sx perfomance

[jmh]

Heh... this "test"

Regards,

JMH

[TeeLangSun]

I've been using Cubase System 4 which has an included audio interface instead of a dongle. Today, I went out and bought SX3. There's definately a big difference in performance. The time it takes to load up an empty sequencer. The time it takes to start a blank document with nothing in it. And the infamous "time it takes to close out a song". All have increased. Flipping through various windows, Arranger, mixer, VSTi windows etc, all slower in SX3. I'm not saying that it's because of my new blue dongle, just that there's no mistaking the loss of performance. My machine is not old by any standard. It's an Athlon64 3200 based machine with 1 gig of ram.

In other news, everything installed correctly. The first start up was fine. After rebooting the machine again, it crashed on start up and took just as long as the very first start up. Normally, subsequent startups are much faster. After that, I got an message that windows was no longer recognizing the dongle. I pulled it out and popped it back in and that solved that. I downloaded the available updates and installed them. The Window sets system is buggy right off the bat. Everything else seems to be working well. No crashes. One other thing. Autosave used to be perfectly smooth and not even noticeable. Now, I know it every time when it autosaves. I get an hourglass for a pointer for a few seconds. Audio doesn't seem to be effected.

PS. Does anyone else agree that the roomverb Reverb very impressive both in sound and functionality?

[jasonsantiago]

TeeLang: Interesting comparison (SL vs. SX) that is something nobody has thought of before. SL is pretty much SX minus the dongle and some features, but how do you know the same 'dongle checks' aren't also being done in SL via your hardware 'dongle'?

Sascha: In cubase by right clicking on any audio file I can choose any VST or directX plugin, and use a preview/process dialog box to apply a change to the audio file. Logic does not offer this with the full range of AU 3rd party plugins (much less the VST functionality they removed). I use this feature a LOT rather than loading my system with insert effects. Cubase can just save it as a new version, so I always have the old to revert to. I can't believe logic doesn't have it, its a main inhibitor for me not playing with my Logic 7

[Sascha Franck]

PS. Does anyone else agree that the roomverb Reverb very impressive both in sound and functionality?

The roomverb is Magnus' Ambience with a few more parameters. So it has been around for a while.

Sascha: In cubase by right clicking on any audio file I can choose any VST or directX plugin, and use a preview/process dialog box to apply a change to the audio file.

Ah, I see.
Yes, that's a nice feature.

[ahja]

Sascha: In cubase by right clicking on any audio file I can choose any VST or directX plugin, and use a preview/process dialog box to apply a change to the audio file.

Ah, I see.
Yes, that's a nice feature.

It's called Offline Processing. 'Nother nice thing is if you applied say... a reverb, a delay, and then phaser, in that order, and wanted to take off the delay, but leave the other processes intact. It's possible by accessing "offline process history".

I use this a lot. Most of my project stay under 50% CPU load because of this.

[jasonsantiago]

The offline process history is the most underrated feature of SX. If people used this regularly the cpu meter complaints would dwindle. Just use offline processing, you can undo in any order!

[Sascha Franck]

The offline process history is the most underrated feature of SX. If people used this regularly the cpu meter complaints would dwindle. Just use offline processing, you can undo in any order!

Maybe. It's just that usually I don't do much audio processing.

[jasonsantiago]

I'm getting to the point where I frequently even mixdown midi tracks I am working on. Printing the audio also has the effect of forcing you to finish. I'm too perfectionist and I keep tweaking. Now that I do a lot more audio printing my songs get done, and frequently with a lot more effects applied.

Of course you don't usually use much audio processing, that's because you use logic which doesn't have the feature... just like I don't spend nearly enough time editing velocities

[_dada_]

Hi all,

a CPU usage test is not very usefull, here.

The point is, how responsive is the interface.
How does it 'feel' ?

Compared to SX2, SX3 feels pretty sluggish, on a number of operations.
Even worse: on some functions, the slowness is random.
This makes it impossible, to 'get used to it' !

Also very interesting :
With 3.02, they tried to rebalance the resource usage.
Obviously, they put more stress on the HD subsystem,
which caused even more problems.
( We all know about the pretty slow graphics, on high zoom levels. )

Why did they have to do that ??
There are a few options.
One of them is, that they had to give more resources to the copy protection. Thus regaining a more fluid interface.

As usual, they didn't get it right, the first time.
The 2nd try was better, but still not good.

Now they promise, that 3.10 will fix all these issues.
But at what cost ?!
Regarding the slow zoom, Fredo told us,
the graphic quality of waveforms will be decreased, at high zoom levels ...


I don't like 'deep' copy protection.
After numerous issues with Pace, now this ...
Not Good.
Well, let's see what 3.10 will bring ...


bye, Jan