Quick question about project efficiency

FMOD Studio
1

Hi there, I just have a question about resource management in FMOD.

What is more CPU intensive when creating events for an impact sound:

  1. Having multiple events - each of these dedicated to a specific layer of the sound e.g. one event for the top end sizzle/click, one event for the mid range punch, and one event for the bottom end/sub.

Or

  1. Having a single event with these three layers included but separated onto different tracks in different multi-instrument instances.

I understand that having these three layers baked into one sound is clearly the most efficient, but I would like to know what causes a bigger CPU hit in the two examples I mentioned above. Also, is the CPU hit that these two methods would cause even noticeable?

Thanks a lot!

2

There are many variables that can factor into which is more/less efficient and it depends entirely on your setup. I would recommend creating these two separate events, play them in the editor, and record their output with the live update profiler. This way you can see exactly which type of event is more efficient on RAM/CPU, etc.