KVR Audio

susiwong · Post by **susiwong** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 2:01 am

Hi all,

in the light of recent rumours I would like to start a thread to try and establish some facts about the possible performance drop in SX / Nuendo.
Since this is a very sensitive subject, let me explain my intentions a bit :

1. I am a registered SX user, in fact there is not one pirated byte on any of my machines. Please let's not discuss piracy here ! There are enough other threads about that.

2. I happen to like SX quite well in general, others have their software preferences, too - so let's not discuss SX/Nuendo vs. other hosts here. Also let's not start a flame war against Steinberg here - imho that would be a bit too cheap.

3. HOWEVER, I would really like to find out if there is a significant performance loss because of the dongle.

4. Since there is a lot of censorship going on atm at Steinberg's forums I hope to have a centralized thread here for people to post their findings (hard facts only, please,no rumours !)

Has anybody experience with loading up essentially the same project in SX/Nuendo and Samplitude or Sonar or Logic PC and could post some figures ?

Any experience about CPU consumption of hungry VSTis in the different hosts ?
On the same machine, that is !

Could someone please repost the results of the USB traffic check (when / how many dongle calls under which circumstances) ?

Any other relevant information welcome, too, of course.

Thanks in advance for keeping this thread legal and civilized !

susiwong

susiwong · Post by **susiwong** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 2:10 am

To start things off, I can report that on two different P4 machines we didn't find a significant change in CPU consumption from SX 2 to SX 3 loading up the same projects.
I don't doubt there may be differences with some setups and projects, however our experience seems to contradict the reports about the new version being slower because of more dongle calls.

susiwong

jdg · Post by **jdg** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 2:59 am

SX3 vs Logic 7.1 on a mac using the same pluggins (altho VST vs AU)
logic is probalby 20times more efficent.. or more.. its night and day with virtual FX instruments.

HHaynes · Post by **HHaynes** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:46 am

"probably 20 times" doesn't cut it - sounds like Steve Job's pre-Intel mythology...

Since no on at H20 offered anything approaching a comparison of the Thonex test on both cracked and un-cracked versions of the apps - I chalked their bravado up to a bad poker bluff. And when you look at their admonition that they would no longer be putting time into cracking Syncrosoft protection, it smells a lot like they've won only a pyrrhic victory. My guess is that Steinberg is one update away from setting them back another ten months... and they know it.

susiwong · Post by **susiwong** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:05 am

Hi Houston,
you might be right, time will tell.
But that's not exactly my question. From what I've heard, the crackers didn't remove the dongle calls but "simply" emulate the dongle, so I wouldn't expect the cracked version to be faster.
What I would like to know is how much performance is sacrificed in the legal version for the sake of copy protection.
I wouldn't use a crack anyway, regardless of performance.
I might consider switching to another host though instead of upgrading to SX 4 in the future, if (and I mean if) there's truth in the rumours and we pay lots of money for a crippled product.
Have a nice day,
susiwong

HHaynes · Post by **HHaynes** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:20 am

Well, if you look here, you'll see that they're pretty upfront about having tried the crack and compared it to the protected version. The bullet point that sticks out for me is: "There is no reliably measurable difference in CPU and disk resource use between the legitimate software products and the illegal versions". You can choose to believe Steinberg or not.

Personally, I have a hard time believing that *no one* at Steinberg would have tried their product without the dongle calls to see what kind of performance hit it would take. I have an even harder time believing that someone in-house wouldn't have gotten a seat for each of the major competitors on each platform and judged comparitive loading for themselves.

...until proven otherwise, MYTH = BUSTED

susiwong · Post by **susiwong** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:34 am

Houston,
as stated before, I believe Steinberg's statement that the crack is not faster.
I'm not so sure anymore about "unobtrusive" though, did you notice how Steinberg takes great care to avoid the question we're discussing here ?
The second part of your post is exactly what I'm suspecting, too. But who will tell us about their findings ?

cheers,
susiwong

Jaeson Merrill · Post by **Jaeson Merrill** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 5:07 am

steinbergs retarded recovery speech is simply badly put politicking to save face.

obviously calling to a USB device is going to be more intensive than an emulated driver inside the RAM>

cubase is crap anyway, who cares?

seamoss · Post by **seamoss** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 5:18 am

Jaeson Merrill wrote:cubase is crap anyway, who cares?

oh no you di'unt

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 5:49 am

I've been with SX since SX1 - dongle all the way. There was a performance hit between SX2 and SX3 - it is nothing to do with the dongle. The updates seemed to fix it - I don't recall having problems recently, although I need a faster PC anyway. And shame on everyone using cracks.

greendoor · Post by **greendoor** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 5:51 am

And for the record - after you have loaded, SX will run and do most stuff without the dongle. The calls to the dongle must be very minimal.

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 6:00 am

Jaeson Merrill wrote:steinbergs retarded recovery speech is simply badly put politicking to save face.

obviously calling to a USB device is going to be more intensive than an emulated driver inside the RAM>

cubase is crap anyway, who cares?

You mean badly put policking like "cubase is crap"?

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 6:31 am

As has been said allready: It's not about the USB dongle per se but probably about the way the copy protection routines are encrypted into (probably vital) functions of the program, thus slowing things down.
Bottomline: You won't be able to prove anything by running a legit vs. a cracked version as the crackers don't claim having reverse engineered the program (which would be required to actually change something), so only Steinberg is in the knows.
But the rather bad performance of SX on some tasks would make it rather plausible.

Regarding Logic/PC: Yes, it's WAY more efficient. When using it on Macs the differences are becoming even more apparent.
But then, the key feature for efficiency of Logic might not be a difference in CP encryption but its dynamic plugin management. Any unused (= no audio stream running through them) plugins simply won't use up any CPU horsepower.
It's a shame Steinberg still haven't been able to implement anything similar.
From what I know, FruityLoops and Samplitude are handling things somewhat similar as Logic, so theoretically they should be more efficient too.

stag · Post by **stag** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 8:44 am

Let´s benchmark the things!!!!

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 8:49 am

There's no way to benchmark things.
As said, Logic is saving up CPU power when nothing is playing back. How would you benchmark that?

SX / Nuendo Performance Loss - A Myth ?