Disabling processing when input is silent. Worth it?

[Kingston]

And to jackson, keep in mind that you'll also lose noticable CPU if each and every of your 100's of simultansously running plugins are doing activation/reactivation checks.

I thought this was covered already: the CPU hit is negligible.

[AdmiralQuality]

eh? Do people actually do this? I mean normal people, not Babya? Seems to me just a bit paranoid, and certainly an odd reason to waste resources like that.

That was my original point Kingston, that no self-respecting developer is going to steal your resources if you dare to make them transparent overlays instead of baking in the backgrounds, and that they're taking a big legal risk if they do.

It's just tony twisting my words again to suit his own purposes. This is why I'm getting perturbed. Which is silly... so I'm gonna go code now. I've made my decision on this (at least as far as SCAMP, will consider it for other kinds of effects. So keep the "votes" coming. I DO listen to you people. Just can't please eveyone.

[AdmiralQuality]

And to jackson, keep in mind that you'll also lose noticable CPU if each and every of your 100's of simultansously running plugins are doing activation/reactivation checks.

I thought this was covered already: the CPU hit is negligible.

But jackson is running hundreds of negligibles in his film scores. They add up.

[Kingston]

eh? Do people actually do this? I mean normal people, not Babya? Seems to me just a bit paranoid, and certainly an odd reason to waste resources like that.

That was my original point Kingston, that no self-respecting developer is going to steal your resources if you dare to make them transparent overlays instead of baking in the backgrounds, and that they're taking a big legal risk if they do. It's just tony twisting my words again to suit his own purposes.

but absolutely no one is going to steal the gui no matter how you embed it. I have no idea what tony said about this previously, and the paranoia remark was my personal opinion.

[tony tony chopper]

But jackson is running hundreds of negligibles in his film scores. They add up

the test we're talking about, you could run thousands and not notice it

(and the implementation will spare CPU anyway)

[Kingston]

And to jackson, keep in mind that you'll also lose noticable CPU if each and every of your 100's of simultansously running plugins are doing activation/reactivation checks.

I thought this was covered already: the CPU hit is negligible.

But jackson is running hundreds of negligibles in his film scores. They add up.

to what? 0.5% load? in comparison to potentional (something like) 1/3 of all material processed as silence? Guess what my pick is?

[TristanWilliams]

I have precious little CPU to spare. If a plugin stops processing while it's running silent, that to me is a good thing. It saves me having to automate switching it on and off, at least.

[AdmiralQuality]

eh? Do people actually do this? I mean normal people, not Babya? Seems to me just a bit paranoid, and certainly an odd reason to waste resources like that.

That was my original point Kingston, that no self-respecting developer is going to steal your resources if you dare to make them transparent overlays instead of baking in the backgrounds, and that they're taking a big legal risk if they do. It's just tony twisting my words again to suit his own purposes.

but absolutely no one is going to steal the gui no matter how you embed it. I have no idea what tony said about this previously, and the paranoia remark was my personal opinion.

Again. I agree: Paranoia.

On the TSV thread, someone suggested some people don't want controls to be 32 bit PNG graphics with transparency (and shadows!) because that makes them easier to steal. And it DOES! But again... I agree... no REAL developer is going to steal graphic assets from another product.

But tony referenced that original comment I made (where I also said that if anyone DID try that with my plugs I'd sic a lawyer on 'em) out of context... to try to make me look like a litigious fiend:

oh plz spare me this. I even saw you talking about your lawyer if someone ever stole your knob bitmaps. I mean come on..
I've seen lots of FL-based winamp skins, FL-ripped graphics in several places and I find it more flattering than annoying.

(on page 2 of this thread, above)

Where in fact all I was saying, is exactly what you're saying King. That nobody would do that ANYWAY.

Quoting (or mis-quoting) out of context is tony's M.O.

(And note that he STILL hasn't admitted that audio rate filter mod rocks!!! )

[tony tony chopper]

Yes, I wasn't talking about the knob/resources thing at all, but pointing out that he's the "I'll call my lawyer" kind of asshole (and I'm quite sure he'd call his lawyer for other reasons)

(And note that he STILL hasn't admitted that audio rate filter mod rocks!!! )

But I'm still waiting for a convincing demo. I know.. 'us fruity people expect everything pre-chewed'.

[nuffink]

The NFR swap's not looking a good bet.

[Kingston]

the test we're talking about, you could run thousands and not notice it

got me curious. do you just look at the input, see if a bunch of zeros come in, and bypass the process (or reversed when turning it back on)? the way I see it, this is a few adds and a call to bypass - takes practically no CPU cycles. or are there some other considerations as well?

(not taking into account if turning processing back on launches a load of coefficient initialisations)

[grymmjack]

And I don't go anywhere near the CPU limit if I'm recording, and all I worry about is the CPU peak... if it's going to gakk on me, I don't care if its for one sample in the song, or thousands. The take is most likely ruined regardless.

actually some hosts feature something called confidence recording, like tracktion2, where even if CPU spikes occur, the recording rolls on along and the recorded music doesn't suffer from it. so in this case, with tracktion (and i'm sure other hosts must have something like this -- not sure what trick they use a separate thread or some separation from processing and recording or what -- for it's such a great feature) that really is a silly way to work.

to give you an idea, my computer is basic crap; p4/1.9ghz, and i frequently spike the CPU when something happens while i'm recording (i run servers and stuff so it's somewhat unique situation i have going here) that accesses the video or disk or something, and most hosts like cakewalk would just stop the entire audio engine (atleast the old version i had), while tracktion2 keeps on truckin' and keeps recording the input without any pause or problem in the end. i will eventually upgrade (after the wedding i can't wait!) but for now it's just fact of life.

so to decide on a strategy for using CPU and plugins based around even 1 second, not even 1 sample, for my own case in this situation is patently absurd. and for you to expect all of your users to work the way that you do, is equally absurd.

gol atleast is taking the stance of: CPU is precious (like many demo coders would too), and the user deserves as much CPU as possible at all times regardless of the BURDEN it puts on him to manage it. he has the right mindset. you on the other hand, AQ, are thinking backwards. wtf would you design a plugin to use 5.1 as a standard, and open six channels as a standard is beyond me, maybe you live in a world where 5.1 is standard (and i dont mean that offensively -- many people have more money and can afford such things and only associate with people that may have the same advantages in life, again not pointing the finger at you just thinking outloud now), but i bet most of the rest of your users dont use 5.1 as often.

at any rate dude, it seems like you are atleast trying to make ammends and are humble to admit that you may have gone a bit haywire with your initial concept and are revising it. that's a great and admirable thing. but to bash on gol like this, regardless of WHO started it (what are we in elementary school suddenly) and where, for putting his users as #1 priority and taking total pride in conservation of the users resources (CPU/RAM/etc) is totally unprofessional behavior.

you have made several threats, i've not seen one threat from gol. you have made several insults, i've not seen one time gol call you any names. he's simply stating his own preferences of development, which i for one throughout the years ADORE him for. he's a great programmer, with a very successful line of products which have treated me very well through the years, but even if i never owned any of his work i would consider your own behavior, retalitory in nature or not, to be very childish and unprofessional. you seem to be like a guy who takes quite a bit of pride in his work, and it shows visually - this part i can attest to since i know a little bit about what it takes to make what you've done, and kudos for it, so why not act like a proud wise papa about your babies instead of being a beligerant and rude jerk?

lastly, i am certain that flstudio is in no way related to your own scamp or synth product so it's not competitive or wrong to simply talk things out developer to devloper in a public eye is it? after all, regardless of how you personally FEEL about what gol and others have said, you certainly have to respect their opinions as their own and not threaten legal action when they disagree with your own ideals and such? i mean where do you draw the line for that kind of thing? is it ok to say "scamp sucks" but it's not ok to list facts like 'it takes 15% of cpu on my amd3500+'? he isn't doing anything illegal by simply stating a fact, regardless of if he took the time to read docs or not, right?

tbh, i find it humorous when people threaten legal action for messages on a forum. 'ill sue you f**ker!' huhuhuuh... someone in another thread was getting to that point just for being called names and stuff. it's ridiculous.

we're all adults here (well most of us, this is kvr after all), etc. has it occured to you also that gol is helping you in some way? from where i stand it seems like he's been offering you advice, and even posted a snipet of ASM which you could use to your benefit.

[nollock]

I'm not sure why you think the check for silence code would be a bad idea because of CPU usage; you'd only need to check every few seconds while the plugin is activated, and then the code to the detect a signal>0 is fairly simple.

That would not work, the plug has to check the input all the time because not only does it need to turn it off, but it also needs to turn it back on. And to turn it back on it needs to know as soon as the input is no zero again.

But yes, the code for checking for the signal would be very cheap. It will be a branch, but it is a branch that will be corectly predicted >99% of the time. So at worst it will take 5-10 cycles averaged out. Which is about 0.01%-0.02% on my CPU at 44k.

For example, if you ran the test 40 times per sample, you would be lucky to eat up more than 1% of my Athlon 2600+.

[tony tony chopper]

we're only talking about this kind of loop anyway

MOV EAX,[ESI+ECX*4]
AND EAX,SignMask_32
CMP EAX,EDX
JG @Break
INC ECX
JNZ @Loop

(better use a test so that you can at least bypass it after the first sample most of the time)

it uses a threshold, so that it can also work with plugins that add noise to avoid denormalization. Of course, you'll have to define a threshold, without knowing how much noise they add..

[AdmiralQuality]

Yes, I wasn't talking about the knob/resources thing at all, but pointing out that he's the "I'll call my lawyer" kind of asshole (and I'm quite sure he'd call his lawyer for other reasons)

(And note that he STILL hasn't admitted that audio rate filter mod rocks!!! )

But I'm still waiting for a convincing demo. I know.. 'us fruity people expect everything pre-chewed'.

Go play a f**king Minimoog. And Totc's demos were awesome. http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 75#1988175 "Bass 1" was my favorite.

Do you see what I mean? This guy thinks he's smarter than HISTORY!

And do you think your company wouldn't be talking to a lawyer if someone stole your graphics for their product, THE ACTUAL GRAPHICS, NOT JUST THE LOOK/FEEL, out of your .exe? At any rate, you'd be fools not to. This is what copyright is fellah, I didn't invent it. (Ah what the hell do you know, you named your product after breakfast cereal.)

You've obviously got some problem with me, but it has NOTHING to do with what I've actually been saying which was, in order:

1. (IN the osc x-mod thread) Hey, there's also x-mod for filters you know.

2. (In response to you writing it off as useless.) Yes it IS useful, many synths have offered it, right back to when they were invented, and many popular VSTi's offer it, and you can even do it with effects like SCAMP.

3. You're a stupid twit. (This after about 5 or 6 posts trying to nicely demonstrate just what audio filter rate mod does, and in return for my troubles having you get more and more difficult, to the point of publishing misinformation and intentionally bad sound demos of my product on your company's website. YOU THINK I CANT MAKE A BAD SOUND WITH FLSTUDIO? It's like smashing a Volvo into a brick wall at 100 kmph and then saying it's not built very safely.)

4. (In TSV's thread) Hey, wouldn't it be nice if more developers used transparent graphics with shadows. Why don't you graphic artists encourage them to (I never called everyone stupid as you mis-quote. I said, exactly, "Seems like almost nobody in this industry knows anything about image compositing though." I didn't say you, or anyone else in particular (truth be told, I was talking about 2 or 3 VERY big companies who I don't wish to name because putting the competition down by name is not my M.O. So if you took that line personally then you're probably one of the ones who don't do that! And the word "stupid" isn't in there at all. http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 18#1989918 )

5. And now this thread. In response to more uncalled for nitpicking about my product, which you never gave a fair test to.

Twit.