Please Help regaining CPU on a patch

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blakemcginnis

Member
Hi guys, I have an outdoor gig coming up tomorrow where I'll be going straight the board at the FOH. This will be my first gig with the axe fx. I normally just play into an Art SLA-1 into a 2x12 cab, so I have the cab sims off. So far I haven't made any of my own patches, I've just assembled some of my favorite factory presets and axe-exchange patches and one of my favorites is a preset called "EJ Chimey Clean" uploaded by a forum user named JLagore. Well, here's the problem. I just plugged into some PA speakers I had around the house and turned the cab simulation on, to get an idea of what to expect tomorrow and the "EJ Chimey Clean" preset overloads the CPU on my Standard :(

I tried messing around, bypassing a few things (the compressor at the front, then one of the cabs, then the GEQ, etc.) but every time I bypassed something and then stored it and then turned on the cab sims, it Overloaded the CPU again - it's at about 92-93%.

Can anyone help out, I'm just getting started with editing patches, so I don't know much about what takes up a lot of CPU and what doesn't. I've attached a screenshot of the preset loaded into the Editor, so you can see what is going on in the patch. I also attached the patch in case anyone wants to load it up and give it a try.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[attachment=1:17dn0h9h]EJ preset screenshot.jpg[/attachment:17dn0h9h]
 

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blakemcginnis said:
Hi guys, I have an outdoor gig coming up tomorrow where I'll be going straight the board at the FOH. This will be my first gig with the axe fx. I normally just play into an Art SLA-1 into a 2x12 cab, so I have the cab sims off. So far I haven't made any of my own patches, I've just assembled some of my favorite factory presets and axe-exchange patches and one of my favorites is a preset called "EJ Chimey Clean" uploaded by a forum user named JLagore. Well, here's the problem. I just plugged into some PA speakers I had around the house and turned the cab simulation on, to get an idea of what to expect tomorrow and the "EJ Chimey Clean" preset overloads the CPU on my Standard :(

I tried messing around, bypassing a few things (the compressor at the front, then one of the cabs, then the GEQ, etc.) but every time I bypassed something and then stored it and then turned on the cab sims, it Overloaded the CPU again - it's at about 92-93%.

Can anyone help out, I'm just getting started with editing patches, so I don't know much about what takes up a lot of CPU and what doesn't. I've attached a screenshot of the preset loaded into the Editor, so you can see what is going on in the patch. I also attached the patch in case anyone wants to load it up and give it a try.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[attachment=1:2rncgekp]EJ preset screenshot.jpg[/attachment:2rncgekp]
Click to expand...


Only bypassing a block is not the answer. You have to delete it and replace it with a shunt.
Even when a block is bypassed, it still uses cpu juice. ;)
 
1. Bypassing effects does not reduce their CPU usage. Try removing an unused block.

2. If you're running the cabs as stereo, change them to mono. If you're running the cabs as hi-res, change them to lo-res.

Good luck at your gig!

Edit:rm52 beat me to it!
 
Are you running a standard? Because the Ultra would handle that nicely.

Something I have noticed though, is that patches run at MUCH lower CPU usage now compared to a couple of months ago. My patches all run at 10-12% lower CPU usage. I have ALOT of stuff in my presets, and still only have about 82% CPU usage tops. I use:

Wah
Compressor
2 Phasers
Flanger
2 Tremolos
Amp
Cab in high res mode
Gate
2 Drives
2 Multidelays
Quadchorus
Rotary
2 Pitch

And I'm about 80-85 CPU usage.
 
tonygtr said:
Are you running a standard? Because the Ultra would handle that nicely.

Something I have noticed though, is that patches run at MUCH lower CPU usage now compared to a couple of months ago. My patches all run at 10-12% lower CPU usage. I have ALOT of stuff in my presets, and still only have about 82% CPU usage tops. I use:

Wah
Compressor
2 Phasers
Flanger
2 Tremolos
Amp
Cab in high res mode
Gate
2 Drives
2 Multidelays
Quadchorus
Rotary
2 Pitch

And I'm about 80-85 CPU usage.
Click to expand...

I think somewhere on the AxeWiki there is a list of how much cpu resources each effect uses.
 
Wow, thanks for all the replies!

I just tried a few things: I tried changing both cabs to mono lo-res, and disabling the Noise Gate..I think (I went to the 'Gate' tab and lowered the thresh setting all the way down until it said 'off') - but it is still using too much CPU - I went to the utility and it was around 98%, it's around 90% with the cab simulation off.

I also tried to delete some of the open blocks at the end of the chain, there were 4 open blocks before the 'output'. I just changed them to 'none' - but then I got no sound, so I must have done it wrong.

Thanks for the help so far, maybe we can get this figured out before tomorrow!


Btw, I'm using a standard, with 7.08 firmware I believe.
 
Those aren't "open blocks", they're shunts (ie, virtual cables), so they need to connect to the last column or you get no signal. You can save maybe 0.4-0.5% by routing the lower line into the upper line just after the last GEQ and then removing the last four shunts in the lower line.

I'd experiment to see if you can eliminate one of the amps or cabs, or reduce the number of voices in the chorus. Then look at the GEQ's and see if you can eliminate them or change them to filters. Even changing to a PEQ will shave a little off.

I'm about to post a new thread on CPU loading, which might give you some more ideas.
 
Well, I tried doing everything suggested. I disabled the noise gate, changed both GEQs to PEQs, and changed both cabs to mono lo-res and it doesn't seem to have helped any. The chorus voices are already at the lowest they will go (2). I hate to remove any of the blocks completely, as I'm afraid it will alter the sound too much - but I'm about out of options I guess. Do you think upgrading from 7.08 to 7.18 firmware would help any? I wouldn't think so, as I've also tried changing all these settings on the editor and it doesn't seem to be moving the cpu meter down at all and I assume it's emulating the newest firmware.
 
here's what I think people meant about reducing the number of shunts... might help to have the visual...
cpuGainRouting.jpg


Also, the EQ at the end... what's that one for? I'm wondering if you could use the Global EQ for the Axe-Fx (affects all presets), or if that last EQ is definitely specific to getting this particular patch's sound?
 
Not sure how close I'm getting, when I enable the cab sims and go look at the CPU usage, it's always around 98-98.5 no matter what I change. I read on the Axe Wiki that you could keep both amps but get rid of one of the cabs and merge the other over to the remaining cab to save on CPU. It appears that this patch is using a 4x10 bass cab model for both amps - What is the proper way to remove one of the cabs from the front panel of the axe? This shouldn't drastically change the sound should it - since they were both the same cab model and I'm just getting rid of one?
 
Success!! Changing the Compressor type to Pedal did the trick. Also thanks for the tip on the GEQ at the end, I was looking at the patch and noticed it was bypassed anyway (at least on my axe fx), and when I enabled it, it didn't really impact the sound, except maybe to make it a little too boomy - so I just took it out. But the compressor was the key, changing all the other things and shunting the GEQ at the end barely kept me from getting the cpu error but it would make terrible clipping noises - but just changing the compressor type alone brought the cpu usage down from 98.5 to ~96, then removing the GEQ at the end brought me down to around 94.5 or so - that should be safe right? I'm not getting any errors and not noticing any clipping, but I want to be sure it's not going to bite me in the end.

Thanks for all the help guys, What a great forum - I start a new thread, go to dinner, come back and I have 3-4 replies, including one from the owner of the company :)

Here's hoping that maybe one day I can get all those great patches that were made for the Ultra (like the Eric Johnson A-B morphing preset, and the EJ and EVH patches made by Dweezil) to work on my Standard by changing around some stuff.
 
Another tip I might add is to move the cab on the top line to the end of your signal chain and then eliminate the cab on the bottom line and route the bottom amp directly to the top cab.

You can then have the top cab as stereo, if you need to mix two types of speaker IR's.

I used to be a big fan of the dual amp setups (which is cool BTW), but I have found with the right tweaking and mixing of tonestack options, I can get the complex and sometimes divergent tone I want out of one amp.

For instance, my main crunch patch features a JTM 45 with the Uberschall tone stack - and to me it sounds just like two amps blended together with the benefit conserved CPU usage.

Another trick I use successfully is to place a drive block in front of a clean amp and then lower the mix on the drive to about 60%. I can distinctly hear the two tones from the patch in a mono setting (even though they are not panned).

The only situation where I would see the absolute need for dual amps is in a true stereo rig where each side is featuring a distinctive sound.

Just my $.02 and let us know how the gig went.
 
Well, glad to hear you liked that patch. It was created roughly a year ago, so many things within the axe have changed since then - thus the cpu issues. It was one of my first patches (based off a factory preset, I think?), so there was a fair bit of redundancy to it; namely the two cab blocks. There probably isn't anything I can say that hasn't already been said, so hopefully something works for you. If not, try making your own - changes are you can come up with something way better than that, and much simpler ;)
 
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