SX / Nuendo Performance Loss - A Myth ?

[Tonmann]

but this 50% perfomance loss can be shown to not exist on plyback - frankly who gives a f**k about performance at other times - nothing else in useing a host is taxing the cpu to any great extent

2/3 of nothing is still nothing

How do you want to do that? Even the cracked version still contains all that crypted code of the dongled version. The only difference is, that the dongle is emulated by some extra code instead of doing calls to the USB port. That's all.

I'm not sure if it's really 50% loss, but it's a fact that runtime decrytion wastes a lot of cpu power and it's also a fact that frequent calls to a serial device like the USB port also wastes cpu power. Noone who's seriously into programming would deny that.

And, no, you can't simply compare to SX2 or SX1 since all Cubase versions always contained encrypted dongle-calls in the code, even the Atari versions back in the 90s!
So this kind of "shit" has a long tradition at Steinberg...

cheers,
Chris

[ericj23]

but if the dongle calls made any kind of cpu hit during playback cubase would perform worse than another similar host that did not make the calls

i tested 4 hosts using the exact same set up of plug-ins etc - the performace was exactly the same (or as near as i couldnt detect it) between all 4 hosts

ie the dongle makes no difference to performace when using vsts

my point is that the dongle code is used when you move a mouse, open an editor window etcie things that are not heavily cpu reliant

or put it another way steinberg are not stupid - the dongle calls do not affect the cpu intensive parts of the program

hence the complete lack of perfomance difference between hosts

[Sascha Franck]

but if you folow the link in my first post i compared the cpu useage fo cubase with a few other pc hosts

And I just did a comparison between SX 3 and Logic 5.5.1.:

- 6 audio tracks, 16 bars of 24bit/stereo at 100BPM
- 6 instances of Cheeze Machine, each playing a 7-note voicing all throughout the 16 bars.
- On the first two audio tracks I inserted one instance of Ambience at default load setting.
- On the Cheeze Machine tracks I inserted 1 plugin per each track:
1) Kjaerhus AutoFilter
2) Kjaerhus Classic Chorus
3) Kjaerhus Classic Flanger
4) Kjaerhus Classic Phaser
5) Kjaerhus Classic Reverb
6) Ambience
of course all at the default startup settings.

This should be a halfway proper reallife scenario as it's mixing audio tracks, RAM-consuming plugins (such as reverbs and modulation FX) and CPU-consuming things (such as Cheeze Machine).
In addition, you may notice that I didn't use any FX busses, to somewhat rule out PDC on busses. PDC for individual tracks was switched on in Logic.

Machine used: Athlon 2800+, 1GB RAM, XP SP2, currently using an Edirol PCR A30 USB-Audio interface - so it's not exactly a powerhouse, but that shouldn't matter.

In Logic, maximum CPU hit was 85% (using XPs performance meter).
In SX 3.01 maximum CPU hit went through the wall allready and I got crackles de luxe.
Even after deactivating the Ambience instance on Cheeze Machine #6 CPU useage still hit 100%.

So, even without dynamic CPU allocation (as all tracks were playing all throughout), performance in Logic is at LEAST 20% better, probably a bit more.

Add to this that usually in SX you have to keep like around 5% of CPU headroom because otherwise you may experience some CPU spikes causing crackles (at least that's my experience on a wide variety of machines), which isn't happening in Logic.

Everybody could easily reproduce the above mentioned scenario.

So much about that.

[uselessmind]

frankly who gives a f**k about performance at other times - nothing else in useing a host is taxing the cpu to any great extent

2/3 of nothing is still nothing

You're right,i wouldn't care either.
Even if it would affect playback,if its still not worse than their competitors its not that much of a problem imo.

but this 50% perfomance loss can be shown to not exist on plyback -

You probably can't,only Steinberg could.
And thats what bothers me.

Altough some of their customers are concerned about this,they don't say a thing.
Instead they talk about illegal version(wich customer cares about pirated software??) and how great the dongle is for them.
For me that says pretty much what they care about.
And thats much worse than any perfomance loss because of cp.

[ericj23]

interesting - alas while the test is pretty similair i used less voicing except on the pro 53 i used and i didn't use any reverbs

mind you i used a large kontakt 2 instrument (one of the guitars)

sascha you couldnt be convinced to try your test on something like tracktion that i did test against - it would help clarify things

[deleted]

DELETED

[KHC]

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.

Hello Houston,

Thanks for posting the link to the Steinberg statement. I have been very concerned by the issue of the usage of CPU by the protection system. This prompted me to cancel my order for upgrades to Cubase SX 3 and all other Steinberg software. I have also purchased Sonar 4 Producer Edition. I am glad that Steinberg has finally replied to the questions.

I have done some independent testing with Sonar 4. At this time it seems that the overhead of the protection system is signficantly less than the overhead of the VST wrapper in Sonar.

My test was with the following project on both platforms:

- 5 instances of VirSyn TERA 2 with 35 active presets
- 35 MIDI tracks

On this project, Sonar 4 uses between 20% and 30% more CPU than Cubase SX 2. This is at idle, at peak, and on average. The CPU was monitored using Windows XP Performance and Counter logs feature for both tests.

With monitoring turned off, and observing only the built-in CPU monitors in the respective programs, Sonar 4 is much closer in performance to Cubase SX 2. But Sonar 4 still looks to be using about 5% to 10% more CPU than Cubase SX.

At least on playback of projects with VST instruments only, and no host based effects, the CPU impact of the protection system is within acceptable limits on SX2.

There are two differences between the two platforms. These are:

The 'first note glitch'; and
long close times.

The 'first note glitch' is the first note on a part produces a CPU spike on the first playback of a project. This happens only in Cubase SX 2.

Sonar 4 closes much more quickly than Cubase SX 2.

This is my experience with one project and one synth. I do not consider this to be conclusive. Further comparisons between the two platforms are needed. This includes synths with both DXi and VST versions; quality of included effects; and audio project comparisons.

Sincerely,

George

[uselessmind]

So are people here trying to say that cracked software is faster than the stuff we pay for?
Thats outragous!
REMOVE THAT FKN DONGLE

Might be in theory,but:
SX3 itself is not cracked yet and very likely never will.
If anything the illegal versions are slower.

[Kingston]

In Logic, maximum CPU hit was 85% (using XPs performance meter).
In SX 3.01 maximum CPU hit went through the wall allready and I got crackles de luxe.
Even after deactivating the Ambience instance on Cheeze Machine #6 CPU useage still hit 100%.

So, even without dynamic CPU allocation (as all tracks were playing all throughout), performance in Logic is at LEAST 20% better, probably a bit more.

Thank you sascha! Nice data there. I always suspected and experienced something like this (ever since SX2.x), but never bothered to test myself.

I should be clear as day that SX is slightly bloated, and in the light of erics tests, so is everything else. At least compared to logic.

Mythbusters. Thank you very much everybody who did tests.

[susiwong]

Sascha, KHC. Ericj23,
thanks alot for your tests.
At least for me this is very valuable information and I think your results go together quite well.
Good stuff,
susiwong

[Jeremy_NSL]

And I just did a comparison between SX 3 and Logic 5.5.1....

Nice test Sasha! Of course, it still doesn't prove the dongle is the performance drain in SX (could be just poor coding/optimization in general - but thats damning too).

But I'd be curious if you could try this same test with Tracktion or Energyxt? I would do it myself, but I don't have Logic PC or Cubase...

[Sascha Franck]

sascha you couldnt be convinced to try your test on something like tracktion that i did test against - it would help clarify things

I'll do that later. I'm on a Win install without T1 right now but will reload the other image later on.
Tracktion 1 should be sufficient, no?

[Sascha Franck]

I should be clear as day that SX is slightly bloated, and in the light of erics tests, so is everything else. At least compared to logic.

Yeah well, it's amazing, worrying and sad at the same time.

Amazing how a sequencer which hasn't been updated in 3 years could still deliver such excellent results.

Worrying how no other company seems to be able of getting it done as well - for whatever reasons (maybe due to lack of programming skills or due to deeply embedded copyright stuff... or whatever).

And still sad that the most efficient sequencer for Windows will never see an update again.

For the record: Those differences in performance figures never seem to show up in isolated tests.
I can play back around the same number of synth voices in both Logic and SX, in case I don't run anything else and I can also insert the same amount of Ambiences on a 24bit audio track in either of them.
But on any reallife project the differences become apparent rather quickly. That's pretty much beyond my understanding. Maybe it's the mixing engine which has got something to do with it.

Oh, and another observation that made me "hmm-ing": When I "reduced latency compensation" in SX, performance actually got slightly worse! I thought it'd release some CPU cycles... mind you, it's only a very small difference, but it was noticeable.

[cptgone]

even without dynamic CPU allocation (as all tracks were playing all throughout), performance in Logic is at LEAST 20% better, probably a bit more.

Add to this that usually in SX you have to keep like around 5% of CPU headroom because otherwise you may experience some CPU spikes causing crackles (at least that's my experience on a wide variety of machines), which isn't happening in Logic.

Everybody could easily reproduce the above mentioned scenario.

Superb post, thanks!

Could someone compare SX to Sonar, perhaps? I don't wanna go Emapple myself...

[cold c]

And, no, you can't simply compare to SX2 or SX1 since all Cubase versions always contained encrypted dongle-calls in the code, even the Atari versions back in the 90s!

Yes, but it was the crackers who claimed there was more CP and encryption in SX3 than previous versions along with performance 'claims' from forum posters. As I already said in this thread-

SX2, significant copy protection/encryption embedded
SX3, much much more copy protection/encryption embedded
Both the same playback performance.

Everybody could easily reproduce the above mentioned scenario.

So much about that.

Yes, however as has been pointed out many times in this thread it can't automatically be inferred that any performance difference is due to the copy protection overhead as you know SX3 has many more features. If you are simply comparing application performance you could try the same project in Cubase VST 5.x etc.

The issues of application performance and copy protection overhead are now being mixed, which is simply going to add more confusion to the myth for other users.

Furthermore, anyone testing application performance must ensure ASIO buffer settings, number of ASIO I/O channels enabled etc are all constant between tests.

It's interesting to see the test data either way, as long as users know what is implied.

When I "reduced latency compensation" in SX, performance actually got slightly worse!

"Constrain delay compensation" doesn't switch off the PDC engine from what I can tell from the user manual, it just ignores the delay for recording purposes, I don't think full PDC can be fully switched off in SX3. (EDIT: To clarify, I don't think there are two versions of the cubase engine, one with full PDC, one without, so "constrain delay compensation" will have limited impact on CPU utilisation).

Could someone compare SX to Sonar, perhaps?

KHC already did this a few posts further up in this thread.