Drumspillage CPU usage?

[TwoToneshuzz]

Good Day

I'm looking for a Modelled drum synth and I'm very impressed with Drum Spillage. Have the Demo and I love the sound quality and the sound design possibilities. I have one problem though; the CPU usage is quite heavy and this is problematic with my present setup so I'm wondering if this is something that would be sorted out in future updates? I've tried turning off all the pads that are unused in a sequence and could see no improvement in the CPU load, this seems strange as turning of voices in most of my other softsynths reduces CPU load. Another CPU heavy synth I use ACE by u-he has a parametre called quality with where you can choose four diffrent quality levels this helps reduce CPU load as well...

So Cpu load what's the story..?

Best Regards

Wade

[audiospillage]

Hi Wade,

Thanks for the feedback. Can you give me a bit more info about your setup? Intel or PPC? Dual core, quad core, single core etc? OS version?

The CPU load in DrumSpillage can be a bit high at times but the main reason for this is the high quality DSP processing. With each update I find new ways to chip away at the CPU load so you can expect to see improvements in the future.

What I really don't want to do is compromise sound quality in any way so perhaps the only realistic option is a quality preference like you mentioned - which shouldn't be too hard to implement if it proves to be a popular idea.


In the mean time some things to look out for:

-Envelopes set to Exponential mode 'Exp' may use a little more CPU.
-You can try turning off any un-used LFO 2 units.
-Pads that are 'polyphonic' will likely use more CPU.
-Not all models are equal - some will use more CPU than others (e.g. ElectroSnare, Clave and SynthClap).

Hope that helps.

[TwoToneshuzz]

Thanks for the quick reply, that alone warms me to the idea of getting DrumSpillage!

My system: imac mid 2007 2.4 Ghz intel core duo 2 4gb ram system: 10.6.4 Host Numerology 3 pro. Motu Traveller mk3 firewire interface with DSP

It's very easy to max out my system as I have a lot of modelling synths

Tassman 4 some instruments are true Cpu hogs

String Studio VS1 up to 10% Cpu load

Ace u-he huge Cpu load! easly chews 30-40& of Cpu load

Surge by Vember audio healthy CPU load 7-8& CPU load

I noticed that with some of the demo kits Drum Spillage was easly up to 20-30% CPU load so it would limit it's usefulness in combination with the above synths.

I'm relatively new user of softsynths but I'm quickly learning that quality products with a lot to offer have often a pretty heavy CPU hit so this post should not be seen in anyway as a critiscm of DrumSpillage it's great that the sounds and the interface are advanced and high quality as they are.

What I'd expect to see is a CPU savings by turning pads off. So I'll keep looking at the system and see if there is ways to improve my systems performance.

Best Regards

Wade

[audiospillage]

Tassman 4 some instruments are true Cpu hogs

String Studio VS1 up to 10% Cpu load

Ace u-he huge Cpu load! easly chews 30-40& of Cpu load

Surge by Vember audio healthy CPU load 7-8& CPU load

I noticed that with some of the demo kits Drum Spillage was easly up to 20-30% CPU load so it would limit it's usefulness in combination with the above synths.

Sounds like Urs is hogging the CPU to me... just kidding! It's a problem and as you've noticed if you want high quality it's going to demand a decent amount of CPU load. Ideally I'd like to get DS down to an average of 15-20% or lower on that kind of machine spec.

What I'd expect to see is a CPU savings by turning pads off. So I'll keep looking at the system and see if there is ways to improve my systems performance.

If a pad isn't being triggered by a MIDI note turning it off won't do anything currently. However, I may be able to claw back a couple of % now you mention it in a future update.

One thing you can do with DrumSpillage which I forgot to mention previously is to turn off the exponential mapping (button labelled 'Exp') in Envelope 1 (amplitude). This makes the release time appear longer but with a less 'natural' decay characteristic. If you shorten the release time and play with the release curve control (small arrow to the right of the envelope editor) you can emulate the default exponential characteristic whilst also shortening the release tail and thus reducing the amount of CPU required to process the sound. This doesn't work all the time but may help with longer sounds.

If that makes no sense at all I can maybe create a preset to illustrate this!

Other more general things to try include increasing the block size in your host (although this also has the effect of increasing latency) or reducing the sample rate if you are running at 96Khz or similar. The latter can reduce sound quality with some plugin synths though.

If your host supports it you can try 'freezing' tracks or doing temporary bounces etc.

Good luck!

[audiospillage]

A follow up to your original question:

Thought you might be interested to know that DrumSpillage 1.2 introduced a 'Freeze' function which allows you to render a pad to file, greatly reducing CPU usage.

AudioSpillage