Specifications

EAW Smaart 6 Operation Manual Troubleshooting
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6.4 Performance Issues
If Smaart is running too slowly, the two most likely causes are not enough available
CPU time and/or not enough RAM for the task. Two possible strategies are to free up
more system resources for Smaart to use and/or decrease the amount of RAM and CPU
Smaart is using. Close other applications to free more RAM for Smaart to use. Within
Smaart, the biggest factors affecting the speed of the program are the FFT sizes used in
the real-time Spectrum and Frequency Response displays. When linear, FIFO averaging
is used for either display, the selected FFT sizes also have a major impact on memory
requirements. Keep the number of reference traces loaded and displayed to a minimum.
If the computer does not have enough physical RAM to hold the information Smaart
needs at a given time, it will utilize hard disk space as virtual memory and this can
drastically affect its performance, all but freezing it up entirely in extreme cases. This
problem is usually accompanied by a lot of hard disk activity as the computer obtains
and sends data to and from the hard disk.
The default FPPO option for the Frequency Response displays efficiently uses memory
and CPU resources, so use FPPO and avoid the largest FFT sizes for Spectrum measure-
ments for the best performance. The worst performance typically results from using the
largest FFT sizes in conjunction with 64 or 128 averages. Note that the Infinite averaging
option uses relatively little RAM compared to any of the fixed number FIFO averaging
options. The Fast and Slow exponential averaging options also consume relatively
small amounts of memory.
6.5 Font and Display Problems
Title and Label Font Problems
Smaart normally uses the Arial (TrueType) font family for graph titles, labels and legends.
(A Windows font family typically consists of four typefaces: the normal base font plus
bold, italic, and bold italic.) These fonts are normally installed on your computer with
the operating system. Of course they can be removed just like any other TrueType font,
but many applications (including Smaart) expect them to be available and can behave
somewhat erratically if they are not.
While Smaart 6 can operate without these fonts, the appearance of on-screen controls
and graphs may suffer if they are not available. Results may vary from one computer to
another based on what fonts that are available. If one or more of the Arial font files are
missing or corrupt, the problem can manifest itself in different ways. Symptoms may
include strange fonts and/or type sizes in graph labels and cursor readouts, and vertical
plot labels failing to rotate (reading horizontally).