FR theme: Performance/memory issues

[Loonie]

Seems to just be tied in with the undo-redo buffer.

When you delete an instrument, it and its settings are still in the undo buffer. If you add something like Sampletank, memory usage goes up around 30MB. Deleting it doesn't free up the memory.

If you add Sampletank and then "undo", it still doesn't free up the memory, in case you "redo".

If you add Sampletank, then "undo", then add some little thing like SmallQoo, the buffer is purged of the Sampletank data and the memory usage plummets.

I guess EXT1 doesn't do this because there's no "undo". I suppose this is sort of a 'garbage collection' issue, rather than memory leak.

[druid]

energyXT 1 DOES have an undo, but as far as I know, no redo.

[Stargard]

Seems to just be tied in with the undo-redo buffer.

that's what I thought too. so there should be an undo buffer on the harddrive, having a list of events/setups that can be restored during the production process.
that way the RAM is unaffected and you can go to step 2 or 15 or back to 7.
reloading a 150MB instrument into your sampler wouldnt take that much and wouldn't kill the ram.
that way you can go back to set ups in your song, that you dismissed first or forgot to save.
but that's just how I see it and I don't know about the programming part of it.

[djsubject]

Seems to just be tied in with the undo-redo buffer.

When you delete an instrument, it and its settings are still in the undo buffer. If you add something like Sampletank, memory usage goes up around 30MB. Deleting it doesn't free up the memory.

If you add Sampletank and then "undo", it still doesn't free up the memory, in case you "redo".

If you add Sampletank, then "undo", then add some little thing like SmallQoo, the buffer is purged of the Sampletank data and the memory usage plummets.

I guess EXT1 doesn't do this because there's no "undo". I suppose this is sort of a 'garbage collection' issue, rather than memory leak.

interesting find!!!!

so by reading this it seems XT2 is acting how it should?

how do other hosts that let you reload a deleted vst by using the undo command?

(IM-uneducated-O) the current way XT2 is doing it is the quickest way?

Subz

[jens]

so by reading this it seems XT2 is acting how it should?

nonono - if you delete an instrument and undo this later on it should simply be reloaded - this of course takes longer but it's utter madness to not relase the ram just because you might want to undo the change later on.

[ddummer]

perhaps an undo dump to file is what it's gonna be in the end?

//Daniel

[Loonie]

interesting find!!!!

so by reading this it seems XT2 is acting how it should?

how do other hosts that let you reload a deleted vst by using the undo command?

(IM-uneducated-O) the current way XT2 is doing it is the quickest way?

Subz

Not quite. It's a functional undo-redo system, but inefficient. I tried a couple of experiments with SX2 and Live6. SX2 frees up the memory when a VST is deleted, but the VST adding and deletion is outside of SX2's undo-redo system, so it's kind of moot. Live6's VST system is within its undo-redo system, and it will actually unload the instrument from memory when a 'delete' or 'undo' is performed.

So it's possible the undo-redo system could be stored in a file, rather than in memory, or it's also possible the system removes the instrument but remembers its settings, and upon redo just reloads the instrument and puts everything back.

To be honest, the current behaviour doesn't concern me, as ext2 has, for a beta, thus far proven to be extremely robust, which implies Jorgen is very carefully crafting and scrutinizing every element of the software during its creation. He clearly meets all the criteria for a good programmer.

[jorgen]

When deleting a VST, what I can do is undload it from but save the settings to ram instead.

on the list

cheers
jorgen

[swivel]

When deleting a VST, what I can do is undload it from but save the settings to ram instead.

on the list

cheers
jorgen

But then wouldn't you be using up RAM uselessly?

Couldn't you just save the settings to disk? Now that I think about it, I guess if it's only the last VST unloaded (or 2, or 3) that would work, but if the settings of every VST that was ever unloaded from the project are in RAM, it seems like that would be not so good... Just thinking out aloud, but personally I would like an unloading of a VST to leave no footprint whatsoever

[Guckli]

Settings themselves are not going to eat much ram. It would be like a .fxp/.fxb in size. (Crappy, bloated) GUI and samples need not be loaded.

[jorgen]

It would be like a .fxp/.fxb in size

yup

cheers
jorgen

[jens]

When deleting a VST, what I can do is undload it from but save the settings to ram instead.

on the list

cheers
jorgen

yes, please!

[djsubject]

[Mighty Pea]

Ah, good to hear that it's such a trivial thing. I was beginning to fear it was a memory leak of some sort, but it wouldn't be quite so predictable then, eh?
Would writing the settings to ram rather than disk really make for a noticeable increase in speed? Not that it'll take up a lot of space though, so it's a bit of a moot point.