High CPU usage is what makes a DAW glitch, crackle and eventually stop. When the computer runs out of headroom it cannot keep the audio smooth, so the sound breaks up and the transport can stall. The good news is that there are clear, ordinary ways to reduce the load, so you can run bigger projects on the machine you already have.
This is host-agnostic. The idea is the same in every DAW or video editor; only the names differ, so check the wording in your own audio settings and mixer as you go.
Because your computer has to build every track, instrument and effect in the same small slice of time, and a big project or a few heavy plugins can ask for more than it can deliver, so it runs out of headroom. When that happens the sound glitches, crackles or drops out, the load or performance meter climbs toward the top, and eventually the transport stumbles or stops and the host warns that it is overloaded. Nothing is broken; the machine has simply been given more to calculate than it can finish in time.
It helps to keep three related things apart, because they are easy to confuse.
CPU load is how hard the computer is working. Crackles and pops are the symptom you often hear when the load climbs too high, covered in why audio crackles and pops. Plugin latency is the small delay a plugin adds while it works, a different problem again, covered in what plugin latency is. This page is about the load itself, and lowering it so the other two are less likely to bite.
Most hosts show the load on a performance or CPU meter. If it sits low and only spikes now and then, a bigger buffer usually settles it. If it lives near the top, the project needs lightening, which is what the rest of this page is about.
You lower it by giving the machine less to do, or more time to do it in. A handful of ordinary changes clear most overloads, and you can work down them until the meter settles.
| Fix | What it does |
|---|---|
| Raise the buffer size while mixing | Gives the computer more time per block, at the cost of some latency |
| Freeze or bounce heavy tracks | Turns live processing into plain audio so it stops using the CPU |
| One shared reverb or delay on a send | Calculates the effect once instead of once per track |
| Disable or remove unused plugins | Frees the load that idle plugins can still hold, and clears unused tracks |
| Commit MIDI to audio | Stops the soft synth running once the part is done |
| Close other apps and tabs | Leaves more of the processor for your project |
Raising the buffer is the fastest relief and freezing is the deepest, so those two do most of the work. The rest is good housekeeping that adds up.
Both turn a track the computer is calculating live into plain recorded audio, so the plugins on it stop using the processor. Freezing is usually the reversible version: the host renders the track and its plugins to audio and plays that back, and you can unfreeze to get the plugins live again when you want to edit. Bouncing, also called rendering or exporting, is the more permanent commit, where you print the track to a new audio file and can remove the original plugins altogether.
Committing your MIDI instruments to audio is the same idea. Once a part is written and you are happy with it, render it to an audio track so the synth stops running, and keep a muted copy of the MIDI in case you want to change it later. Between them, freezing and bouncing are the single biggest thing you can do to run a large project on a modest machine, because they take the heaviest tracks off the processor without changing how the mix sounds.
Freeze rather than delete while you are still working, and keep the original MIDI or plugin settings muted alongside the frozen audio. You get the CPU back now, and you can still go back and change the part later without having lost anything.
The heaviest are usually convolution reverbs, linear-phase EQs, oversampling processors, and soft synths playing many voices at once. These do far more arithmetic per second than a simple effect, so a few of them can cost more than a large number of light plugins, and they are the first place to look when the meter is high.
This is why one shared reverb on a send is worth so much, and why a light instrument leaves room for the rest of your project. Look at what is actually loaded rather than the track count alone, and freeze or bounce the few heavy tracks first.
Heavy virtual instruments are a big part of what loads up a project, so the instrument you reach for makes a real difference to how much headroom you have left.
Because a soft synth playing many voices is one of the heavier things in a session, the instrument you choose matters. Ours are built to be light and efficient, so they leave headroom for the rest of your tracks, plugins and effects. The Collection is three of them: ARGISH, SILT and REHEAT.
When you want them in a project, The Collection ships as AU, VST3, AAX and a standalone app on macOS, signed and notarized, and a VST3 on Windows, so it loads into whatever setup you already have.
Free to hear in the browser, no signup. The Collection is three instruments in one purchase.
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