It is being worked on... they said it would be a while (that was a few months ago) so it was not expected for 2.4FortunOfficial wrote: ↑Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:10 pm And it looks like it’s still not being fixed. I hope they focus on performance, stability and bug fixing in the near future. For me this is more important than anything else.
Latest News: Bitwig updates Bitwig Studio to v5.1
Sluggish/sloooow GUI Bitwig 2.23 macOS Sierra 10.12.6
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- KVRAF
- 25420 posts since 3 Feb, 2005 from in the wilds
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FortunOfficial FortunOfficial https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=341835
- KVRist
- 93 posts since 19 Nov, 2014
In november my update plan ends. Then I will only renew it as soon as this is fixed. Then i’m absolutely happy to jump back in.
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- KVRist
- 472 posts since 18 Jan, 2017
I've just realized there is much more annoying problem for me than simply drop of frame rate. And this is lagging during zoom and scroll. When i have 10+ tracks in a project, this lagging become very severe. When i try to zoom in/out the whole UI is just freezing for 2-3 seconds, and this is very annoying! I hope something will be done about it...i'm starting to loose faith to be honest...
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- KVRian
- 912 posts since 1 Nov, 2012 from Berlin
A 2-3 seconds freeze ist most likely something different than the cpu or gpu usage for painting the gui - what are you running on those 10 tracks?
This description sounds more like you're out of RAM and the machine is swapping memory, or you're using a Macbook or an iMac and it is clocking the base frequency down drastically because the cooling just can not keep up with the heat the machine produces.
A video of such a 2-3 second freeze while showing the Activity Monitor for the RAM usage as well as the Intel Powergadget for cpu clocking would be interesting to narrow down the cause.
This description sounds more like you're out of RAM and the machine is swapping memory, or you're using a Macbook or an iMac and it is clocking the base frequency down drastically because the cooling just can not keep up with the heat the machine produces.
A video of such a 2-3 second freeze while showing the Activity Monitor for the RAM usage as well as the Intel Powergadget for cpu clocking would be interesting to narrow down the cause.
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- KVRist
- 472 posts since 18 Jan, 2017
Hello! Thanks for reply.dom@bitwig wrote: ↑Mon Oct 29, 2018 3:35 pm A 2-3 seconds freeze ist most likely something different than the cpu or gpu usage for painting the gui - what are you running on those 10 tracks?
This description sounds more like you're out of RAM and the machine is swapping memory, or you're using a Macbook or an iMac and it is clocking the base frequency down drastically because the cooling just can not keep up with the heat the machine produces.
A video of such a 2-3 second freeze while showing the Activity Monitor for the RAM usage as well as the Intel Powergadget for cpu clocking would be interesting to narrow down the cause.
Please take a look on the video : https://youtu.be/yceV9IyckYU
When the lag occurs, see how my transport bar freezes.
The project is nothing special. Mostly Bitwig native devices, some Kontakt and Omnisphere instruments.
As you can see in the top bar i have about 6.8GB free RAM and my CPU temp is about 67 С. I don't think this is something with my MacBook Pro.
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- KVRian
- 912 posts since 1 Nov, 2012 from Berlin
That's only the temperature, but you don't know what the cpu is running at.
Please run and monitor the Intel Powergadget to be sure, as i mentioned. Else we can't be sure.
Usually the Macbooks keep those 67degrees, because they clock down drastically, sometimes as low as to 900mHz.
Please run and monitor the Intel Powergadget to be sure, as i mentioned. Else we can't be sure.
Usually the Macbooks keep those 67degrees, because they clock down drastically, sometimes as low as to 900mHz.
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- KVRist
- 472 posts since 18 Jan, 2017
Yes, there is a slight clock down to around 2.0 Ghz, but its not that much.
Here is the video with Power Gadget : https://youtu.be/Zfk1ndwyKLg
Here is the video with Power Gadget : https://youtu.be/Zfk1ndwyKLg
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- KVRist
- 472 posts since 18 Jan, 2017
Guys, please admit this is the problem on your side and some serious optimisations/fixes/tweaks/improvements are needed. I know you don't like such comparisons but other DAW's work perfectly on the same hardware. If you need help with testing the GUI speed i'll be happy to help you, just PM me.
I remember you said its better to draw only as much as necessary (about Cairo GDK). The idea is to keep track of the areas that have changed, and redraw only those. How about to start from this?
I remember you said its better to draw only as much as necessary (about Cairo GDK). The idea is to keep track of the areas that have changed, and redraw only those. How about to start from this?
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- KVRist
- 384 posts since 7 Nov, 2013
It is pointless to report to Bitwig support in this regard - it's always your machine's fault and never the application's, regardless how well all other DAWs with the same VST and file locations perform on the same machine. 
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- Banned
- 11467 posts since 4 Jan, 2017 from Warsaw, Poland
1) They've admitted as much and said they're working on offloading the GUI rendering to GPU
2) Your video shows something that shouldn't happen and it looks like a problem with how your computer is set up. The CPU clock shouldn't be fluctuating so wildly between 1GHz and 3GHz, it should be at a stable level +/-5%; also your GPU suddenly jumps to 25-30% but we know Bitwig barely uses it. I'd investigate those things, but I'm not a Mac user so can't be more specific
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- KVRist
- 472 posts since 18 Jan, 2017
1. Then why everytime there are attempts to blame user's hardware instead?antic604 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:13 am1) They've admitted as much and said they're working on offloading the GUI rendering to GPU
2) Your video shows something that shouldn't happen and it looks like a problem with how your computer is set up. The CPU clock shouldn't be fluctuating so wildly between 1GHz and 3GHz, it should be at a stable level +/-5%; also your GPU suddenly jumps to 25-30% but we know Bitwig barely uses it. I'd investigate those things, but I'm not a Mac user so can't be more specific
2. How it can be set up differently? Its a normal Macbook Pro 2017, nothing has been changed. In fact, there is nothing you can change in Macbook Pro or MacOS regarding its performance. I did clean install of latest MacOS few weeks ago. My other software working flawlessly.
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- KVRian
- 912 posts since 1 Nov, 2012 from Berlin
@Enrize: Thanks for the video!
@Antic: Pretty spot on. But as sad as it is, in case of a Macbook as a user you can't do much.
The video shows exactly what i was referring to in my first post.
It's also why i thought i'd chime in here quickly to clear up some confusion that is going on in regard of two different topics that often get mixed up lately in the discussion of the general GUI performance.
One side of the story is that Bitwig Studio currently is painting the GUI mainly using the CPU, as we stated before. This is something we want to change in the future by offloading this to the GPU.
It will lead to better GUI performance across all systems, and it will make the GUI more snappy, esp. for people who state it can feel laggy with multiple monitors and high resolution.
But on the other hand, this gets mixed up with what happens exclusively on certain Macbook Pro and iMac models of the last 4 years or so - and it actually affects me personally as a user:
Complete GUI freezes, sometimes even for seconds. This is not normal and does not really have to do with the CPU/GPU thing and does not usually happen on other correctly set up systems.
As we can see in Enrize's video, despite the system being in demand of CPU and GFX performance, the system decides to clock down the CPU down to 2GHz instead of the 3GHz it should be able to deliver constantly (not even speaking about going higher and turbo boosting) and the GPU frequency even going down to 330MHz from 1GHz. This is when the freezes happen, as the system delivers only a fraction of the performance it actually should.
I'm using Macbooks (Powerbooks) as my daily tool for an average of 10hrs a day for way over a decade now - and my 2015 i7 Macbook does exactly the same. The cooling in those machines obviously just can't cope with the heat the i7 and the Radeon produce when being pushed, esp. when using external screens and high resolution. And it gets worse over time when dusting up on the inside. As a result, they get cooled by rastically clocking down.
Personally i think it is questionable to favor a slim design over actual performance - what is this cpu and gfx combination good for, if it just can't run steadily its specified base clock? But this is something only Apple has control over.
The peak of this story so far has been the release of the most recent i9 Macbook, that performed even worse in benchmarks than the previous i7 model. The media echo pretty big and Apple finally reacted in that case - as you can look up googling "throttlegate". Unfortunately, it does not help us with older models not reaching the steady performance they theoretically could reach.
On my machine, i can force it into clocking down even by playing youtube videos in HD on an external screen. During this warm summer, it got so bad, that it was getting hard to get work done on that machine. It would flat out at around 1GHz. It is a 2015 model, running at least 10hrs a day and collected some dust inside and after finally cleaning it out it got a bit better again (i suggest doing the same if you are experiencing those problems on machines that are not brand new anymore) but i still can force it into downclocking just by steady heavy load. Sadly, compared to the earlier models, those machines seem not to be designed to be run at constant heavy load anymore.
Back to the CPU/GPU thing with the Bitwig Studio GUI: Offloading the painting to the GPU will take load of the CPU. This possibly will also help on such Macbooks and iMacs to clock down later, so those freezes by clocking down will happen later. But it will only shift the cooling problem, not solve it.
It might even be that the GFX chip, that seems to be the bigger problem then the CPU, becomes even hotter and the problem gets even worse. Thats something we will have to see.
I hope this helps a bit to understand, assess and troubleshoot GUI performace issues when experiencing them in different setups.
@Antic: Pretty spot on. But as sad as it is, in case of a Macbook as a user you can't do much.
The video shows exactly what i was referring to in my first post.
It's also why i thought i'd chime in here quickly to clear up some confusion that is going on in regard of two different topics that often get mixed up lately in the discussion of the general GUI performance.
One side of the story is that Bitwig Studio currently is painting the GUI mainly using the CPU, as we stated before. This is something we want to change in the future by offloading this to the GPU.
It will lead to better GUI performance across all systems, and it will make the GUI more snappy, esp. for people who state it can feel laggy with multiple monitors and high resolution.
But on the other hand, this gets mixed up with what happens exclusively on certain Macbook Pro and iMac models of the last 4 years or so - and it actually affects me personally as a user:
Complete GUI freezes, sometimes even for seconds. This is not normal and does not really have to do with the CPU/GPU thing and does not usually happen on other correctly set up systems.
As we can see in Enrize's video, despite the system being in demand of CPU and GFX performance, the system decides to clock down the CPU down to 2GHz instead of the 3GHz it should be able to deliver constantly (not even speaking about going higher and turbo boosting) and the GPU frequency even going down to 330MHz from 1GHz. This is when the freezes happen, as the system delivers only a fraction of the performance it actually should.
I'm using Macbooks (Powerbooks) as my daily tool for an average of 10hrs a day for way over a decade now - and my 2015 i7 Macbook does exactly the same. The cooling in those machines obviously just can't cope with the heat the i7 and the Radeon produce when being pushed, esp. when using external screens and high resolution. And it gets worse over time when dusting up on the inside. As a result, they get cooled by rastically clocking down.
Personally i think it is questionable to favor a slim design over actual performance - what is this cpu and gfx combination good for, if it just can't run steadily its specified base clock? But this is something only Apple has control over.
The peak of this story so far has been the release of the most recent i9 Macbook, that performed even worse in benchmarks than the previous i7 model. The media echo pretty big and Apple finally reacted in that case - as you can look up googling "throttlegate". Unfortunately, it does not help us with older models not reaching the steady performance they theoretically could reach.
On my machine, i can force it into clocking down even by playing youtube videos in HD on an external screen. During this warm summer, it got so bad, that it was getting hard to get work done on that machine. It would flat out at around 1GHz. It is a 2015 model, running at least 10hrs a day and collected some dust inside and after finally cleaning it out it got a bit better again (i suggest doing the same if you are experiencing those problems on machines that are not brand new anymore) but i still can force it into downclocking just by steady heavy load. Sadly, compared to the earlier models, those machines seem not to be designed to be run at constant heavy load anymore.
Back to the CPU/GPU thing with the Bitwig Studio GUI: Offloading the painting to the GPU will take load of the CPU. This possibly will also help on such Macbooks and iMacs to clock down later, so those freezes by clocking down will happen later. But it will only shift the cooling problem, not solve it.
It might even be that the GFX chip, that seems to be the bigger problem then the CPU, becomes even hotter and the problem gets even worse. Thats something we will have to see.
I hope this helps a bit to understand, assess and troubleshoot GUI performace issues when experiencing them in different setups.
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- KVRist
- 472 posts since 18 Jan, 2017
Thank you for information Dom. I know you are working on a problem and this gives me hope that situation will be better.
All you have written seems logical enough, i know of the MacBooks overheating problems, the only thing that bothers me is why GUI in other DAWs (again, i hate to make comparisons and i know you also do!) working smooth on exact same machine? This is that makes me think there is something you could do better under the hood...
I'm a huge supporter of Bitwig Studio, if you need some more analytical data to improve performance, you can count on me.
All you have written seems logical enough, i know of the MacBooks overheating problems, the only thing that bothers me is why GUI in other DAWs (again, i hate to make comparisons and i know you also do!) working smooth on exact same machine? This is that makes me think there is something you could do better under the hood...
I'm a huge supporter of Bitwig Studio, if you need some more analytical data to improve performance, you can count on me.
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- KVRian
- 912 posts since 1 Nov, 2012 from Berlin
You're welcome. And while i know it is pretty disappointing, i just wanted to be sure to explain the technical reasons as well as why not all Macs are doing this. Last but not least, it is important to know that we over here in the office are in the same boat. And of course, we don't just blame things on the machine of a user to try to hide things. This is technical stuff that can be investigated and measured by anyone spending time and digging into those topics.
Regarding the hope for improvement: The downclocking also happens with other apps that put stress on CPU and GPU on the same time, esp. with Retina displays. As mentioned, i can even force it into this state using fullscreen HD videos in the browser on external screens. Not even talking about rendering software, computer games or other performance critical things. When it comes to DAWs, there are several things that can make a difference: unlike lots of other products, the GUI and audio engine in Bitwig Studio are completely separate. Before there will be any danger of audio drop outs, the GUI will get slower or freeze, as it runs with lower priority, keeping the audio save. Which itself is a great feature. With hosts, that don't work like that, you will therefore most likely get dropouts before you'll ever notice GUI problems, or they'll happen at the same time. So this would be one reason why it seems different. What is important: you can't judge only what you see in the GUI, you have to watch what happens with the CPU and GFX clock to know what is happening.
In the end it also depends on the GUI itself, of course. How much is going on there, what is the natively calculated resolution, what frame rate does it run, etc. and Bitwig Studio can be pretty complex in that regard - which is great when visualising modulators etc. and for sure it also makes sense to let the GPU do all the painting in the future.
It is just that in general it is not too much of a problem on normal systems. It just takes as much performance for the GUI as needs and as it can get, but only as second priority after the audio engine. So if you you're stating to max out a normal machine, the frame rate just drops, not causing any audio or other problems and it just does not feel as snappy anymore - it is just the thermal throttling of the Macs that causes such annoying freezes.
In short: Offloading the painting to the GUI might result in a noticeable improvement in what you can do until these freezes happen on those mentioned models - but it is pretty unlikely to solve the problem of them hitting the clock brakes that hard when they decide they become too hot. This is a design choice of Apple with those machines, again, reading up on the i9 throttlegate store is pretty interesting.
Regarding the hope for improvement: The downclocking also happens with other apps that put stress on CPU and GPU on the same time, esp. with Retina displays. As mentioned, i can even force it into this state using fullscreen HD videos in the browser on external screens. Not even talking about rendering software, computer games or other performance critical things. When it comes to DAWs, there are several things that can make a difference: unlike lots of other products, the GUI and audio engine in Bitwig Studio are completely separate. Before there will be any danger of audio drop outs, the GUI will get slower or freeze, as it runs with lower priority, keeping the audio save. Which itself is a great feature. With hosts, that don't work like that, you will therefore most likely get dropouts before you'll ever notice GUI problems, or they'll happen at the same time. So this would be one reason why it seems different. What is important: you can't judge only what you see in the GUI, you have to watch what happens with the CPU and GFX clock to know what is happening.
In the end it also depends on the GUI itself, of course. How much is going on there, what is the natively calculated resolution, what frame rate does it run, etc. and Bitwig Studio can be pretty complex in that regard - which is great when visualising modulators etc. and for sure it also makes sense to let the GPU do all the painting in the future.
It is just that in general it is not too much of a problem on normal systems. It just takes as much performance for the GUI as needs and as it can get, but only as second priority after the audio engine. So if you you're stating to max out a normal machine, the frame rate just drops, not causing any audio or other problems and it just does not feel as snappy anymore - it is just the thermal throttling of the Macs that causes such annoying freezes.
In short: Offloading the painting to the GUI might result in a noticeable improvement in what you can do until these freezes happen on those mentioned models - but it is pretty unlikely to solve the problem of them hitting the clock brakes that hard when they decide they become too hot. This is a design choice of Apple with those machines, again, reading up on the i9 throttlegate store is pretty interesting.
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- Banned
- 11467 posts since 4 Jan, 2017 from Warsaw, Poland
Ok, so the problem seems to be that Macs tend to throttle down the CPU (and likely the GPU) when they "think" the momentary load can be managed at lower clock but then, when suddenly the load gets up - there's scrolling, a heavy VST starts processing audio, etc. - they choke because they can't get back up fast enough. This is exactly the behaviour my Surface Pro 4 (and I suspect most laptops) have when running on battery-saving power profile. But in Windows I can crank it up to performance mode and solve this (+ there are dedicated tools to do more).dom@bitwig wrote: ↑Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:15 pmIn short: Offloading the painting to the GUI might result in a noticeable improvement in what you can do until these freezes happen on those mentioned models - but it is pretty unlikely to solve the problem of them hitting the clock brakes that hard when they decide they become too hot. This is a design choice of Apple with those machines, again, reading up on the i9 throttlegate store is pretty interesting.
I understand OSX lacks such a feature, but maybe something else can be done? What if Bitwig was running - parallel to the audio engine - a process that'd consume CPU cycles to keep the clocks up, but as soon as actual DSP processing would increase it'd adjust its load accordingly? Kind of like a dynamic phantom buffer that "fills" the empty available DSP room of the CPU? If other DAWs on those machines - I'm assuming Logic? Live? - perform well, then maybe they do something like this? I've been seeing reports of Live 10 spinning MBP's fans constantly even with small projects, so maybe that's something to explore?
