Way to turn off a tracks to limit DSP use

#1

I have read some other posts about this but I was wondering what would the best approach for the following situation, currently.

Say user has a MIDI track with an instrument that uses a lot of DSP, even when idle.
Say it is using so much DSP that they decide to bounce this MIDI track to an audio track.
But they want to keep that MIDI track + MIDI data + Inserted Instrument plugin still in their project so they could make edits if needed.
If they deactivate the plugin (and this plugin does not truly bypass itself) it still uses that DSP percentage. So then there would not really be a benefit to bounce this track to audio.

User would have to remove the MIDI track + plugin + effects + etc. from the project which is not desired.

Assuming you wanted to continue using Ardour, does anyone know of a way that this could be achieved?

In a different post of mine I heard people mentioning about “freezing” tracks but I was not sure.

Thank you for any information shared.

#2

Simply setting the whole track inactive in the tracklist to the right of the editor window will do.

3 Likes
#3

@werner.back
Thank you for your response.
In various posts I have made in the past about this, I do not think anyone mentioned that this would work.
I tried this out, and although this does not work completely -still see a little DSP % shown in the DSP meter in the Menu Bar, compared to the % it shows when no plugins are inserted
-get a DSP % spike every now and then even when Ardour is idle

This does work overall and is possible solution for how to handle the issue that I mentioned.

Thank you again for your response, this was very helpful.

#4

Maybe you overlooked it.

1 Like
#5

Actually I have choosen to try to block that post experience out of my memory but thank you for bringing it up again.