KVR Audio

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 10:46 am

e@rs wrote:CPU hog indeed. No way I could actually use it.

Are you guys all running on 386SX CPUs or something? I have a five year old i5 and I hardly even notice that it's there.

e@rs · Post by **e@rs** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 1:42 pm

Whaaa? I get 25% on a 2008 C2D.

Lesha · Post by **Lesha** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 6:43 pm

e@rs wrote:Whaaa? I get 25% on a 2008 C2D.

I get ~10% on an FX 8320

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 7:37 pm

e@rs wrote:Whaaa? I get 25% on a 2008 C2D.

OMG, that's a stone age machine. You should buy a pocket calculator or something, it will have a faster CPU.

Hooj · Post by **Hooj** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 7:05 am

Thanks for the offer but for me, the juice just ain't worth the squeeze!

e@rs · Post by **e@rs** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 1:16 pm

ghettosynth wrote:
e@rs wrote:Whaaa? I get 25% on a 2008 C2D.
OMG, that's a stone age machine. You should buy a pocket calculator or something, it will have a faster CPU.

And I'm browsing the interwebz on a Pentium 4.

My smartphone and my TV are both stronger than my computers.

juhhie · Post by **juhhie** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 8:42 pm

ghettosynth wrote:
e@rs wrote:CPU hog indeed. No way I could actually use it.
Are you guys all running on 386SX CPUs or something? I have a five year old i5 and I hardly even notice that it's there.

Takes like 0.75% CPU max on my i5 and sounds great.

Lesha · Post by **Lesha** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 8:49 pm

juhhie wrote:
ghettosynth wrote:
e@rs wrote:CPU hog indeed. No way I could actually use it.
Are you guys all running on 386SX CPUs or something? I have a five year old i5 and I hardly even notice that it's there.
Takes like 0.75% CPU max on my i5 and sounds great.

Are you sure? We are talking about SurferEQ.

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 8:52 pm

Won't even open on this computer. Crashes every time....

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 9:26 pm

Lesha wrote:
juhhie wrote:
ghettosynth wrote:
e@rs wrote:CPU hog indeed. No way I could actually use it.
Are you guys all running on 386SX CPUs or something? I have a five year old i5 and I hardly even notice that it's there.
Takes like 0.75% CPU max on my i5 and sounds great.
Are you sure? We are talking about SurferEQ.

I'm serious. I have an old i5, a 2500K that I purchased in 2011 and Reaper reports 0.81% with one instance processing a .wav file and the settings configured so that the EQ is always trying to chase the pitch. If I use more sensible settings it drops to 0.74% and if I turn the speed up and the thresholds down so that it's chasing its tail constantly, it peaks at about 0.90%

I still have a core 2 quad machine around here and even some machines with much less power, like the original Lenovo netbook. They are all useful for appropriate tasks. The netbook is a little impromptu server. It runs linux off of an old 60GB SSD. The core 2 quad is a linux machine browsing and minimal development duty.

If you're doing music and running anything older than about a 2011 machine you are punishing yourself for almost no reason. CPUs got amazingly better after the core 2 days. My newest i5/i7 machines which, albeit, use laptop CPUs (e.g., mac mini i7) aren't significantly better than my five year old i5.

My god, everything is a CPU hog on old crap like that, no wonder some of you guys complain so much.

ontol · Post by **ontol** » Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:19 am

ghettosynth wrote: edit
If you're doing music and running anything older than about a 2011 machine you are punishing yourself for almost no reason.

I built my machine in mid to late 2009, and not feeling punished at all.

but I do get you weren't talking about the year so much as the cpu I'm running on a i7 920, Win7/64, 3x8G RAM

ghettosynth wrote: CPUs got amazingly better after the core 2 days. My newest i5/i7 machines which, albeit, use laptop CPUs (e.g., mac mini i7) aren't significantly better than my five year old i5.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Mon Dec 12, 2016 5:42 am

ontol wrote:
ghettosynth wrote: edit
If you're doing music and running anything older than about a 2011 machine you are punishing yourself for almost no reason.
I built my machine in mid to late 2009, and not feeling punished at all.

but I do get you weren't talking about the year so much as the cpu I'm running on a i7 920, Win7/64, 3x8G RAM

Well, yes and no. The i7 920 is no slouch, especially for its time, but compared even to my five year old i5, it's not exactly a screamer. This is especially true when you factor in original cost.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/In ... /1981vs619

So, sure, if you bought a high end i7 or a Xeon from that time it's probably doing ok, but CPUs did improve dramatically, not only in performance but also in power consumption, which, is something that the newer CPUs do much better than my machine.

The thing is, even relatively new CPUs in laptops aren't really much better. I have a Dell with an i7 6500U, my i5 is actually faster. Consider that the Dell is less than a year old. Yes, it's a much lower power CPU and not in the same class.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/In ... 36930vs619

But, if we compare to a relatively modern comparable, the i5-6500k, yes, the new CPU is faster, but only by about 25% or so than the five year old machine. Whereas a Sandy Bridge i5 is about 40% faster than your machine of only two years prior and in the next higher class.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/In ... /3503vs619

I'm not trying to be critical of your machine, I'm sure that it's fine. Unless you're really pushing it, there's probably not enough gain to switch. That's why I'm still using mine. Yes a new machine would be faster but not really that much faster. But, in general, the Sandy Bridge architecture was a vast improvement across the board over the previous CPUs and demarks a point in time where CPUs just got better. In fact I am getting a new studio machine, but it's not a new machine, I'm going to use the slightly slower, but 6-core i7 3930k that used to be my linux machine for work.

That's the point that I want to make, that if you're running something from before the Sandy Bridge era and it isn't really keeping up, you don't have to go brand new. The slightly newer machines were a lot better and we haven't really seen those kind of gains in consumer machines since.

Lesha · Post by **Lesha** » Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:20 am

ghettosynth wrote:
Lesha wrote:
juhhie wrote:
ghettosynth wrote:
e@rs wrote:CPU hog indeed. No way I could actually use it.
Are you guys all running on 386SX CPUs or something? I have a five year old i5 and I hardly even notice that it's there.
Takes like 0.75% CPU max on my i5 and sounds great.
Are you sure? We are talking about SurferEQ.
I'm serious. I have an old i5, a 2500K that I purchased in 2011 and Reaper reports 0.81% with one instance processing a .wav file and the settings configured so that the EQ is always trying to chase the pitch. If I use more sensible settings it drops to 0.74% and if I turn the speed up and the thresholds down so that it's chasing its tail constantly, it peaks at about 0.90%

I still have a core 2 quad machine around here and even some machines with much less power, like the original Lenovo netbook. They are all useful for appropriate tasks. The netbook is a little impromptu server. It runs linux off of an old 60GB SSD. The core 2 quad is a linux machine browsing and minimal development duty.

If you're doing music and running anything older than about a 2011 machine you are punishing yourself for almost no reason. CPUs got amazingly better after the core 2 days. My newest i5/i7 machines which, albeit, use laptop CPUs (e.g., mac mini i7) aren't significantly better than my five year old i5.

My god, everything is a CPU hog on old crap like that, no wonder some of you guys complain so much.

Could you please test it with Hermann Seib's VSTHost?

e@rs · Post by **e@rs** » Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:22 am

Thanx for the detailed explanation, ghettosynth!

I'm not a computer enthusiast, I don't follow the latest news and stuff. I built my machines myself from parts, but I don't feel a strong pressure to upgrade right now. There are many plugins that are low CPU, like FabFilter, Soundtoys (not all

), Eventide, ValhallaDSP and the new DMG Audio Track Range.

juhhie · Post by **juhhie** » Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:08 pm

Lesha wrote:Are you sure? We are talking about SurferEQ.

Yep, could be the DAW or the plugin format though. I use the VST3 version in 64-bit Reaper.

Focusrite Plugin Collective