KVR Audio

stefancrs · Post by **stefancrs** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:00 am

You're trying it the wrong way

First time you start it you might be best off using the "quick setup" button and look at the videos

Improv · Post by **Improv** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:32 pm

AD80 wrote:
Wow. The best part is "took me a couple of days to implement" .

The best part for me was reading:

"The dual processing has given Podium 70% extra CPU headroom (depending on signal routing). A full 100% extra cannot be obtained because there are some overhead in the shared access to memory and other system resources."

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:40 pm

Only 32 processors supported? Damn, I've got 33. That's just my luck.

kp · Post by kp » Wed Aug 24, 2005 4:11 pm

So you've got one spare...good home going here :-)

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:19 pm

OK, I'll email it to you.

Zynewave · Post by **Zynewave** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:24 pm

Hi,

The best part is "took me a couple of days to implement"

Well, two days to implement distributed processing in the engine. After that I spent another week to optimize and test, and also review thread synchronization issues in the entire application. Running an application on a true multiprocessor system can introduce problems not encountered on single CPU systems, such as shared CPU cache access, and low priority threads that runs simultaneously with higher priority threads, etc.

There seems to be some interest in how multiprocessing works, so here's a few words on how it is implemented in Podium:

Normally, the engine will go through the audio routing hierarchy, and every time a plugin is encountered, the plugin process function will be called. With multiprocessing enabled, the engine will put the plugin in a queue for later processing, and the audio output of the plugin is marked as waiting. Once all ready plugins are put in the queue, a pool of threads allocated to each available CPU will start to process the queue of plugins. Once the queue is empty, the engine will repeatedly go through the waiting audio routings until all plugins are processed.

This means that multiprocessing only saves CPU time if two or more plugins can be processed in parallel. If you have plugins that are serially connected, then the processing of a plugin will have to wait until the feeding plugin is processed.

The distribution and activation of the processing threads will consume some time in the Windows OS kernel, so the gained CPU time will be less when you reduce the buffer size or have plugins that are very light in CPU consumption. Still, I would be surprised to find a scenario where multiprocessing actually consumes more time than single processing.

Ixox · Post by **Ixox** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 11:47 am

Zynewave wrote:There seems to be some interest in how multiprocessing works, so here's a few words on how it is implemented in Podium:
...

Thanks a lot for the explainations.
That's very interesting.

This only feature made me try Podium yesterday night. I tried 1.37 i don't have yet a dual core CPU.
I seems to require some time to get used with this program but that may be worth it

Xavier

scam_artist · Post by **scam_artist** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 2:03 am

Ixox wrote:
I seems to require some time to get used with this program but that may be worth it

Follow my Quick Start guide (a little outdated but still helpful I think):
http://www.zynewave.com/userfiles/ScamArtist/index.htm

Watch the videos:
http://www.zynewave.com/index.htm

Read the Podium guide:
http://www.zynewave.com/guide/index.htm

and you should have a much clearer understanding of how it works

AD80 · Post by **AD80** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 2:08 am

Zynewave wrote:Hi,
The best part is "took me a couple of days to implement"
Well, two days to implement distributed processing in the engine. After that I spent another week to optimize and test, and also review thread synchronization issues in the entire application. Running an application on a true multiprocessor system can introduce problems not encountered on single CPU systems, such as shared CPU cache access, and low priority threads that runs simultaneously with higher priority threads, etc.
.

Its still pretty damn cool.

loomchild · Post by **loomchild** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 2:25 am

slightly OT, but is there an ETA for the offline rendering?

Ixox · Post by **Ixox** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 9:19 am

scam_artist wrote:
Ixox wrote:
I seems to require some time to get used with this program but that may be worth it
Follow my Quick Start guide (a little outdated but still helpful I think):
http://www.zynewave.com/userfiles/ScamArtist/index.htm

Watch the videos:
http://www.zynewave.com/index.htm

Read the Podium guide:
http://www.zynewave.com/guide/index.htm

and you should have a much clearer understanding of how it works

I've already watched the video which are very well done.
I'll give a look to the other links.
Thanks.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 9:46 am

I had a look at the vid tutorials on the site. Makes a bit more sense now, although I'm still not getting the vibe of the software.

Does it have mousewheel zooming?

Zynewave · Post by **Zynewave** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 3:24 pm

slightly OT, but is there an ETA for the offline rendering?

No ETA. I've tried to give time estimates in the past, but often development took a slightly different direction due to frequently asked features (FAF?). So I generally do not give time estimates to avoid disappointing people.

Does it have mousewheel zooming?

Yes, if you hold down the key shortcuts for activating zoom tools (combinations of shift+ctrl+alt) the mouse wheel will zoom anchored at the point where the mouse cursor is. Mouse wheel with no key shortcuts will slide vertically, and with shift held will slide horizontally.

chagzuki · Post by **chagzuki** » Fri Aug 26, 2005 3:30 pm

That's cool. After Tracktion I can't go back to any app that doesn't have mousewheel zooming. But given that I zoom much more than scroll, those keyboard shortcuts don't sound optimal. Zooming more or less encompasses scrolling as with 2 finger flicks you can zoom out and back in at another location. Effortless and precise.

christianmusicmaker · Post by **christianmusicmaker** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 4:53 pm

stefancrs wrote:You're trying it the wrong way First time you start it you might be best off using the "quick setup" button and look at the videos

I remember struggling with Podium about a year ago and gave up after about 30 minutes or so just trying to get a beep out of it.

I think there was a thread some time ago where many KVR users tried and failed. It was like we were all trying to climb this wall and hardly anyone could do it! Seasoned users of other hosts gave up. At that point I was very curious and a bit worried

. I thought "what is on the other side of this wall..."

I kept an eye on the development of the product through the Podium forum as I saw it as a good way to bring my annual software upgrade costs down considerably.

I read a review of Podium on KVR that had a link to a quickstart and finally got a sound out of it. It has been a steep - ish learning curve since then but all the sequencers at different levels have learning curves anyway in my opinion.

For a Sonar user...what can Podium bring to the table...? It is certainly cheaper which is big deal for me and probably many others I work with. They would not need the full feature set that Sonar provides although one of my friends is interested in CubaseSX/Nuendo which is one of the reasons I started the recent Cubase3.1 thread.

The guys I work with do not all have the user experience I have with software applications for music so I try to gather as much info as I can from different threads and forums to help them as much as I can and of course see if anything is of interest to me as well.

Podium cost wise would suit them pretty well I think.

For me...I have a *very* open mind when it comes to hosts. I always like to see if there is a better, quicker, and cheaper way of making music.I could certainly use Podium for my own use but not for my clients. One of the problems I have is that I have a huge number of projects that I started in Live 3 (now Live 5) and Sonar 3 (now Sonar4) that I am trying to finish off. Much, much more than I thought.Enough to fill 5 albums probably.

Thankfully I am finally starting to finish projects.

My clients have various requirements that cover scoring and video and P5's groove matrix is great for client work.Podium does not have such features so Sonar with P5 rewired get the nod. One of my friends uses Reason for instance and would like to bring those files over to collaborate so Sonar fits the bill there as well.

My son uses Live5 for his home projects which is quicker to get into and more flexible with audio loops than Podium.

However I really like the idea behind Podium though and think the multi core support is brilliant. Not even Live5, P5v.2 or Reason have multicore support yet. Podium is a fully 64 bit DAW with surround as well. Not bad for one developer eh? I cannot see Podium remaining a one man business for too long. Someone out there is surely looking at the development of Podium so far and will offer to distribute it on a wider scale like Mackie and Tracktion.

One of the best ways to help the development of a product is to buy it and that is exactly what I did 3 months ago and think it was a very good investment I have just been way too busy with the existing projects I have to really put some heavy projects through it just yet, but for my clients work it's a no. Sonar gets the nod.

Great work though...keep it up Frits.

My favourite feature in Podium has to be the spline curves I could play with those for hours!

http://www.zynewave.com/guide/guide35_curve.htm

Podium has multi-processor support now