Everybody hates getting ‘overload’ messages during mixing. That moment when you are in the zone, getting a nice sounding mix, and just when you reach for that extra plug-in to spice up your track, everything stops! Or worse, your DAW hangs completely and closes unexpectedly, losing the last 15 minutes of work that you forgot to save (if you are lucky). We’ve all been there — but how can we avoid these errors when plug-ins seem to get more and more memory hungry, and not everyone can afford to change computers yearly? 

Let’s look at 5 things that could help you manage your computer resources and get the most out of your processing power. 

1- Increase Your Buffer Size During Mixing

An easy one but often forgotten. 

It is always recommended to lower the buffer size while recording. By doing this we let the computer focus on the playback so the latency decreases. But it’s quite common to forget to bring it back up during mixing. When not done, it can cause a bit of a shock when our super-powerful machine shows the dreadful overload message and only two plug-ins have been added to the session. Always check the buffer size in your DAW when you are going to start mixing and bring it up to the max.

If you are a Pro Tools user: while you are on the Playback Engine Window, consider enabling Dynamic Plug-in Processing. It can increase the chances of removing any error messages by optimizing the performance of the plug-ins, making them work only when audio is passing through them. 

2- Batch Processing

Some emulation plug-ins are really great and can help your tracks come to life or get the texture that you are looking for. The problem is that certain audio processing requires a lot of CPU power to work properly and it might be impossible to load 30 instances (or more) of them in just one session. 

Instead, why not consider processing your audio using summing busses. You would just need to add the effects in your busses instead of each individual track. This would save resources on your computer, add cohesion within your summed signals and still help you get the sound that you were after. 

3- Common Effect Tracks

Effects like reverbs, delays or harmonizers are very processing heavy plug-ins. It’s quite common to see less experienced producers adding these types of effects on each individual track and overloading the session very quickly. By creating Aux tracks dedicated to different reverbs or delay effects, you can share them across your session using sends. This way you only have to load one instance of these plug-ins and use them for multiple sources just like you would in a real, physical studio. You can even send effects to other auxes to create more complex sounds like massive delays or psychedelic reverbs.

4- Use Low-Processing plug-ins

Sometimes all you need is a good old stock EQ to do the job. When I say EQ I also mean compressor, de-esser, reverb, delay — you name it! They sound good and work well. Third party plug-ins are normally more attractive and can be key to elevate the sound of a mix. but they can also eat up a lot of DSP. 

If you want to be efficient and manage your processing power, consider using stock plug-ins for certain tasks. They are optimized to work flawlessly within the DAW of choice, consuming the right amount of resources, while providing some nice extra features like sidechaining from other tracks.

5- Freezing/Commiting Tracks

We are reaching the end of the mix, but we need more processing power to really nail the icing on top of this cake — the final touch that will make our track sound killer. Why not committing the sound of the snare that it took you hours to achieve and free up some of that well needed CPU? How about rendering those programmed MIDI tracks and turning them into audio to ease the load of the computer? 

Freezing and committing are two very feared words among 21st Century mixing engineers. Perhaps because knowing that you can keep revising and tweaking the mix, makes us feel more secure. But let’s face it, at this stage of the mixing process nobody wants to go back and tweak the snare sound (or maybe you do). Nevertheless, freezing and committing can help you a great deal to ease the load of the computer. Just keep a copy of the session with the processing before committing. That’s the great thing about modern audio processing!

Sonimus Plug-ins

One of the great things about Sonimus plug-ins is their zero latency and careful optimization for low CPU consumption. This allows the use of great analog sounding plug-ins with no restrictions or machine limitations. You can record and monitor the effect of the plug-ins without worrying about the addition of delay in your signal. You can also add as many instances of the plug-ins as you want during mixing, without stressing the processing power of the computer. Great sound with no compromise.