverbs and that using up all that cpu i've got one reverb doing doing all the work for all three of these tracks now the main two effects that i recommend using fx channels for are reverbs and delays those are the main ones um another one that i do use often is a doubler where i'll set up an effects channel with a doubler on it that i'll maybe send my lead vocal to just to get a little bit of a wider sound or i might automate that to just coming during the chorus or something but usually for me it's reverbs and delays for sure and then it is doubler as well for me so if you're using the same plugin for multiple things set up an effects channel return track and that will make a gigantic difference with your cpu usage especially because reverbs and delays in particular eat up cpus like freaking hyenas it's insane all right and as a quick recap the three ways to save cpu in studio one is number one transform your virtual instruments to rendered audio number two transform audio and midi tracks that have multiple cpu heavy plugins and number three use effects channels on reverbs and delays alright that is it for me today guys thank you so much for watching if this was helpful do me a favor and leave me a comment and let me know which one of these three things are you currently not practicing and i would love to hear what your results are when you try one or all three of these tips all right i'm out until next time see ya

Channel: The Indie Music Lab

Views: 9,830

Rating: 4.9298244 out of 5

Keywords: presonus, studio one, studio one glitching, glitchy, how to conserve cpu, why is studio one lagging, how to use fx channels in studio one, how to render to audio, how to save cpu in studio one

Id: IQZiA2wUBvw

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021