How long does SonicStage take to load of your computer?

[mercury_in_flames]

Hey I know people arent likely to time their computer but if eveyone could do this it would be cool just to have the stastistics to see how long the average user has to wait for sonic stage to load

Please add you system specs if you could as well as what version of sonic stage you are using. Thanks everyone. To do this, start your computer up from 'turned off' and once started up with no more things starting to load in your task bar, start sonic stage.

Mine:

I have a built in memory card that shares my on board ram, with it set to

32mb video ram, and 992mb RAM, CPU Pentium 4 m 2,8ghz, and about 1770 tracks in my library, it took me 22 seconds.

After I closed S.S i waited a few minutes, then loaded it again, and it took 6 seconds.

[Pug]

Sonicstage 3 onwards seems a lot slower to me than 2

Version 3.4 takes around a minute 1st 2nd or 3rd time:

666Mhz celeron, 128mb Ram

I have stopped using SS on this PC as it isn't so much the starting up that is the problem it takes about 2 minutes to import an albums worth of tracks (not convert, import!) It takes around 20 seconds to do any other operation such as select album, change to track view, right click on an album etc...

I now only run SS on my laptop,

Cheers

Pug

[mercury_in_flames]

cheers for the votes everyone, keep em coming.

LOL, my sister always complains that the desktop computer we have takes years to start up and why is the laptop so much faster. Well, the desktop is a pentium 3 with 256 ram and running windows XP. what does she expect? I have spent 102 pounds on upgrading this laptop to 1 gig ram, and 135 pounds on an external hard disk, and 130 pounds on an external dvd writer. If she had offered to share the cost of a new kick-ass desktop, then i wouldnt leave her sitting with a dog-egg computer lol.

[Richard]

Erm.. 8-9 seconds first time, 2-3 on subsequent retries.

[mercury_in_flames]

LOL, for real? what specs you got again?

[danielbb90]

20 seconds the first time,

And 10 seconds the second!

It would have been quicker if i didn't have outlook running...

Edited February 21, 2006 by danielbb90

[Richard]

LOL, for real? what specs you got again?

Pentium M 2.0 Ghz, 1GB ram and a relatively small library of say 150 tracks.

[pauljones52]

12.96 seconds first time after reboot, 3.19 seconds second time (phone stopwatch lol) 1.6 ghz pentium m, 1gb ram (DDR2 dual channel), 5400rpm hard drive, GMA900 graphics card lol. About 150 tracks in the libary.

Edited February 21, 2006 by Matt J

[Roamer]

45s first time, 10s the 2nd time.

Specs: PII 400 Mhz 192Mb RAM.

Library contains only uploaded recordings (around 25)

[greenmachine]

SS3.4 23/3s P3/600/256 empty library

[KrazyIvan]

SS 3.4

First Try: 14 secs.

Second Try: 6 secs.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.54GHz)

512MB DDR3200 (yeah I know it's underclocked)

SS library size: 2.3 GB

[Artstar]

Actually, on my setup it takes about 6 secs initially and then 2 secs thereafter.

Why?

Dual AMD Opteron 246's

4GB RAM

RAID0 config SCSI array

[atrain]

i'm watching some divx video & have 8 tabs of firexfox open but i get an opening time of about 7 seconds. re-opening took about three times that long & at the moment i have about 120 tracks in the library.

amd xp 3200+

1.5 gig ram

radeon 256mb 9600xt

3x ata harddrives [one via usb]

[mercury_in_flames]

hmm, i think its safe to say that what you have in you library does play a part. Although having 4 gigs of ram must speed things up a tad lol. Anyone else running Norton internet security here>?? I dont get why mine took 22 seconds initially :/ Oh, I also keep my library on an external hard disk.

[greenmachine]

I think HD fragmentation and HD read speed do play a major part for first time opening. For the second time it seems to open quite fast even without vast amounts of RAM or a fast CPU as long as you don't have a huge library. Still this program seems pretty much like a resource hog which i don't use more often than necessary.

[mercury_in_flames]

The external hard disk can do a read speed of a 4.7 gig dvd movie off the disc at 22x and the internal at 8x. The external does 7200rpm. This just in, I had to reformat my computer because norton had 'an internet script error' which stopped the main 'norton security centre' window not open. I uninstalled, deleted reg keys etc, still nothing. I was up till 4 reinstalling, setting up my wireless again, download updates for windows etc. what a drag.

[KrazyIvan]

I had to update my figures since I upgraded

Old:

SS 3.4

First Try: 14 secs.

Second Try: 6 secs.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.54GHz)

512MB DDR3200 (yeah I know it's underclocked)

SS library size: 2.3 GB

New:

SS 3.4

First Try: 10 secs.

Second Try: 4 secs.

AMD Sempron 64 3400+ (2 GHz)

1 GB DDR400

SS library size: 2.5 GB

[Richard]

Nice, - I upgraded the memory in my laptop from 1GB to 2GB last week, but it doesn't really make a difference to startup times for SS, (not that it was particularly slow anyway).

I bought a test box for some stuff I'm doing at work with a 2.8ghz dual-core processor and 3GB Ram - I'll have to give it a whirl on there

[Ishiyoshi]

SS 3.4

First Try: 8-10 secs.

Second Try: 2-4 secs.

Sony VAIO PCG-TR5AP, Intel Pentium M 1.10GHz *for portable setup; my desktop setup should be significantly faster

1 GB of RAM

SonicStage Library Size: approx. : 6 to 8 GB *(library size actually varies as it resides in an external HDD)

[Stuge]

SonicStage ver3.4

First attempt :16sec

Second :3.24sec

My Comp Spec

P4 2GHZ & 512mb ram

[hkey_barker]

This is for SS 3.4 with 30 GB's of music

First: 14 sec

Second: 8 sec

P4 2.0 GHZ 768 MB

7200 RPM hard drive

[xatax]

SS 3.4

First: 8sec

Second: 3sec

P4HT 3.2Ghz 1.5GB DDR400

RAID 0 7200RPM

Small library though...

[bobt]

Hi GTR,

1st start just over 10 seconds, second just under 3 seconds.

IBM Net Vista 1.5 GHz, 512 ram, no service packs SS 3.4 (shows that it can run without servicepacks), lots of music in the library.

Take care,

Bob

[MZ-NH1]

Took about 10 secs the 1st time, and then about 3-4 secs the 2nd time...

AMD X2 3800+

1GB Ram

300GB HDD

7800GT Extreme GFX

[Jimbolico]

Win2K,SP3 - SonicStage 3.4 - 2000 song Library of WAV files (132Gb)

6 Seconds to initialize first try

2 Seconds to initialize second try

System specs;

Supermicro SC833S-550 + X5DAE

Dual Xeon 2.8 533mHZ

2Gb DDR266

36Gb U160 SCSI System Drive/Adaptec 29320

588Gb U320 SCSI Raid 0 Drives (1x4)/Adaptec 2200s

Sony NW-HD2 portable device

Edited March 17, 2006 by Jimbolico

[1kyle]

So small a time as not to be significant. Less than any of your options above. Probably less than 1/2 sec and even tha's being generous.

Running AMD 64 single CPU with 2GB RAM and SATA drives.

Your main problem (assuming you have at least 512KB or better 1GB RAM) will be 99.9% for sure SLOOOOOOOW discs.

Slow disks really do slow a machine down especially if you don't have a lot of spare RAM so the computer will have to write a lot of "Pages" to slow Disk paging space.

For most people not doing a lot of CPU intensive work and SS is not particularly CPU bound the main bottleneck are DISKS but this is so rarely talked about even on the most "Geekish" of computer forums.

Unless you are doing a lot of Video editing, Photoshop or other image processing work or editing really HUGE audio files (normal CD files even WAV don't count here as HUGE files) CPU usage on a home computer or even an office workstation will not be a problem --you probably on average are only using about 15% (and that's generous) of the CPU power available.

Domestic machines are invariably "Highly I/O bound" which means it's the I/O subsytem, primarily the disks) which get the most usage and if there (as there usually is) a problem or bottleneck here you will really notice it.

So Get the FASTEST disks you can afford, (you can always move them to a new computer when you buy a new machine) and don't be mislead about sooper dooper performance with RAID. RAID is primarily designed to protect against data loss if a disk fails although in some circumstances it *can* improve performance but you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing.

ABOVE ALL if you must use the IDE connections on your mother board for your main disks(the standard ribbon connections with the 40 or 80 pin plugs) DON'T SHARE A CD/DVD WRITER on the same connector as a DISK. Better to have 2 disks on an IDE connector rather than a Disk and a CD/DVD device together.

Just get some FAST disks. Fragmentation is not an issue any more especially if you are using NTFS. You can waste HOURS defragmenting a disk with almost ZERO improvment at the end of the execise. These type of tools were OK in the "Good old DOS days" but should be forgotten once and for all.

Cheers

-K

Edited March 17, 2006 by 1kyle

[mercury_in_flames]

defragging my external hard disk makes a big difference on my computer. When I do a disk drive test i get 25000kb/s with a defragged drive and if ive got about 20 gigs worth of fragmentation in big chunks then i get about 13000kb/s.

[1kyle]

defragging my external hard disk makes a big difference on my computer. When I do a disk drive test i get 25000kb/s with a defragged drive and if ive got about 20 gigs worth of fragmentation in big chunks then i get about 13000kb/s.

If you use NTFS you can set the default cluster size to 4K instead of 16 K or whatever --so this problem shouldn't occur again. With large disks which most USB drives are now the default cluster size can be as much as 32 K or even 64 Kso if you have even a 1 byte file it will still appear as a 32K or 64 K file on disk which is where your wasted space can come from --especially if you write and delete smallish files a lot.

Also external disks are usually USB these days -- not really central to the slow loading time of SS.

Incidentally the actual data transfer rate is often not the limiting factor. You'll find a bottle neck in the device's buffer size (cheaper disks have a fairly small buffer) so you'll get "Paging" as the O/S has to write the data somewhere when the Disk buffer (or cache) is full. The buffer is used since memory is faster than Disk as a storage area which can be written directly to disk using the Disk's owm controller rather than using the OS itself. In other words Windows thinks it's done the I/O so can go and do another task even though the disk write hasn't completed yet. Thsi makes the whole system much more efficient.

The bigger the disk's internal buffer the less Windows has to stop what it's doing in order to service the disk write. SATA and disks which have their own controller cards are far better as they do their own processing --almost NONE of the computer's CPU is used in Reading / writing to the disk.

Internal OS design including paging and Disk sub systems are beyond the scope of what the original poster intended I'm sure but there's plenty of decent info on the web for those interested.

Cheers

-K

Edited March 17, 2006 by 1kyle

[dex Otaku]

SS takes about 6 secs to open "cold", and about 2.5-3 secs with the assistance of cache [closed then re-opened] on my machine.

Fragmentation is not an issue any more especially if you are using NTFS. You can waste HOURS defragmenting a disk with almost ZERO improvment at the end of the execise. These type of tools were OK in the "Good old DOS days" but should be forgotten once and for all.

This is a complete crock of caa-caa, 1kyle. NTFS may be slightly more resistant to fragging than FAT [of any type] but it still does so.

The influence of fragmentation varies on what you use a given partition for. For those of us who do a great deal of audio or video editing, the main source of fragmentation is temporary files that get deleted quickly. This includes pre-edit "originals" as well as temp files generated by editors. Since these files can be anywhere from moderate to quite large in size [perhaps 2MB-7GB on my machine] and other files get manipulated quite frequently at the same time, there end up being huge gaps in the disc structure which get partially used pretty quickly. Truth is, I can take an unfragmented drive at the beginning of a single editing session and have a 40-70% fragmented drive at the end of it simply by virtue of having done the work. Even just manipulating parts of my music collection causes rapid fragmentation on a massive scale.

Fragmentation does slow things down noticeably. The average user who doesn't actually use their computer for anything more serious than word processing will never notice this, but those of us who actually manipulate large files on a daily basis will notice the influence of fragmentation over very short periods.

That said, I don't defrag that often because waiting for 100,000 files to get sorted takes longer than the slowdown itself warrants, usually.

[Jimbolico]

{Unless you are doing a lot of Video editing, Photoshop or other image processing work or editing really HUGE audio files (normal CD files even WAV don't count here as HUGE files) CPU usage on a home computer or even an office workstation will not be a problem}

{don't be mislead about sooper dooper performance with RAID. RAID is primarily designed to protect against data loss if a disk fails although in some circumstances it *can* improve performance but you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing.}

{ABOVE ALL if you must use the IDE connections on your mother board for your main disks(the standard ribbon connections with the 40 or 80 pin plugs) DON'T SHARE A CD/DVD WRITER on the same connector as a DISK. Better to have 2 disks on an IDE connector rather than a Disk and a CD/DVD device together.}

-K

RAID WILL improve perfomance, no question about it. It's called RAID0, level 0. This level if for non-fault tolerant arrays. It permits up to 14 drives as 1 single drive letter, operated in sequence by a 2 channel controller. The best controllers must be plugged into 133Mhz PCI-x slot and have cache upgrade to 512 or 1Gb DDR. IDE is not used.

IDE is only for CD drives, take your IDE drives and throw them away. IDE operates up to 133Mb/s. SATA operates at 150Mb/s. Ultra160 SCSI operates at 160Mb/s. Ultra320 SCSI operates at 320Mb/s. Which would you build an array with? Which would you choose for a system disc?

2 cpus are faster than 1. Ultra320 drives are faster than SATA. 2 channel RAIDs are faster than single channel. PCI-x is faster than PCI. USB2.0 is faster than IDE.

With this in mind, plug a SRCU42x (512cache)-2 channel Ultra320 RAID 0-into a PCI-x slot and chain 3-7 drives per channel. I think it peaks at 5 per channel and then see's neg effect from too many drives. (operation of array becomes counter-productive)

RAID management is a breeze, you are already capable, I can tell. Plus you can remove them from the array and make single fixed volumes, all from the same controller or plug in a 29320 or 19160 for single system drives, fixed volumes not on the SRCU42x. Can have 2x2 RAID0 with 2x5 RAID10. Raid levels differ the 'type' of fault tolerance you are needing, easily understood while creating the array from within the controllers setup options. Windows has 'disk management' tool which makes creating a 'logical' drive a breeze these days. XP and 2K are fullproof and simple, quick to format and initialize. By far, the easiest thing you ever did was format 6 drives at once, all in the blink of an eye. The best way to de-task your CPU is to add another one, and then add a RAID controller. It's much more efficient at writing files. The cache of the controller helps more than the cache of the drive. Upgrade the controller cache to 512 or 1Gb if supported.

I am doing a lot of Video editing, Photoshop or other image processing work. I showed my backup system, the 1x4 array. It's still a great peformer for SonicStage3.4 and 130Gb of files. Main system just does the captures. All the systems work together for frame rendering. One of the servers is for CAD and has no array. But it does have a 29320 and a U320 system drive. Of course!

Win2K,SP3 - SonicStage 3.4 - 2000 song Library of WAV files (132Gb)

6 Seconds to initialize first try

2 Seconds to initialize second try

System specs;

Supermicro SC833S-550 + X5DAE

Dual Xeon 2.8 533mHZ

2Gb DDR266

36Gb U160 SCSI System Drive/Adaptec 29320

588Gb U320 SCSI Raid 0 15K Drives (1x4)/Adaptec 2200s

147Gb U320 SCSI Volume 15K Drive 1/Adaptec 2200s

147Gb U320 SCSI Volume 10K Drive 2/Adaptec 2200s

Sony NW-HD2 portable device

Edited March 18, 2006 by Jimbolico

[xatax]

You've got some pretty crazy rig there Jimbolico, a real beast! Congrats

[poe]

XP,AMD 64 3700,1 gig of ram(minus whatever for Radeon 200 intergrated video on motherboard) and about a 1000 song liabrary.

1st: 8-10 seconds

2nd: 2-4 seconds

POE