KVR Audio

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 12:47 pm

About 64bit audio btw, from the point of view of a programmer:

Of course no need to explain again that it's totally unrelated from 64bit addressing mode.
Apps are processing floating point audio either through the FPU (80bit precision internally, supports 64 & 32) or SSE1 (32bit scalar or vector) or SSE2.
I haven't heard of 128bit (quad precision) floating point instructions other than on the paper. Maybe that's planned somewhere, I don't know. Better ask the "expert" up there, he knows it's the future.

What has changed in 64bit addressing mode is the FPU. While it's still there in every x64 CPU, its used is discouraged, and thus compilers don't use it (you're still free to access it directly in asm or machine code). This means that where a compiler would have used 80bit FPU registers to do some 64bit float operations, it would now use 64bit SSE2 registers. Yes, that means less precision. And of course in practice, it makes no difference, in mainstream & multimedia apps.

Is there a reason not to mix in 64bit? Not quality-wise, afterall it doesn't hurt audio at all. The result is technically more precise, it's of course far far from audible, but it doesn't hurt, & marketing likes it.
What it hurts is the CPU. You spend more time processing 64bit audio than 32bit, and even more converting back & forth for plugins that don't support it (knowing that after it has passed through one 32bit float plugin, it's back to 32bit precision).
[note that this 32bit vs 64bit processing plugin still has nothing to do with "32bit vs 64bit addressing mode" or what we commonly call "64bit VSTs"]

One may think that in 64bit addressing mode, processing 64bit audio is faster. That would have been true.. if the FPU had still been used, as afterall, the memory has to be manipulated, in 2 passes in 32bit.
Sadly, most of us use SSE & SSE2. Meaning that we're already all processing data packed in 128bit vectors, and we do that in 32bit or 64bit where it matters, no matter the addressing mode. So if a piece of code was processing mainly in 32bit float in 32bit, and you change that to 64bit in 64bit, it'll still be twice more data to process in 64bit, thus most likely twice slower (there are other rules here, which would generally make things worse).

As for 64bit addressing mode, you're not seeing 32bit fading away a single bit. This is because there is no benefit for most apps, no benefit for a browser, no benefit for a little tool, hardly for a game. Multimedia apps, that manipulate video & audio, yes, totally, as you need to manipulate large amounts of data in them (even though your RAM is generally wasted by giant knob graphic strips in a plugin that wanna look cool, rather than audio).

I would add, the future is low-precision. You pick the right precision according to your needs. Intel's IPP features fixed-precision versions of trigonometric functions, you get them in like 11bit, 21bit, 24bit, 26bit, 50bit, 53bit (talking about "significand" here). They're CPU savers, and Harmor is mixing low & high precision a lot.
When you do a simple addition or multiplication, that's fast & you can generally afford the highest precision. When you're computing TanH however... the more precision you need, the more iterations it'll require for the approximation.

christianmusicmaker · Post by **christianmusicmaker** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 1:14 pm

Interesting view point but much of that went straight over my head...

Not being a programmer. My translation for all that is..."guys don't sweat the code related stuff just make great FL x64 music"

On way to download my free update (thanks) and moving on to a more serious note...I did ask this before but did not get a response.. Can you guys at Image line confirm or deny that there will be an x64 version of Groove Machine? Not GMS the derivative of it but Groove Machine.

Yes...no...beta..?

Thanks

osiris · Post by **osiris** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 1:26 pm

I'd like someone who actually uses this to tell me whether it's stable or not. I've found with FL that certain releases are buggy, but usually fixed quickly with another update.
Right now, only some 64 bit plugins crash with FL. Does this mean if I install 64 bit FL, only the 32 bit plugins will crash?
(And I thought FL used jbridge????)

The_Hidden_Goose · Post by **The_Hidden_Goose** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 2:30 pm

Maybe I'm lucky, but I get very few bugs with FLS 11

There are quirks that have been with FLS for ever it seems, like it not processing mnod wheel normally and such (workaround is simple), but very few actual bugs here.

I don't do much bridging to 64-bit, as I install 32-bit plugs. However there was a time when I mistakenly thought there might be some advantage so I installed 64-bit ones for a time, and didn't really have many problems with bridging then either. A couple of plugs crashed and I never went through all the options to sort them, so they obviously weren't things I can't live without - can't even remember what they were now.

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 3:03 pm

Does this mean if I install 64 bit FL, only the 32 bit plugins will crash?

likely, but also the 64bit hasn't been used much yet, so there are certainly other bugs

(& no FL doesn't use jbridge, so you can try jbridge for plugins that don't bridge well in FL)

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 5:09 pm

The RC has been out since March

Musical Gym · Post by **Musical Gym** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 9:21 pm

Just a note on latest 11.1 install of 32/64 bit versions...
If you register with your FLregkey, the Help/About box still has fields for entering email/password with an Unlock Products button..
Confusing. Not worried since the header indicates it's registered to me, but I think it's a bug. Those fields and button shouldn't be there in a registered version.

hibidy · Post by **hibidy** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 9:23 pm

And another thing, did anyone ever donate a push controller so they could figure out how to get that to work?????

Image-Line · Post by **Image-Line** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 10:20 pm

Musical Gym wrote:Just a note on latest 11.1 install of 32/64 bit versions...
If you register with your FLregkey, the Help/About box still has fields for entering email/password with an Unlock Products button..
Confusing. Not worried since the header indicates it's registered to me, but I think it's a bug. Those fields and button shouldn't be there in a registered version.

The unlock stays active since you may buy something new and need to use it to unlock another product.

http://support.image-line.com/knowledge ... hp?ans=237

Your registration info will appear on the top of the panel if you were successful.

Regards Scott

LawrenceF · Post by **LawrenceF** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 10:37 pm

Image-Line wrote: ...but it seems that since he left the company the marketing department has gone back to it.

Regards Scott

Are you sure he left the company or is that one of those rumors that gets passed around? I only ask because he replied, in an official way, on the user forum a few short weeks ago.

http://forumsarchive.presonus.com/posts ... age#310893

P.S. My sympathy for your stalker.

Image-Line · Post by **Image-Line** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 11:13 pm

LawrenceF wrote:
Image-Line wrote: ...but it seems that since he left the company the marketing department has gone back to it.

Regards Scott
Are you sure he left the company or is that one of those rumors that gets passed around? I only ask because he replied, in an official way, on the user forum a few short weeks ago.

http://forumsarchive.presonus.com/posts ... age#310893

P.S. My sympathy for your stalker.

Well he disappeared from their official staff lists, so I suppose he has taken a back seat. I don't really know any details, other than since his apparent departure their marketing department seems to have gone back to the 'it sounds better because it's 64 Bit'.

I suppose the problem these days is that marketing (and that includes me BTW) like simple stories for their customers. The whole 32 Bit vs 64 Bit audio thing is far from simple, as Tony tony chopper (gol) mentions above. That said, it's not something users need to worry about, but they do.

http://www.image-line.com/support/FLHel ... _audio.htm

There is no other DAW software company is as generous, and that looks after customers long-term like we do. Lifetime Free Updates really means just that. And while something may 'never' going to happen today, often it does happen later and people get it for free. Things on the 'never' list have included Audio Recording, Auto PDC, 64 Bit and a Mac version. There's only one thing left on that list and we are working on it. FL Studio 12 is shaping up to be the biggest update yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkjnm1skZk0

Regards Scott

LawrenceF · Post by **LawrenceF** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 11:30 pm

I hear you. Curiously enough, i've never heard a single client or associate or collaborator of mine ask about it (double precision or anything like that) ... ever. And I was typically doing sessions with people who owned various daws.

The only place I've ever seen - anyone - debate it and/or go to great lengths giving it more importance than it's due or being concerned about someone else doing that is on the Internet.

I've gotten the "Do you have PT?" question dozens of times. Nobody has ever actually asked..

"Do you have double precision DSP? It's mandatory."

Anyway, I can't hear a difference so I never turn it on in S1. Mmv.

Musical Gym · Post by **Musical Gym** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 11:48 pm

Image-Line wrote:
Musical Gym wrote:Just a note on latest 11.1 install of 32/64 bit versions...
If you register with your FLregkey, the Help/About box still has fields for entering email/password with an Unlock Products button..
Confusing. Not worried since the header indicates it's registered to me, but I think it's a bug. Those fields and button shouldn't be there in a registered version.
The unlock stays active since you may buy something new and need to use it to unlock another product.

http://support.image-line.com/knowledge ... hp?ans=237

Your registration info will appear on the top of the panel if you were successful.

Regards Scott

Thanks, it's still confusing if someone doesn't know you're doing it a new way. The old way of buying and installing new regcode worked fine. Good to know the new process.

Image-Line · Post by **Image-Line** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 12:21 am

Musical Gym wrote:Thanks, it's still confusing if someone doesn't know you're doing it a new way. The old way of buying and installing new regcode worked fine. Good to know the new process.

The 'old way' still works BTW.

Regards Scott

Touch The Universe · Post by **Touch The Universe** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 12:24 am

Yay 64 bit! To me that only means more Ram though!

64bit FL Studio