Plugins clicking and popping in bitwig

[HBIII]

Hi all, I am new to bitwig and loving it so far. However, I have come across one issue I am wondering about. I just got a new macbook pro with the m1 pro chip and 32gb of ram. I installed arturia pigments 3.5 (it runs m1 native). When I try to run it in bitwig there are popping and clicking sounds until I turn the buffer up to 256 (and even then there is an occasional pop or click). Running the same plugin in logic I can do a buffer of 32 no problem. Is there something I can do here to help improve the performance? I need low latency because I also use a lot of hardware synths and effects as well as itb effects and instruments. 256 is just too slow .

[mrfrenkie]

The same here (M1 Pro). Especially when the Bitwig window is not in focus

[loungepanda]

Am demoing it and I'm also seeing relatively high DSP usage on Win 10 - e.g. over twice the load average (ms) on an Init saw patch compared to Hive

Might be poor optimization by Arturia?

[pdxindy]

The same here (M1 Pro). Especially when the Bitwig window is not in focus

You got a bunch of cpu spikes there...

Running plugins using "Together" sandboxing, I got lots of cpu spikes and crackles with 4 instances of Hive, but if I pushed it up to say 12 instances of Hive there were no crackles and spikes.

Running plugins "Within Bitwig" the cpu crackles went away.

[PhilipVasta]

I can’t be sure but I think something is goofed in the latest versions of bitwig with regard to plugins. I’ve been getting subjectively more problems in high cpu usage and such. I also installed Windows 11 recently though.

[HBIII]

Thanks for the responses everyone, I am glad I am not alone (my graph looks similar with those spikes). I also emailed bitwig and they said they said they were getting similar results and to run it 'within bitwig' for better performance. And that they are working on improving the performance of VSTs...

[pdxindy]

Thanks for the responses everyone, I am glad I am not alone (my graph looks similar with those spikes). I also emailed bitwig and they said they said they were getting similar results and to run it 'within bitwig' for better performance. And that they are working on improving the performance of VSTs...

Once you switch to 'within bitwig', the spikes go away and it runs great...

Last I spoke with them, the Bitwig Team is still not sure if it is a Bitwig thing or Apple thing, but they are working on it.

[HBIII]

Thanks for the responses everyone, I am glad I am not alone (my graph looks similar with those spikes). I also emailed bitwig and they said they said they were getting similar results and to run it 'within bitwig' for better performance. And that they are working on improving the performance of VSTs...

Once you switch to 'within bitwig', the spikes go away and it runs great...

Last I spoke with them, the Bitwig Team is still not sure if it is a Bitwig thing or Apple thing, but they are working on it.

Switching to 'within bitwig' helps, but it still does not match the performance I can get in logic. In bitwig I can go down to a 64 sample buffer with one instance of pigments 3.5 before popping. In logic I can run as many as I want with a 32 sample buffer no problems (the projects I am working on need to be 96khz sample rate so that is what I am using for this testing).

[pdxindy]

Thanks for the responses everyone, I am glad I am not alone (my graph looks similar with those spikes). I also emailed bitwig and they said they said they were getting similar results and to run it 'within bitwig' for better performance. And that they are working on improving the performance of VSTs...

Once you switch to 'within bitwig', the spikes go away and it runs great...

Last I spoke with them, the Bitwig Team is still not sure if it is a Bitwig thing or Apple thing, but they are working on it.

Switching to 'within bitwig' helps, but it still does not match the performance I can get in logic. In bitwig I can go down to a 64 sample buffer with one instance of pigments 3.5 before popping. In logic I can run as many as I want with a 32 sample buffer no problems (the projects I am working on need to be 96khz sample rate so that is what I am using for this testing).

Are you recording live into all those Logic tracks with Pigments? Cause it runs the recording tracks at 32 but the other tracks at a much higher buffer.

I stopped using Pigments cause it is a CPU killer... but I did not check it in Logic. Maybe there is some issue with Pigments and Bitwig.

[iNNeRNoiZe]

Same problems here on M1 Max (Core Audio)... Lot's of cpu spikes and crackles with many many different plugins.

[HBIII]

Same problems here on M1 Max (Core Audio)... Lot's of cpu spikes and crackles with many many different plugins.

You should email bitwig support too. Maybe if enough people email them they will get everything working better on M1 .

[pdxindy]

Same problems here on M1 Max (Core Audio)... Lot's of cpu spikes and crackles with many many different plugins.

What plugin hosting option are you using?

[Kirkwood West]

i'm only getting extreme pops when instancing new plugins on 5.1 m1 max. Most plugins i've tested so far seem to be very stable and balanced once loaded. just an initialize pop.its got a sound for sure, almost like i'm plugging in a peice of gear hot. its cool once i got the session built. but until then there is a spike at every new instance.

I did try different levels of plugin hosting and noticed hosting together reduced the spikes a lot. hosting every plugin individually would cause the spike. which is good to know, not sure if that can be addressed or not... gonna keep experimenting, possibly report to Bitwig and I'm grateful I was able to find this old thread.

[Kirkwood West]

Playing around more today and the plugin hosting doesn't seem to make a difference with some plugins. Some plugins also must block processing for more than the buffer while they load which would create these spikes in the cpu graph... so many of plugins block processing while loading a preset, causing cpu spike and bad sound to be produced.

[synthique]

I have this issue with 5.1.8 - It doesn't matter how much buffer I give it, or how little DSP load there is. This is on a 12-core Intel mac pro/32gb/SSDs running Ubuntu + Alsa driver + SSL 12 USB interface.
I would sometimes have this problem if I left a project open for a few hours and came back to it. I'd have to restart the audio engine and that would fix it. It doesn't happen when I hit 50% DSP load or something, it just happens when I'm trying to get something done the load can be 1% and have a huge buffer size, still happens.

The issue got out of hand when I started using side chaining across tracks. I thought that running plugins fully sandboxed would be more stable, but if they're running in separate cores/threads, and the side chain signal has to be communicated to other threads, that would be kinda iffy vs. just scheduling everything in the same core/sequentially.
Probably I should go back to 5.1.7 or previous to see if that fixes it.
If I can reproduce it in isolation I'll send a project file + specs to Bitwig.