Hmm, I bought ACE recently (while it was still in beta) as a possible replacement for my Arturia Arp 2600V because Arturia has made the licensing system really onerous in recent months.
My plan was to use ACE with Apple MainStage in live performance. I just noticed however that there's a sidebar on the ACE website suggesting that ACE is "very demanding of the CPU" and now I'm wondering if it's going to be a problem.
Demanding on CPU
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- u-he
- 30217 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Well, you can keep the demand of cpu low, e.g. by keeping it at reduced polyphony or by keeping ACE in "standard" or "draft" mode if the sound permits.
If it runs, it runs. I can see nothing in ACE that should cause a bad surprise.
Cheers,
Urs
If it runs, it runs. I can see nothing in ACE that should cause a bad surprise.
Cheers,
Urs-
- KVRist
- 208 posts since 16 Mar, 2002 from Scottsdale, AZ, USA
You know I have to admit I was complaining about the CPU usage too right after I bought it. I even said that I didn't think I would use it all that often. Well, I did two tracks for a commercial only a few days ago and was using ACE in both tracks.dhjdhj wrote:Hmm, I bought ACE recently (while it was still in beta) as a possible replacement for my Arturia Arp 2600V because Arturia has made the licensing system really onerous in recent months.
My plan was to use ACE with Apple MainStage in live performance. I just noticed however that there's a sidebar on the ACE website suggesting that ACE is "very demanding of the CPU" and now I'm wondering if it's going to be a problem.
I admit I was wrong, because the sound and ease of use of ACE justifies the somewhat high CPU usage I think... Ken
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 68 posts since 25 Apr, 2009
That's not the issue --- in the MainStage live world, there are lots of other synths also loaded. My concern is that other synths in my environment would be negatively impacted.
Urs wrote: If it runs, it runs. I can see nothing in ACE that should cause a bad surprise.
Cheers,
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- KVRAF
- 1617 posts since 11 Dec, 2008 from Minneapolis
There's some interesting stuff Urs posted in the stickied ACE thread about CPU usage. Any patch with certain settings in voice structure - the upper left part of the GUI, nothing with the cables - shouldn't vary from another patch with the same settings. So if you get a feel for how those settings affect CPU usage, that will very easily let you estimate what amount of CPU resources ACE will consume. Like other synths, the consequences of exceeding available resources are just that you'll get dropouts if you're trying to run too much at once, it'll either work fine or blow up.
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- KVRist
- 31 posts since 19 Jul, 2003
Do both the mac and pc platform experience the same CPU usage? If you're on a pc, it should make complete sense to you. Every indication points to URS being a mac programmer FIRST ... with the pc product being a "necessary evil." I have no doubt the pc could benefit from optimization spawned from intimate knowledge of the platform architecture.
jp
jp
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- u-he
- 30217 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
I'm not quite sure where you get this idea from.apuhjee wrote:Do both the mac and pc platform experience the same CPU usage? If you're on a pc, it should make complete sense to you. Every indication points to URS being a mac programmer FIRST ... with the pc product being a "necessary evil." I have no doubt the pc could benefit from optimization spawned from intimate knowledge of the platform architecture.
jp
I'm coding C with intrinsics for SSE and AltiVec for x86 and PowerPC processors. The code for IntelMacs does hardly differ from the code for Windows PC.
The main difference between both platforms is the location/handling of files and the drawing engine of the user interface. While it may be true that there have been more known issues on Windows lately (thinking white lines with resized interface, and the omnipresent issues coming with UAC), there's neither a difference in feature sets nor in performance, to my best knowledge.
Any differences that arise are almost solely based on the compiler (MSVC vs. GNU Gcc) and the system itself, e.g. the drawing environment and things like Apple's VecLib which unfortuantely has no proper match on Win.
The same applies for any other developer, regardless if they prefer to work on Win, Mac, both or whatever else.
Urs-
- KVRAF
- 26978 posts since 3 Feb, 2005 from in the wilds
just try it with the ACE demo... Nobody can try your system for you. Any synth can overload the cpu if you use enough of it or enough other synths. ACE behaves like any other synth in this regard.dhjdhj wrote:That's not the issue --- in the MainStage live world, there are lots of other synths also loaded. My concern is that other synths in my environment would be negatively impacted.
Urs wrote: If it runs, it runs. I can see nothing in ACE that should cause a bad surprise.
Cheers,
One good thing about ACE and I am still learning the extent to which this is true, is that adjusting knobs/controls in realtime does not make cpu jump around. It seems more consistent than some synths. So I expect you will find ACE to be an effective performance synth... assuming you have a current cpu.
You should be able to run numerous instances of ACE simultaneously.