OUT OF CPU POWER ???

HI... IS IT REALLY SO, THAT A INTEL P4 3GHz WITH 3GB RAM AND SEPARATE HDDS FOR SYSTEM AND PROJECTS CAN'T COPE WITH REAPER ??? I HAVE VOXENGO BOOGEX ON 5 TRACKS, SOME REAEQ AND REACOMP + ADDICTIVE DRUMS AND MY PC IS CRUMBLING (SNAP, POP & CRACKLE). MY AUDIO HW: RME MULTIFACE I + M-AUDIO FAST TRACK USB BOTH LOW LATENCY DEVICES, BUT STILL I CAN'T MONITOR THROUGH FX IN REALTIME. I'VE TRIED ALL BUFFER-SIZES, NO HELP !!! THIS HAPPENS WITH THE FAST TRACK ON DIGIDESIGN PRO TOOLS M-POWERED ALSO. PLEASE HELP ME AROUND. TRIED ALL KIND OF DAW TWEAKS FOUND THROUGH THE WEB. THANKS, TONI S / FINLAND.

It's not Reaper.I'm running an old AMD3800+ 2.8 Ghz with 1 meg of RAM on winXP pro and have no problems.Biggest project I did had around 19 tracks and loads of VSTs. Reaper and project files on O/S drive but partitioned. Much as I like Voxengo stuff it may not be coded as tight as it should.I would suggest you only use one instance of it and try and find alternative VSTs if you want to treat guitars/basses that way. I also now try for a minimalist approach.If I know I'm going to use reverb on several instruments I make an FX track and place my favourite reverb on that track and then use the I/O routing to send the various tacks I want to effect to it.This saves CPU time by not using multiple instances of that VST.It also cuts down on possible reverb tail clashes from different reverbs that can cause havoc with mixes. This technique could also be used on say a number of dry recorded guitar tracks but adding ReaEQ/Reacomp which use minimal CPU time to each dry track to change the sound and then sending them to a single Amp Sim FX track.You would still have control of the individual volumes and pans of the tracks. HTH :)

Amp sims are heavy duty FX. So don't be surprised your CPU groans with 5 of them simultaneously. Sending multiple guitar tracks to one ampsim can be compared to driving one hardware guitar amp with multiple guitars at once... you might get away with a clean amp setting, but still it will not sound nearly as good as having an amp per guitar. I'd rather bounce the FX to the tracks. If you leave the original files in the project, you can still change your mind (and the sound) later on if needed.

WELL, I KNOW THAT IT SURE AS H** IS NOT THE HDDS (C'OS THEY'RE BOTH 7200RPMS)... SO IT PRETTY MUCH LEAVES IT TO THE CPU AND CHIPSET ??? MY PREVIOUS DAW HAD THIS INTEL APPLICATION ACCELERATOR-UTIL... DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THERE'S AN EQUIVALENT FOR IT FOR MY CHIPSET, "INTEL P4 865GLC" ??? WHAT IF I'D GO FOR THE FX BUS-WAY. SENDING MULTIPLE TRACKS TO THE SAME BUS (WITH REAEQ, REAC0MP AND BOOGEX)... I'M THE OLD-SCHOOL-FASHIONED-GUY WHO LIKES TO RECORD RHYTHM-GUITARS TWICE (NECK-PICKUP / PAN: HARD-LEFT, BRIDGE-PICKUP / PAN: HARD-RIGHT). HOW WILL I SET UP THE FX BUS ROUTING (SENDS & RECEIVES) SO GUITARS-LEFT COME PROCESSED FROM LEFT (MONO-PANNED HARD LEFT) AND GUITARS-RIGHT -"- FROM RIGHT (MONO-PANNED HARD RIGHT) ??? AND NOT FROM THE CENTER !!! GOT THE BIG PICTURE... ??? THANK YOU, TONI S / FINLAND.

it's easy to render stem mixes of your processor heavy tracks. right-click track, lots of different options in there.