Sound quality - CPU efficiency equilibrium

If you are new here check this forum first, your question may have been answered.
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

Just a thought - those numbers are for single thread performance. I had a dual core CPU back then and have a quad core right now. The same might be true for a lot of music producers.

Also, you have to take power consumption into account to get an idea of the shift in priorities. If you keep in mind that core frequencies haven't increased a whole lot in order to keep power consumption low, you get a better idea. Ask anybody who overclocks their CPU to the same power envelope and the numbers start looking very different.
..off to play with my music toys - library music production.
http://www.FiveMinuteHippo.com

Post

medienhexer wrote:Just a thought - those numbers are for single thread performance. I had a dual core CPU back then and have a quad core right now. The same might be true for a lot of music producers.
exactly, and that's what I was saying, 2 cores do NOT make a computer 2x faster. 2 cores is more like 2 computers.
That's just what Intel markets because there was no other way to evolve. "4 cores make the internet faster"..

Even though multithreading isn't friendly with low latency, it's still ok to get 200% to 300% improvement out of a quad core, in the best cases. It's often that your song has 4 or more things to perform in parallel. Now imagine 100 cores. Which 100 tasks are you gonna give you your sequencer, to peform at the same time? And then add to this the cost of 100's of context switches.


It's ok if you don't trust me, you can argue with the other people out there:
Image
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/11 ... ll-stuck/2


medienhexer wrote:If you keep in mind that core frequencies haven't increased a whole lot in order to keep power consumption low
you mean, temperature..
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

Post

yes and especially as DAWs have to work with audio data sequentially i.e. the cant just let 5 plugins all loose on the same data at the same time

Post

tony tony chopper wrote:
Kaboom75 wrote:Who cares what the OS CPU meter says fact is it improves DAW performance a good sound vs a crackly CPU overload sound is a massive difference. More cores and big third party coolers is the way forward until Quantum computers arrive.
Ok, say you got 4 synths running in parallel (or voices in them, whatever), and you got, I don't know, a 200% speedup out of a quad core. If you don't understand where the speedup comes from, you may think that adding 4 more cores will bring another 200% speedup, but no, because you won't have enough to keep 8 cores busy.

Worse, if you had 1000 cores, context-switching for 1000's of threads *alone* would probably kill audio buffering, without processing anything.
u-he synths can keep as many cores as you have busy. Are you from Xi Machines by any chance?
Ableton Live will use 16 cores if you have 16 tracks.

Post

Kaboom75 wrote: u-he synths can keep as many cores as you have busy. Are you from Xi Machines by any chance?
Ableton Live will use 16 cores if you have 16 tracks.
I have multithreading in my synths as well & I know what I'm talking about.
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

Post

Kaboom75 wrote:Plugins that use a lot of CPU are the ones that model analogue hardware very close. There is no way to do it with low CPU usage than the usual digital plugins.
This is pretty much it I think. Synths like Zebra and Harmor can deliver great sound quality without destroying your CPU, if you want to hit the sweet spot between no artifacts and low CPU usage you just can't be too hung up on recreating the analog aesthetic. You've brought up u-he a few times and you can see the difference from the same developer, Zebra is much easier on the CPU than Diva or the wired modulars

Some strategy also helps, you can use lower quality synths or draft modes more for some bass and lower mid range sounds as aliasing isn't as likely to occur. Lead parts that people focus on most sharply tend to be higher also

Post

TheNickC wrote: This is pretty much it I think. Synths like Zebra and Harmor can deliver great sound quality without destroying your CPU,
Harmor would normally kill your CPU (MUCH more than a classic analog-modelling synth), additive synths are the most CPU-demanding out there. I mean, trigger a 9-voice unison low saw, that's 4500 sine oscillators to process for just 1 voice. Try to process 4500*44100 Sin() in a little app & time this.
Lots of tricks were involved to make it fast (multithreading as well btw, even though that doesn't do miracles).
DOLPH WILL PWNZ0R J00r LAWZ!!!!

Post Reply

Return to “Getting Started (AKA What is the best...?)”