Basics of Work Priority, Buffer, and Pre-fill File Buffers?

[RockNRoll]

Greetings all,

I have tried to search the forums, but still am a bit unclear as to what specific functions these settings adjust.

In essence, does a high work priority setting mean that DP will utilize as much overall CPU resources as it can from your system? If so, then would you want it to set it to low if, say for example, you were using a lot of standalone audio apps at the same time? Also, can you make DP an even greater CPU hog by increasing the "Max Work Percent" under Configure Studio Settings, or is generally safer to leave it at the default 80%? Please correct me if I am under the wrong impression regarding any of these configurations.

I generally understand the concept of Buffer settings, however, would you generally want to set it to the maximum number as it will allow for when you are performing a final mix?

Also for setting Pre-fill FIle Buffers under Configure Studio Settings, what exactly does this adjust? In what sort of scenario would a user prefer to disable this setting?

Thanks a lot for any insight!

[Phil O]

If you haven't already, check out pages 20-23 in the Getting Started guide. As far as I know it's the only place MOTU mentions these settings. A while back I did a torture test to push my new (at the time) Intel Mac. I loaded up tracks with various plugins and kept duplicating tracks until DP choked. Then I deleted just 1 track (just shy of choking) and adjusted those settings 1 at a time to see what effect they had. If you do this, you'll see that at a certain range of settings, you can start adding more tracks. So tracks got added as necessary to bring the program to just short of failing. When I got to the maximum number of tracks, that's where I left the settings. I really don't know how good a test this was, but it seemed to boost performance, so I'm happy. I do plan to revise and repeat this test at some time, but for now everything is working smoothly.

Phil

BTW, my settings are:
Prime seconds - 3.00
Work Quanta - 80 ms
Max Work Percent - 99%
Buffer - 1024
Work Priority - High