Powerful synths that are CPU friendly?

[AndreasH]

Dune 1 and LinPlug CRX4.

[exmatproton]

It actually was mentioned by the OP in the first post. Hard to mention anything earlier than that.

They are "ok". What i don't like about those, is that they run @ ~20 fps.....quite annoying. Especially coming from something like Rapid, which is running at a steady 60 fps (and quite light on the cpu, until you really stretch it's legs)

Promise me this is a joke, please. 60fps is nearly three times the frame rate of cinema and a complete and utter waste of CPU cycles. 12fps should be more than adequate for something as totally unimportant as a soft synth interface. After all, any animation you get is purely decorative and serves no useful purpose.

Basically, anything more than 10 years old should be very light on a modern CPU, as they were made for far less powerful machines.

NOOO...no joke. These days it is just stupid not to run a plugin @ high FPS levels (IMO).
Especially when moving knobs etc, it should go smooth. Otherwise it is truly finicky to get parameters at the right position. Really, not joking. I like to work fast with high refresh rates and i notice i rarely use synths that are just sluggish.

BTW, it is not about animations, it is about update rate of the UI. So everything is affected, epsecially turning knobs and moving sliders can be a real pain in the ass with slow updating UI's (in my experience)

[Urs]

Hehehe, we used to draw knobs immediately when they were turned. The problem with that are high display resolutions and high resolution mouses. We measured update rates of 150+ FPS when turning a knob. This was definitely a huge waste of CPU. We had to switch it off.

[andrew71]

Promise me this is a joke, please. 60fps is nearly three times the frame rate of cinema and a complete and utter waste of CPU cycles. 12fps should be more than adequate for something as totally unimportant as a soft synth interface. After all, any animation you get is purely decorative and serves no useful purpose.

I think this is a generational thing, probably influenced by PC gamers. Younger people, in my experience, tend to be focused on graphical performance, and apparently FLStudio has an FPS counter in it. It's also being discussed in the Hive 2 Sanity check thread in the U-he forum.

A slower GUI really doesn't bother me at all, unless it is seconds behind...

[BONES]

No, it's just how easily the minds of clueless idiots are manipulated by marketing. They don't know where or why frame rates are important, they've just been told that they are because it helps to sell new products that people don't really need. Because these people have no capacity for critical thought, they blithely accept this marketing hype as fact and that's that.

[Stefken]

No, it's just how easily the minds of clueless idiots are manipulated by marketing. They don't know where or why frame rates are important, they've just been told that they are because it helps to sell new products that people don't really need. Because these people have no capacity for critical thought, they blithely accept this marketing hype as fact and that's that.

The story of capitalism.
If I remember correctly, discrete frames are seen as continuous motion from 22 fps on.
I guess 12 fps would be passable, but I would go for 20 fps.

[starflakeprj]

Zebra 2 is another winner....

Surprised it wasn't mentioned sooner.
Very CPU friendly for what it does.

Maybe because the OP mentioned he already has Zebra2?

[Yorrrrrr]

Fast frame rates is something really important to me. Just makes GUI usability a more joyful or fun experience. It's just a comfort thing. I think FabFilter stuff runs at a decent frame rate and as such I find a them a joy to use, not only because of their look, layout, etc.

[perfumer]

Europa

[Echoes in the Attic]

No, it's just how easily the minds of clueless idiots are manipulated by marketing. They don't know where or why frame rates are important, they've just been told that they are because it helps to sell new products that people don't really need. Because these people have no capacity for critical thought, they blithely accept this marketing hype as fact and that's that.

In almost 20 years of using soft synths, I've never once seen the frame rate marketed, or even mentioned by a dev, or on a product description anywhere. In fact I've never seen anyone bring it up anywhere before this thread. So I'm more inclined to believe it's something some people notice using the software and are sensitive to for whatever reason, rather than getting suckered by marketing. This is not what anyone is talking about when selling vsts.

[SoundPorn]

That I promise you is not the story of capitalism. Capitalism has nothing to do with certain people being dumb and gullible. But it does have everything to do with why you even have internet in the first place because if not for capitalism the CIA tech who invented it would have just kept it a secret government communication network.

No, it's just how easily the minds of clueless idiots are manipulated by marketing. They don't know where or why frame rates are important, they've just been told that they are because it helps to sell new products that people don't really need. Because these people have no capacity for critical thought, they blithely accept this marketing hype as fact and that's that.

The story of capitalism.
If I remember correctly, discrete frames are seen as continuous motion from 22 fps on.
I guess 12 fps would be passable, but I would go for 20 fps.

[BONES]

12fps was the default animation speed for Flash content when it first hit the internet and most people were fine with it. For the kinds of things that it matters for in a plugin UI, I'm sure it would be more than adequate.

These days it is just stupid not to run a plugin @ high FPS levels (IMO). Especially when moving knobs etc, it should go smooth.

No, what's stupid is what I've just quoted above. The "smooth" functioning of a graphical knob will in no way be affected by the rate at which the UI is being redrawn. It is a product of the way the application is programmed to respond to input and the number of frames in a knob's animation. e.g. If the knob uses a 20 frame animation then there are only 20 possible positions for that knob and the refresh rate will not, in fact cannot, change that. If the value represented by the knob's position is programmed to go from 0 to 100% when your mouse moves a distance of 5mm on your desktop, it will feel less smooth than if it's programmed to do it over a distance of 2cm.

Otherwise it is truly finicky to get parameters at the right position.

Again, you are completely wrong. Firstly, parameters aren't set at positions, but at values, and the position of the knob is only a visual guide as to the value that has been set. If we use a 32 frame knob as an example, for a MIDI parameter that has possible values of 0 to 127, then for any given position of the knob, denoted by one of the frames, the setting could be any of four different values. So the centre position might be 62, 63, 64 or 65 before the knob changes to a different frame. Again, if the application is programmed to allow long mouse travel, then it will feel smoother and be easier to set a precise value. Also, most applications will allow you to fine tune to the nearest value by holding down the SHIFT or CTRL key (or something similar) so that you can set a precise value. The knob won't necessarily move, it is just there to give you a rough visual indication of the value, nothing more. It is your mouse movement, or the movement of a control on a MIDI controller, which sets the value.

Really, not joking. I like to work fast with high refresh rates and i notice i rarely use synths that are just sluggish.

If that's true, you're an idiot, or at the very least you sound like one.

BTW, it is not about animations, it is about update rate of the UI. So everything is affected, epsecially turning knobs and moving sliders can be a real pain in the ass with slow updating UI's (in my experience)

Again, if that's true, your experience is worthless because it is completely clear that you don't have the first idea how any of this actually works. The refresh rate will make things like a real time waveform display look slicker (or jerkier) but, as I said, even 12fps will look good enough for something that is just eye candy anyway.

Fast frame rates is something really important to me. Just makes GUI usability a more joyful or fun experience. It's just a comfort thing. I think FabFilter stuff runs at a decent frame rate and as such I find a them a joy to use, not only because of their look, layout, etc.

No, you are wrong. I'd suggest it is the required mouse travel that imparts that joy, nothing more. Even if a plugin is updating at 120fps, your screen is still only going to update at its standard 50 or 60Hz anyway, so you won't actually notice it. Those extra CPU cycles are completely wasted.

[Yorrrrrr]

[BONES]

In almost 20 years of using soft synths, I've never once seen the frame rate marketed, or even mentioned by a dev, or on a product description anywhere. In fact I've never seen anyone bring it up anywhere before this thread. So I'm more inclined to believe it's something some people notice using the software and are sensitive to for whatever reason, rather than getting suckered by marketing. This is not what anyone is talking about when selling vsts.

No, as I have pointed out at length above, those people are mistaken and haven't the first clue what they are talking about. That's why devs don't talk about it, because they don't think about it or do anything about it because it doesn't matter. They just let everything refresh at the screen refresh rate, which is already more than twice as fast as it needs to be for humans to perceive smooth motion.

Seriously, try it for yourself if you can. Orion allows you to set the refresh rate, so that you can get more accurate metering. I can change it from it's default setting of 40fps down to 1fps and it has zero effect on the way the GUI responds to my mouse. What it does, though, is make the meters look very choppy and strange, so I keep it at 30fps, which is half the refresh rate of my screen.

[MuzikFreq]

Oh boy I sure did miss the fps debates from my gamer forums