Efficient Arp-ing

[trancend]

Was wondering which of the following arpeggiation methods is less work for a midi timing master (which in this case is my underpowered windows 7 budget laptop running SonarLE6, until I get my liquid cooled G5 resurrected).

- Virus arp on, with Cakewalk issuing long, infrequent notes
- Virus arp off, with Cakewalk issuing short, frequent notes

I'm trying to cut down on "hesitation" (slow downs) while recording, and so whichever method is less computationally expensive for the laptop is the one I prefer.

Thank you.

[MBTC]

Not sure if you have a TI which is streaming audio over USB, but are you sure the current source of the slowdowns is computation (CPU) speed?

Overall, the first scenario (Virus arp on, longer notes in DAW therefore less MIDI ON/OFF chatter over the wire) should be more efficient in terms of the amount of data that needs to go back and forth, and that should be easier both on the laptop CPU (but only slightly, since arping notes on and off is not really that costly), but the real savings is just less MIDI data to deal with.

That said, I've always found whenever you have a timing sensitive operation (arping/gating etc) on an external device that needs to be perfectly in sync the host device, getting them to cooperate sometimes comes together on its own, and other times is a chore, so to that extent the efficient solution might actually be harder to get rid of the slowdowns you hear sometimes.

Hope I'm not insulting your intelligence with this one but with your budget laptop are you using the internal audio card to handle ASIO? As I said I wasn't sure if you're using a TI so I'm not sure what your audio interface situation is.