Studio One 3, new-ish Macs, and pathetic CPU behavior - is it just me ??

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So I have a 2015 MBP and a 2016 iMac.

I use Ableton Live regularly on both without any CPU issues, including building my massive, plugin-intensive industrial songs and other projects.

Ok. I also have Studio One V. 3 installed on both systems. And it's not good.

The main problem (though there are others, but I'll stick to one issue for now!), which occurs on BOTH computers: just clicking on a track, any track, makes the CPU meter jump up. Even in an empty session, even with the audio interface (komplete audio) disconnected. In a session with a bunch of stuff, the spikes just from clicking on tracks go way up, as much as 25-40%, and can cause an overload.

I've been in a back and forth with Presonus tech support for three weeks. They had me try a few things, none of which changed anything. Yesterday, the tech guy (who writes to me about every 3 or 4 days, fwiw) said:

"I can't replicate this on my Mac and nobody else but you is reporting this problem." He had no further advice or troubleshooting to provide, and I haven't heard from him since.

So essentially Presonus tech support is telling me: As far as we are concerned this problem doesn't exist, except for you, so uh, too bad for you.

Except this behavior is IDENTICAL on TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SYSTEMS.

There's just no way that's coincidence. Which is why I'm here, describing the problem, to ask if any Mac users out there running S1V3 (current version) on 2015 or later macs (and yes of course I have 16gig RAM, 4ghz i7 processor) are seeing this behavior.

So, Mac and Studio 1 people:

1. what Block Size do you use?
2. do you get CPU spikes when clicking on tracks? In an empty session? In a song-in-progess session?

The smaller the block size, the worse the spikes are. The higher the block size, they start to go away (but this is at sizes with huge latency where recording would be impossible). So clearly the spikes correspond with the general CPU usage as well. But given that I'm talking about EMPTY sessions here, this isn't a case of me running to much stuff, etc.

Please let me know your experience, thank you. It's not fun being given up on by a company's tech support!

-Michael

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mholloway wrote:"I can't replicate this on my Mac and nobody else but you is reporting this problem." He had no further advice or troubleshooting to provide, and I haven't heard from him since.
You wont hear from him again, because he is a bare face liar, this is reported all the time, it is a long running joke on various forum across the net, they have even banned various people for posting about it all the time at their own forum.
Duh

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bungle wrote:
mholloway wrote:"I can't replicate this on my Mac and nobody else but you is reporting this problem." He had no further advice or troubleshooting to provide, and I haven't heard from him since.
You wont hear from him again, because he is a bare face liar, this is reported all the time, it is a long running joke on various forum across the net, they have even banned various people for posting about it all the time at their own forum.

Well that's certainly not encouraging!!!

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To be honest, I'm jumping ship down the line to Logic X. I had a bad experience recently with the studio 192 mobile. So I canceled the faderport 8 order, and am returning these presonus monitors. I will continue to use Studio One for mixing for the time being. As for the presonus forums, probably the worse of them all. The presonus software employees are cool though. The main guys at the US office are trippin sometimes via their forums.

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mholloway wrote:Well that's certainly not encouraging!!!
Yikes. That's a new one to me.

To be clear, I certainly have seen multiple reports about cpu spikes over the years and have experienced them myself with VI's, but I've never personally heard that one before, the cpu spiking up just by touching a track panel with the mouse or selecting tracks.

Playing samplers, sure. I've seen more than a few people reporting that. Just selecting a track? I've never heard that one.

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Doesn't happen to me here when clicking a track, sorry...multiple tracks, plugins, el cap, 8-core Mac Pro or even mini.

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macmuse wrote:Doesn't happen to me here when clicking a track, sorry...multiple tracks, plugins, el cap, 8-core Mac Pro or even mini.

Whats your block size set to in the audio prefs?

thanks,
-Michael

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"is it just me ??" no
Thats just how it is. More or less unusable with small blocksize. I have stopped trying to get S1 to work and use other options instead. Will maybe try it again when they do something about it but it looks like it is not a priority wich is a shame. They don´t want to hear about this issue at Presonus HQ so don´t expect any actions from Presonus regarding this in the nearest future, go for another DAW instead. Logic comes to mind.
I´m also using a 2015 Macbook Pro and it is powerful enough when using other DAWs with small buffers but not S1.

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I'm not trying to hijack the thread but the CPU spiking happens under Windows as well. I can't play a single piano library VSTi at 44.1k 64ms without spiking and ultimately crackling. And it happens with all of my piano libraries, Ivory, Ravenscroft 275, Pianoteq, Acoustic Samples etc. Some are a little more forgiving than others but ultimately all exhibit crackling and CPU spikes. No such problems under Reaper, Sonar or Protools. I can play all day long at 44.1k 64ms with a round trip latency of 5.2ms using my MOTU Ultalite AVB. My computer is fully optimized for DAW work.
The problem is Studio One. At this point despite being with Presonus Studio One since v1 I've about given up. My system is Intel Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H, Intel 4790K 4.0 GHZ,16G Corsair Vengeance 2133 Memory and Windows 10 Professional OS and VSTi are on Samsung SSD drives.

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tunafish88 wrote:I'm not trying to hijack the thread but the CPU spiking happens under Windows as well. I can't play a single piano library VSTi at 44.1k 64ms without spiking and ultimately crackling. And it happens with all of my piano libraries, Ivory, Ravenscroft 275, Pianoteq, Acoustic Samples etc. Some are a little more forgiving than others but ultimately all exhibit crackling and CPU spikes. No such problems under Reaper, Sonar or Protools. I can play all day long at 44.1k 64ms with a round trip latency of 5.2ms using my MOTU Ultalite AVB. My computer is fully optimized for DAW work.
The problem is Studio One. At this point despite being with Presonus Studio One since v1 I've about given up. My system is Intel Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H, Intel 4790K 4.0 GHZ,16G Corsair Vengeance 2133 Memory and Windows 10 Professional OS and VSTi are on Samsung SSD drives.
Did you read the original post though? Seems like another issue to me.

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chk071 wrote: Did you read the original post though? Seems like another issue to me.
Yes I did.
I think it's just another manifestation of CPU spiking. For me, I get spikes with the VSTi loaded but not doing anything. Granted, small spikes at less than 10 percent but even still.

EDIT: I just checked with 1 VSTi loaded and 10 audio tracks. CPU at about 2 percent. Clicking around the tracks causes it to spike to 4 percent. This is just sitting there. It doesn't go anywhere near 40 percent.
Seems acceptable to me for that test.

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All too familiar stories about Studio One, search this forum for the same again and again.
When Wolfgang Kundrun left the team, problems more or less immediately started to appear, specifically on Macs. This was also coupled with a belligerent denial of issues from Presonus and the usual army of fanboys. Personally, I and others found a major bug with their "save as" function, an error so basic any 1 st grade programmer would be ashamed of. Usual rounds of denial and obfuscation. It was finally fixed in 2.65 months later.

All of this is so sad as the initial v2 Studio One was incredibly stable and full of new and unique ideas. Track transform and the drag and drop workflow to name but a few.

Specifically if you use Vsti and Mac look elsewhere, it is the worst performing DAW out there by a mile. For audio work seems to be better and more comparable to others re CPU on the Windows platform.
Mac Studio
10.14.7.3
Cubase 13, Ableton Live 12

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I demoed S1 v3 recently (I'm on PC), looking to maybe switch from Cubase, and really liked the workflow. But the same heavy trailer project (100ish tracks, lots of plugins) that was going in the 25-30% region of the RT CPU usage in Cubase was around 90%-95% in S1...so, not comparable for heavy projects with lots of Kontakt and other plugin instances, I guess.

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mholloway wrote:
macmuse wrote:Doesn't happen to me here when clicking a track, sorry...multiple tracks, plugins, el cap, 8-core Mac Pro or even mini.

Whats your block size set to in the audio prefs?

thanks,
-Michael
Sorry for the delay...I forgot about this thread. I don't do live recording so my block is set at 512 and at that block size, I hadn't experienced it. As a test just now, I set it at 64 and it does peak the meter when clicking on a track. So yes, at those settings it happens for me too. :(

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Nope, not just you. And nope, doesn't have to be mac.

That will be my one post.

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