FR theme: Performance/Graphics issues

[disturb]

I know jack about coding, but what's mentionned in this thread really got me thinking.
Anyone ever noticed how all the gui problems are totally non-existent when eXT is load as a vst in another host ??
No cpu spikes when moving comps in main, the whole interface is much more responsive, meters are like 3 times faster...
This really hints at a problem in the standalone code i think.

A few times i had to load some of my projects in eXT vst in ableton live, just to be able to keep working on them ! Live is quite a cpu hog compared to eXT, but it still made a world of a difference, i was able to add new instruments and effects whereas in standalone, the songs crackled on every mouseclick.

[spritex]

Soma, you are talking about sweet_trip's setup, but trust me it's not about disk usage.

Also, other sequencer have behaved well on my setup with sensible latencies. eXT2 glitches easily even with 2048 samples, low CPU load and plenty RAM left to prevent disk swapping.

[spritex]

This really hints at a problem in the standalone code i think.

That means more or less the core audio engine, the "heart" of the program?

Of course we can't experiment with eXT2 as a VSTi yet, but I'd guess it's a similar situation.

[sweet_trip]

soma, i'll try that.
and yeah, ASIO for life, baby!!
lol

i guess i mentioned the Doom3 reference assuming the problem lied with a video/GUI problem in XT2 only. of course if it is as you said, a caching problem with the HD, then the video would just be a part of the problem...

i'll test...

[druid]

It's not a video problem, come on, the graphics in energyXT are simple by any standard in the past five years at the very least. It's gotta be a conflict of resources or something similar somewhere, surely.

spritex: You say eXT2 glitches easily with 2048 samples, low CPU load and plenty of RAM left. Can you give me an easily reproducable way to do this? I'm using a Dell Inspiron laptop with Core 2 Duo 7200, 2gb RAM, 7200RPM internal hard drive, and a Geforce 7900 GS, so it's specced fairly high and I'd be curious to see if it did the same for me. I'll have to be careful to not utilise all of one of the cores as I'm sure eXT2 doesn't support more than one core yet.

By the way, has anyone with a dual core system tried going into task manager, right clicking on energyXT2.exe, and setting its CPU operations fixed onto the first core? I doubt it would do anything, but it's something I've never read anyone mention, so .. I'd try it myself right now, but I'm not sure how to get it glitching (to see potential improvements) and I don't have it right now.

[ik_ik_ik]

I know jack about coding, but what's mentionned in this thread really got me thinking.
Anyone ever noticed how all the gui problems are totally non-existent when eXT is load as a vst in another host ??
No cpu spikes when moving comps in main, the whole interface is much more responsive, meters are like 3 times faster...
This really hints at a problem in the standalone code i think.

A few times i had to load some of my projects in eXT vst in ableton live, just to be able to keep working on them ! Live is quite a cpu hog compared to eXT, but it still made a world of a difference, i was able to add new instruments and effects whereas in standalone, the songs crackled on every mouseclick.

This stuff rearing its head again with XT2 makes me nervous although I've had less problems with XT1 recently since upgrading to a Lenovo laptop with a TI PCMCIA chipset - both the Echo Indigo and Motu 828Mk2 (via a TI based Firewire PCMCIA card) are definitely working more smoothly.

I haven't pushed XT2 at all yet but use XT1 as my workhorse. I've got so used to its quirks like having to often restart it before recording a moderately CPU heavy track as the CPU has just crept up for no apparent reason or having to recreate the Master Out's temp recording file every time I record something otherwise it starts to crackle. Just been hoping these things will disappear with XT2.

Disturb, yes, your post reminded me of this 17 page epic from back in 2005. Exactly what you say above.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... t=#1401299

Never really got resolved and I gave up, much as I think Jens did, as ASIO4ALL did OK. There's other stuff going way back further about threads and priorities.

Haven't been too involved in testing XT2 yet as there are bits missing or confused that mean a quite radical change of workflow (I'm a self-confessed Main Window addict) but it's looking fantastic and I'm very much keeping my fingers crossed that it becomes the viable live performance tool I desperately wanted XT1 to be.

Inigo

[1barEnuff]

hi, i'm not into speculating about things i know nothing about so this is more of a question really. ext1 has a folder called driver, inside which is a file asio.dll, does this mean all audio app developers compile their own asio driver or is there a standard copy of this that everyone uses? and if each asio.dll is tailor made for each app, could this be part of the problem also?

john

[ik_ik_ik]

hi, i'm not into speculating about things i know nothing about so this is more of a question really. ext1 has a folder called driver, inside which is a file asio.dll, does this mean all audio app developers compile their own asio driver or is there a standard copy of this that everyone uses? and if each asio.dll is tailor made for each app, could this be part of the problem also?

john

Hey john, AFAIK Jorgen developed the ASIO implementation (asio.dll) himself and made it freely available - coincedentally the SynthMaker developers confirmed they used it and for me this and had exactly the same GUI and glitching problems with an Echo Indigo whereas nothing else did.

Not sure how much this might have in common with Martin Fay's Delphi orientated OpenASIO which Toby Bear's MiniHost uses and XT1 runs really well as a VST inside this.

[spritex]

spritex: You say eXT2 glitches easily with 2048 samples, low CPU load and plenty of RAM left. Can you give me an easily reproducable way to do this?

Just make, say, two MIDI tracks with Zebra VSTi on each, record some notes and try to select them with mouse dragging. While the sequencer is playing, of course.

You can use the Zebra demo if you don't have it.
http://www.u-he.com/zebra/index.php?item=downloads

(It also happens with Shortcircuit, haven't experimented with many different plugins because these are my main tools.)

[druid]

I shall try that. I own Shortcircuit so that will do nicely. (When the hell is SC2 coming out?!?? :P)

[disturb]

spritex: You say eXT2 glitches easily with 2048 samples, low CPU load and plenty of RAM left. Can you give me an easily reproducable way to do this?

Just make, say, two MIDI tracks with Zebra VSTi on each, record some notes and try to select them with mouse dragging. While the sequencer is playing, of course.

You can use the Zebra demo if you don't have it.
http://www.u-he.com/zebra/index.php?item=downloads

(It also happens with Shortcircuit, haven't experimented with many different plugins because these are my main tools.)

It takes more than two instances here, but that just depends on your cpu power i guess.
What other vsti do you use ? DO you have this problem only with Z2 ?

[spritex]

(When the hell is SC2 coming out?!?? )

OT: I am already using SC2 Alpha7 instead of SC1, it seems to work mostly OK. Apparently Claes has a day job and has to share his "indie" time between SC2 and Surge.

[spritex]

It takes more than two instances here, but that just depends on your cpu power i guess.
What other vsti do you use ? DO you have this problem only with Z2 ?

As I said, also happens with Shortcircuit (2). But thing is, these two Zebra instances take only like 20% CPU when in playback without mouse action. And the glitching doesn't occur in other sequencers even with way more instances and FX and so on.

[soma]

Also, other sequencer have behaved well on my setup with sensible latencies. eXT2 glitches easily even with 2048 samples, low CPU load and plenty RAM left to prevent disk swapping.

I don't doubt that XT is giving you problems that other hosts aren't; I am just trying to figure out the factors.

Page swapping doesn't happen only when RAM is full. AFAIK

[DarkStar]

Hey john, AFAIK Jorgen developed the ASIO implementation (asio.dll) himself and made it freely available - coincedentally the SynthMaker developers confirmed they used it and for me this and had exactly the same GUI and glitching problems with an Echo Indigo whereas nothing else did.

This seems much more than coincidence to me.

Is asio.dll a "real" ASIO driver, or does act as an interface between eXT1 and the ASIO driver?

PS Where is the equivalent in XT2?