Blue Cat Audio

wavecaster · Post by **wavecaster** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:54 pm

Hey,

is there any chance you could make DPeakMeter Pro react a little smoother to level changes? I'm generally very happy with its performance, it's just that the meters move in a somewhat jerky fashion. I'm aware that this has (probably) nothing to do with its precision and that it would still catch all peaks that occur in an update window, but I'd still much prefer looking at a smooth 60fps representation of my levels. (And yes, I'd happily sacrifice some more CPU cycles for that :)

Would this be possible? Maybe as an option?

Cheers,
jan

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Wed Mar 03, 2010 3:32 am

Just for our information, on which platform (OS / Host / CPU) are you running our plug-ins? The DPMP display should not be jerky, except with high CPU load (it's configured to display things at a maximum rate of 20 Hz anyway to limit its CPU usage).

There is no user-friendly way to change the settings for now. We are investigating a universal "CPU vs refresh rate" setting for our plug-ins, but it's not here yet.

You can however modify the skins to increase the refresh rate. It's an easy modification: just open the skins (.xml file - location depends on your OS), and add the refresh_time_ms attribute to the root SKIN tag. It corresponds to the refreh period in milliseconds (inverse of frequency).

Should look like this in the default stereo skin for example:

<SKIN author="Blue Cat Audio" name="Default" language_version="1.4.2"
font_face="Arial" font_size="14" text_color="#dddddd" font_quality="cleartype" layout_type="column" repeat="true" spacing="3" background_image="bg.bmp" refresh_priority="normal" refresh_time_ms="25">

25 ms corresponds to 40 Hz and should be enough. But you can try any value to see how it works for you.

wavecaster · Post by **wavecaster** » Wed Mar 03, 2010 1:11 pm

Hi,

first of all, being a programmer myself, I LOVE being able to tweak stuff like this, so, kudos for making things so open and flexible. I'll have to try my hand at creating a custom skin myself sooner or later.

Sadly though, it didn't solve this particular issue

I tried a value of 20, and the response wasn't noticeably different from that of the default value - certainly a far cry from 50 Hz. The plug-in does pick up the value, though (as tested with a value of 500), so it seems that the bottleneck is somewhere else.

To clarify what I mean, compare the meters to, say, those of Flux Audio's free "Stereo Tool" plugin, or those of Universal Audio's Precision Limiter - both of these move considerably smoother. This is especially noticeable when the meters return from a peak that's followed by near-silence. Also, with very dynamic material that has a lot of peaks in a short time, the DPM meters tend to flicker wildly, while I still can somewhat follow the overall dynamics with a meter that has a faster redraw cycle.

For the record, I'm using your VST plugins in Nuendo 4.3 running on a Quad-Xeon Mac Pro; DPM doesn't seem to cause any noticeable CPU load, so I doubt that's the culprit.

As said, this is not a deal-breaker - DPM is still a very useful tool. It's just that the slightly jerky redrawing makes me feel a little "disconnected" from the audio material, for lack of a better word. I'd love to use DPM as my main output guard that stays open in a corner of the screen, so I care as much about the right "feel" as I do about technical accuracy. Sorry if that sounds a little obsessive

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:43 pm

Just sent you a beta version with a higher priority setting for drawing operations. Do you mind checking it out and tell us if you like it better?

Thank you!

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 11:59 am

I'm curently demoing the Blue Cat Audio plugins because of the two-week DontCrack sale

, and after initial tests I'm well impressed!

Alas, I felt that there was something wrong with the visual metering feel, updates being so slow, and no controls to be found for changing the setting. The feel was exactly the kind of "disconnectedness" described above. I'm running the demo plugins in Live 8.1.3.

This thread, however, solved it [edit: only partially, see below]: after explicitly declaring the refresh_time_ms constant in the .xml file, the visuals update extra smoothly. Trying it with FreqAnalyst Pro right now, it should be noted that the updates are actually considerably slower than 20 Hz (i.e. refresh_time_ms="50") if the value isn't declared in the .xml file! After adding the declaration and making it 50 ms, the visuals behave much more comfortably.

Seeing that the CPU hit was minuscule after getting things to the intended default level, I beefed up the updates to 50 Hz, and now the meters are a sheer joy to use -- and give a much more detailed and "connected" showing of the audio material. The added CPU load is barely noticeable.

Edit: It seems the "Multi" versions of the plugins don't go any faster, no matter what ms value I enter. It's possible to slow the updates down with a higher ms value, so it is being parsed correctly. What might be causing this? At the moment, the updates are the way they were out of the box, I'd estimate about 4-5 Hz. This was the same speed FreqAnalyst Pro was going before giving it the exact ms value, after which it updates perfectly.

In any case, lovely plugins. I hope the refresh speed can be fixed to a comfortable level for the other ones, too

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 12:59 pm

Edit: Arggh. Quote-fumble-double post, while making the edits above. To make this post useful, here are the system specs:

Intel Q6600, Asus P5KC, 2GB
Nvidia 8800GT 512MB, EMU 0404
Edirol PCR-500

Windows XP Pro SP3, fresh updates
Ableton Live 8.1.3

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:03 pm

Thank you for your feedback. This is strange that you get such a slow refresh rate. We'll double check the reason for that with a similar system as yours. The refresh rate is sometimes dependent on the host application.

For the Multi series, you might have to do the same operation on the model.model and shared.model files that are located in the "Model" directory.

Our next major update of all plug-ins will definitely let you tweak CPU vs Refresh rate in the user interface, since it may behave differently on various hosts and platforms.

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:09 pm

I can confirm that merely adding refresh_time_ms="50" inside the <MODEL> tag in the model.model file (default.xml and shared.model are left unchanged) makes the Multi plugins refresh flawlessly. The difference in usability is really quite dramatic, with no change in CPU load.

Excellent

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:41 pm

Thanks for the detailed feedback. It should in theory make no difference but there might be a problem here that we haven't noticed. We'll look deeper into it.

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:19 pm

That's a good catch: the default value was indeed not the expected one (50 ms). This problem has been introduced with the latest version of the plug-ins. We'll update them soon to fix this! In the meantime I guess you can use the bypass described above!

The issue is more noticeable on some particular hosts and with quite dynamic content, that's probably why nobody has noticed it before.

Sorry for that, and thanks again for the very helpful feedback.

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 11:02 pm

Good to hear it's under control so swiftly! Again, the feel of these plugins is excellent now, with the ms value in place.

Actually, while you're implementing the fix, I'd suggest just placing these additional parameters into the installer .xml files in the meantime. I'm guessing a lot of people are going to be demoing these plugins during the following days (like me) because of the big two-week sale. Several plugins in the pack are designed for highly visual feedback, and the current default feel can give an unflattering first impression in some hosts.

Glad to be of help! And it's nice to know your support is this responsive if I indeed end up purchasing

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 6:24 pm

Actually, while you're implementing the fix, I'd suggest just placing these additional parameters into the installer .xml files in the meantime. I'm

We have better than that: a new version is online, which also includes performance improvements (plug-ins are now using SSE2 instructions - up to twice faster on some platforms). They were supposed to be released a bit later, but since an update was required... The website is not up to date yet, but you can re-download the demo versions, they have already been updated.

Please tell us if it fixes your problem and works as you expect.

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Sat Jun 19, 2010 6:25 pm

Whoa, nice

I'll test them very soon. Thanks!

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 6:15 am

The graphs in all the updated plugins work faultlessly right out of the box. Very, very nice

I still have to keep the refresh_time_ms fix in the skin .xml files of the Dynamics plugin (which wasn't part of the update), in order to have the transfer function graph refresh more informatively.

Blue Cat Audio · Post by **Blue Cat Audio** » Mon Jun 21, 2010 7:56 am

Indeed. It should be updated soon as well.

Blue Cat Audio

KVR Audio

Could you increase the GUI update frequency for DPeakMeter?