Pigments and CPU use

[sluggo]

A program like "Frozana" playing three notes takes my cpu to 35%, but it drops 5% when I close the GUI. My computer is about 1 year old, it's a laptop I got through work. I'm not in a financial position to get a new computer, but maybe I can in a year or year and a half.

[layzer]

switch to synths like Synth1 and Charlatan with outboard effects. get "close" to the same sounds, way less CPU tax. FK all new VSTi's

[e-crooner]

switch to synths like Synth1 and Charlatan with outboard effects. get "close" to the same sounds, way less CPU tax. FK all new VSTi's

I think it would take way too much effort to get close to those sounds with simple synths like those and effects, in many cases you just can't:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0g83Aqd7Fs

[Trancit]

Try comparing usage with the GUI showing versus hidden. The graphics use a lot of horsepower, I find.

+100

Ive lost count of how many plugins ive encountered which would take an insane amout of CPU (50% and more) while the UI was open whereas the same plugin with the same settings and same everything would use almost nothing (maybe 2-3%) when the UI was closed.

Its the first thing i always check when a plugin constantly has inexplicably high CPU usage because in so many cases its really just the UI that is consuming all the CPU.

Interesting...that is why some plugins allow you to adjust the graphics refresh rate.

No, imho that´s why developers should start to use more the GPU rendering for intense animated GUIs instead of letting the CPU do all of the work!!!

I have to quote myself as I wrote without having it tested myself...
1. Pigments is not as hungry as some wrote here and I got a weak i5-7600...
2. Pigments GUI is mainly rendered on the GPU and not on the CPU... with only Reaper GUI shown my GPU shows a load of 3%... with Pigments GUI open the GPU load goes up to 20%...
If I hold 3 notes on the bespoke "5ths Sweep" with the GUI open, Windows shows a CPU load of 9-10%...
With Pigments GUI closed the CPU load goes down to 6-7%... not that much of a difference...

What I dislike on Pigments is that it take quite long to load... I hate when plugins doing this... everything more than 3 seconds is imho inacceptable or at least needs heavily to be improved

[tony10000]

Try comparing usage with the GUI showing versus hidden. The graphics use a lot of horsepower, I find.

+100

Ive lost count of how many plugins ive encountered which would take an insane amout of CPU (50% and more) while the UI was open whereas the same plugin with the same settings and same everything would use almost nothing (maybe 2-3%) when the UI was closed.

Its the first thing i always check when a plugin constantly has inexplicably high CPU usage because in so many cases its really just the UI that is consuming all the CPU.

Interesting...that is why some plugins allow you to adjust the graphics refresh rate.

No, imho that´s why developers should start to use more the GPU rendering for intense animated GUIs instead of letting the CPU do all of the work!!!

I have to quote myself as I wrote without having it tested myself...
1. Pigments is not as hungry as some wrote here and I got a weak i5-7600...
2. Pigments GUI is mainly rendered on the GPU and not on the CPU... with only Reaper GUI shown my GPU shows a load of 3%... with Pigments GUI open the GPU load goes up to 20%...
If I hold 3 notes on the bespoke "5ths Sweep" with the GUI open, Windows shows a CPU load of 9-10%...
With Pigments GUI closed the CPU load goes down to 6-7%... not that much of a difference...

What I dislike on Pigments is that it take quite long to load... I hate when plugins doing this... everything more than 3 seconds is imho inacceptable or at least needs heavily to be improved

The 7th Gen i5 is not that bad in terms of specs:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cp ... Hz&id=2920

It also depends on the DAW. I get lower CPU %ages in FLS than Ableton. I also heard Reaper is even more efficent.

[rj0]

Things to also check on any laptop is whether power-saving modes might be enabled, reducing performance.

Also, since integrated GPUs (which might or might not be the case here) share memory, what other background processes might be competing for that (as well as CPU).

[Igro]

What rj0 said. Make sure you set to maximum performance mode and not the balanced one

[Benutzername]

Another hint: If you have both internal and dedicated GPUs (like found in may laptops) make sure that the DAW is set to use the dedicated GPU in the control panel of your graphics card (NVIDIA control panel or the AMD equivalent).

[Trancit]

It also depends on the DAW. I get lower CPU %ages in FLS than Ableton. I also heard Reaper is even more efficent.

Of course, but not with 1 instance playing 3 voices... there everything depends on the VSTi respectively your hardware.

[rj0]

Much like a dedicated GPU, a non-integrated (for laptops, probably USB) sound card (if you are not already using one) might also help offload CPU usage (plus, of course, improve sound quality).

[Tj Shredder]

Much like a dedicated GPU, a non-integrated (for laptops, probably USB) sound card (if you are not already using one) might also help offload CPU usage (plus, of course, improve sound quality).

That is a myth, the sound card does not do any processing, whereas the GPU does that heavily. Only badly written drivers can tax the CPU...
The only sound cards that do processing are UAD or specialized signal processors, but hey do that only for their own plugins...
There are attempts to load some audio processing into GPUs though...

As a side note, some external sound interfaces do have internal signal processing, but that is only available inside the card itself for mixdown. My UltraLite mk3 has some internal effects, but nobody would use those in a DAW setting ever...

[sluggo]

I have to quote myself as I wrote without having it tested myself...
1. Pigments is not as hungry as some wrote here and I got a weak i5-7600...
2. Pigments GUI is mainly rendered on the GPU and not on the CPU... with only Reaper GUI shown my GPU shows a load of 3%... with Pigments GUI open the GPU load goes up to 20%...
If I hold 3 notes on the bespoke "5ths Sweep" with the GUI open, Windows shows a CPU load of 9-10%...
With Pigments GUI closed the CPU load goes down to 6-7%... not that much of a difference...

What I dislike on Pigments is that it take quite long to load... I hate when plugins doing this... everything more than 3 seconds is imho inacceptable or at least needs heavily to be improved

I checked our CPU and mine looks pretty bad. Comparing the 7600 vs my 8250 on CPU Benchmark rates the 7600 55 out of 1206 and the 8250 is 275 out of 1206. I don't have any audio benchmarks but it looks like long-term I should get a better computer.

[Psync]

Another hint: If you have both internal and dedicated GPUs (like found in may laptops) make sure that the DAW is set to use the dedicated GPU in the control panel of your graphics card (NVIDIA control panel or the AMD equivalent).

Excuse me for asking, not behind my laptop right now, but should I then be looking for general software settings, or can I target the DAW specifically in the NVIDIA control panel?

Kind regards, Psync