Intermittent Pops / Crackles but CPU only at 75%?

My kitchen sink preset has 2 amps a stereo cab and runs at 85% CPU, I am using controllers attached to the gain of both these amps to change my gain level and I am experiencing no pops or audio glitches. I think in total I have 14 controllers that all work simultaneously when switching gain levels.
The only glitching I am experiencing is with the screen being slightly sluggish, all audio functions, including expression pedal movement are working as expected.
 
After fiddling with this for some time, even getting down to a dual amp preset with only 11 blocks and 12 controllers which still clipped after some exercising of the controllers, I've come to the following hypothesis:
  • Running 2 amps takes a significant amount resources from the 1st of the Axefx3's 2 cpus.
  • Running a moderate number of modifiers, in particular midi expression pedal type modifiers also takes up resources from the 1st of the Axefx3's 2 cpus (although momentarily/intermittently), and can conflict with a dual amp path setup causing pops/crackles particularly when exercising expression pedal modifiers for any length of time (in severe cases they don't even need to be exercise, just having them exist causes some popping). The resultant clipping can be very intermittent (maybe you'll only hear a pop/click every could of minutes - but it's there and annoying (and a deal breaker on the patch if your trying to record something).
  • There's no way to know the exact status of the 1st cpu as the Axefx only provides a status of the 2nd cpu - a WISH would be to have a status of the 1st cpu since running 2 amps in one patch along with some midi expression pedal controllers would seem to be a somewhat common usage scenario where, from what I've observed, the 1st cpu will be running quite hot while the second may not be stressed at all depending on how many other fx blocks are in the patch - so, when building a patch, would be good to know where the 1st cpu is at.
 
sprint said:
After fiddling with this for some time, even getting down to a dual amp preset with only 11 blocks and 12 controllers which still clipped after some exercising of the controllers, I've come to the following hypothesis:
  • Running 2 amps takes a significant amount resources from the 1st of the Axefx3's 2 cpus.
  • Running a moderate number of modifiers, in particular midi expression pedal type modifiers also takes up resources from the 1st of the Axefx3's 2 cpus (although momentarily/intermittently), and can conflict with a dual amp path setup causing pops/crackles particularly when exercising expression pedal modifiers for any length of time.
  • There's no way to know the status of the 1st cpu as the Axefx only provides a status of the 2nd cpu - a WISH would be to have a status of the 1st cpu since running 2 amps in one patch along with some midi expression pedal controllers would seem to be a somewhat common usage scenario where, from what I've observed, the 1st cpu will be running quite hot while the second may not be stressed at all depending on how many other fx blocks are in the patch.
Click to expand...
I still don’t think you’re maxing the first CPU outright, just causing spikes due to all the changes, which probably wouldn’t be shown even if we had the first CPU meter available. Just my thought.

I don’t think a meter could show those momentary spikes due to instant changes.

I think it was also stated that just because that many controllers are available doesn’t mean they can all be used without any impact. It really depends on what exactly is being controlled.
 
Agreed that the controller impacts are probably often spikes that a separate read out would not necessary show, however, I do suspect (it's impossible to know for sure) that once you have 2 amps in a patch, cpu1 is pretty loaded up depending on the amps you've chosen and the settings - adding in the controllers puts it over the edge in the case of my patch. Given this, I still think it's odd that we give so much attention to the 2nd cpu status (warnings etc), when it seems to me the more important one to keep tabs on (or at least "as important") is the 1st cpu since it's taking care of your core tone which, for me anyway, is the most important part of my patch in terms of making sure it's absolutely solid. A user may proceed proudly with their patch arranged at 70% according to the status they can see, while in reality, the cpu running the core tone is at 90% ready to clip with not much more added (i.e. - in my testing I was noticing that "Perform" parameter was making it worse). If there were a separate meter for cpu1 then I'd bet we'd be paying attention to it.

Anyway - no matter - From this experience, I have a handle on where the safe limits are now so I'll just stay within that.

Thanks for the input.
 
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