DP9 set to get an update, claiming 4X CPU performance...

[machinesworking]

My impression of demoing DP was that it's just too deep for a casual look, that if you want to use it you kinda have to use it, learn it, and I wasn't really willing to go that deep demoing it, and may not have had the time to do that in 30 days without just using it all the time during that period.

I overlooked the crashes because it was new to Windows at the time, but it's not really something you can learn in a short time like Tracktion or something. Some of the concepts are just completely different from Cubase and similar.

If I was DP I might extend that demo to 45-60 days.

I agree, beyond that being a better learning period, life gets in the way. I can't tell you how many 15 or 30 day trials have died before I really got a chance to do more than open the VST in a DAW.Quite honestly in 2000 that's the conclusion I came to about Logic, if I was going to use it, I just needed to buy it and go, no amount of evaluation in a store or training DVDs would let me know if it was a match beyond the basics.

[machinesworking]

Here's the official statement from MOTU on the updates.

http://cdn-data.motu.com/marketing/motu ... 016-pr.pdf

[kelldammit]

hmmm, when i had it back at v5 or so, it was nowhere even CLOSE to logic in terms of cpu performance. v8/9 on pc, it is similarly not on par with cubase or reaper. VEP helped quite a bit, though.
Since DP already has had prerendering (for some time now), it makes me wonder what they've got up their sleeve! Any such improvements are always welcome

Also, yes, i run at 1024 buffers 100% of the time. After switching from usb to my babyface's midi i/o, i've never had any issue with latency whilst playing, strangely. Not on studio one, reaper, or DP. Cubase seems a little dodgier, but it's most likely just a setting...

[kelldammit]

GAH, DP. The KVR kind.
heh.

[machinesworking]

hmmm, when i had it back at v5 or so, it was nowhere even CLOSE to logic in terms of cpu performance. v8/9 on pc, it is similarly not on par with cubase or reaper. VEP helped quite a bit, though.
Since DP already has had prerendering (for some time now), it makes me wonder what they've got up their sleeve! Any such improvements are always welcome

Also, yes, i run at 1024 buffers 100% of the time. After switching from usb to my babyface's midi i/o, i've never had any issue with latency whilst playing, strangely. Not on studio one, reaper, or DP. Cubase seems a little dodgier, but it's most likely just a setting...

DP5 was before prerendering, I think v6 had it first? (avoided v6), Dp 7 and Logic 8 had similar track counts on OSX when I tested, Live came in dead last at 60% what those two could handle. Reaper at first bit the dust at dead last then at restart came out ahead?? I still just own Logic 8, so I can't vouch for Logic X vs DP9.
I'm going to pick up a copy of Logic X soon for some older songs I want to work on, so I should be able to give at least an "industry standard on OSX" vs DP9 before "next gen pre gen" and after, when it comes out.

I was dead set on building a PC with Windows on it until I found out I could swap out my older 4 core chips with cheap faster 6 core Xeons off ebay in this Mac Pro.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[machinesworking]

The Groove 3 videos are really pretty good. There's a DP9 update video, but it doesn't really say anything MOTU doesn't about the update.

You can drag an audio file directly into DP's Tracks Overview left instrument setup area and it will place itself at bar 1 or where it's OMF data says it belongs. that's the quickest method to get multiple audio files into DP. Dragging multiple audio files into a blank template with no audio tracks, there's no way to place them instantly on bar 50 if that's what you want to be able to do. You would drag to the Tracks Overview, then move the files to bar 50.

Be forewarned, OMF does some funky sh*t sometime, I've had imported files from Pro Tools show up at bar 250... Spent a lot of time looking at bars 1-130 in the Tracks Overview wondering what just happened to the 16 files I dragged in?

[Dewdman42]

The main CPU performance they are claiming is actually even faster then that. They are saying in one test they got 10x as many virtual instruments with the update then before, and that they believe it will have 4x the performance of Logic. The way they are accomplishing this is with a new feature that essentially does on the fly freezing of instrument tracks. All instrument tracks get rendered in the background so that when you hit play, if the midi is already sequenced for a given track, then the instrument playback can play from a rendered and frozen track..it all is supposedly going to be seamless so you can just work on the track or not and it will render it in the background and use the rendered version if you aren't sending it live midi. Frankly I don't know why everyone hasn't been doing it this way all along. But anyway, they say DP has been able to playback as many as 10x more instrument tracks this way and 4x more than Logic. It should be out soon, so we'll see....

They also claim to have cut latency in half, which I am skeptical about, but we'll see. if so that will be miraculous...

[incubus]

It's too embarrassing to retell my old mac story, but the LSS was that I did try DP5 and I actually got much better performance than those "other" mac hosts.

Always the oddball, I am.

[trimph1]

It's too embarrassing to retell my old mac story, but the LSS was that I did try DP5 and I actually got much better performance than those "other" mac hosts.

Always the oddball, I am.

You are not alone. I tried DP8 but all it does here is either a) crash or b) hang up or be really slow.

I'll have to demo DP9 and see how it goes on my MPB.

[incubus]

I'm not sure I follow "exactly" but seems that the recent KVR blurb about some of the audio interfaces ties in.

At any rate, I'm all for forward thinking. I dunno if it's "about time" or whatever, but I like forward thinking. It's few and far between imho.

[machinesworking]

The main CPU performance they are claiming is actually even faster then that. They are saying in one test they got 10x as many virtual instruments with the update then before, and that they believe it will have 4x the performance of Logic. The way they are accomplishing this is with a new feature that essentially does on the fly freezing of instrument tracks. All instrument tracks get rendered in the background so that when you hit play, if the midi is already sequenced for a given track, then the instrument playback can play from a rendered and frozen track..it all is supposedly going to be seamless so you can just work on the track or not and it will render it in the background and use the rendered version if you aren't sending it live midi. Frankly I don't know why everyone hasn't been doing it this way all along. But anyway, they say DP has been able to playback as many as 10x more instrument tracks this way and 4x more than Logic. It should be out soon, so we'll see....

They also claim to have cut latency in half, which I am skeptical about, but we'll see. if so that will be miraculous...

To the bolded statement..
Probaby because in order to make it seamless it's going to have to render while you're busy moving around the timeline. i.e. it's not just freezing like you normally do, it's processing data on that timeline while you go bar 3, loop it, and add MIDI tracks, or edit audio regions etc. Basically it's doing a lot of background processing which in the past before 2,4,8 core machines were standard, would have seriously caused crashes and such. Heck! it's not out yet? so it's I would guess still in the process of ironing out the last of the bugs.

Latency is tied directly into how much processor power you have. So my cynical guess is that latency on record armed tracks, say 8, with VSTi/AUs on them isn't going to be any lower, but latency on one record armed track with the other 7 not armed just with MIDI data in the timeline will be lower.

This also begs the question as to how this is going to work with plug ins like Diva that cn access multiple cores being played, is that going to affect the pre-rendering adversely? cause crashes?

[Dewdman42]

well my 4 core machine I expect to handle the new feature just fine and I don't particularly think it will take that much back ground processing to do it. At any given moment it only needs to be background-rendering short sections of a single track at a time, as you change the midi data. This is far less CPU usage then merely playing back one instrument track would take. I think all the DAW's should be doing this and should have been doing it a long time ago. The machines could have handled this a long time ago. Granted, it may involve complex programming to create software that works this way.

Also latency is not tied to your CPU the way you are imagining it. Lower cpu use does not directly lower latency. its the other way around. Lower latency from a smaller buffer will increase CPU demands. What happens is that there is a data path the audio has to take, involving a buffer; and the smaller the buffer, the lower the latency. That latency is fixed, based on the buffer size. However, the smaller buffer you make, the more the CPU will be crunched. So obviously if you have a more efficient or faster CPU, you can get away with lowering the buffer size for less latency and not be as bothered by the increased CPU use. But making the CPU more efficient doesn't magically give you lower latency, it merely makes it possible for you to reduce the buffer size even more if you so desire.

The example you gave of arming 7 tracks, does not increase latency, it merely increases CPU demands. So it may be that you can't arm 7 tracks without either increasing the buffer size (which increases latency), or suffering tremendous CPU crunching and perhaps audio drop outs.

What Motu says they have done is to cut in half the latency for any given buffer size. Its yet to be seen how this effects CPU performance.

Regarding your point about Diva, again, this is new improvement is not related to core utilization, so I do not see the relevance. The new feature will ultimately give all of your plugins, including Diva more breathing room by rendering stuff in the background so that every time you hit play it doesn't have to render it again in real time. This can all be done with threads. 4 cores does not mean you can only have 4 tasks happening at once. many many threads can be happening, even on a single core machine.

[machinesworking]

well my 4 core machine I expect to handle the new feature just fine and I don't particularly think it will take that much back ground processing to do it. At any given moment it only needs to be background-rendering short sections of a single track at a time, as you change the midi data. This is far less CPU usage then merely playing back one instrument track would take. I think all the DAW's should be doing this and should have been doing it a long time ago. The machines could have handled this a long time ago. Granted, it may involve complex programming to create software that works this way.

We have no real idea how they've implemented pre rendering. The best model we have is track freezing, which records the tracks in a linear way, end to end. Coming up with a hypothetical reason why it would be easy vs hypothesizing why it might be that we're just getting around to one developer announcing pre rendering that hugely improves track counts, this is an argument that's next to pointless. I was trying to give the developers a break, you kinda want to scold them.

Also latency is not tied to your CPU the way you are imagining it. Lower cpu use does not directly lower latency. its the other way around.

I never said that, faster CPUs are capable of lower latency.

Lower latency from a smaller buffer will increase CPU demands. What happens is that there is a data path the audio has to take, involving a buffer; and the smaller the buffer, the lower the latency. That latency is fixed, based on the buffer size. However, the smaller buffer you make, the more the CPU will be crunched. So obviously if you have a more efficient or faster CPU, you can get away with lowering the buffer size for less latency and not be as bothered by the increased CPU use. But making the CPU more efficient doesn't magically give you lower latency, it merely makes it possible for you to reduce the buffer size even more if you so desire.

This is a matter of communication breakdown. I've done this for quite some time, I know all that. My point is I think MOTU are using pre rendering to give the impression of lower latency.

The example you gave of arming 7 tracks, does not increase latency, it merely increases CPU demands. So it may be that you can't arm 7 tracks without either increasing the buffer size (which increases latency), or suffering tremendous CPU crunching and perhaps audio drop outs.
What Motu says they have done is to cut in half the latency for any given buffer size. Its yet to be seen how this effects CPU performance.

If you had gotten the point of what I was saying you would have understood that I'm skeptical of MOTU's lower latency claim, because any pre rendered track is going to free cpu giving better performance at lower latencies. So arming 7 tracks will not free them from your CPU, thus not lowering demands on your CPU, and causing no improvements. My guess is this is what is going on with their claim of cutting latency in half. I can run at a buffer of 32 with just one instrument armed and playing now, if I have 4 or so tracks of instruments 32 becomes impossible. The short of it is I think them claiming lower over all latency is entirely due to pre rendering, since freeing up tracks will lower CPU demands making it possible to lower your latency settings etc. Turn off pre rendering and my guess is no improvement in latency.

Regarding your point about Diva, again, this is new improvement is not related to core utilization, so I do not see the relevance.

And you know that how? I'm not at all trying to be rude, but you simply don't know, period. There is a clear connection between CPU and latency, higher speed CPUs made lower latency setting possible, lower latency settings cost CPU. Better core utilization definitely would improve your ability to lower latency. But Diva being able to use multiple cores could be hindered by threads/cores being busy rendering tracks in the background.

The new feature will ultimately give all of your plugins, including Diva more breathing room by rendering stuff in the background so that every time you hit play it doesn't have to render it again in real time. This can all be done with threads. 4 cores does not mean you can only have 4 tasks happening at once. many many threads can be happening, even on a single core machine.

Anytime your CPU is being used it's being used, whether you call it threads or core utilization, or... If one of your cores is busy rendering tracks in the background it will not have resources to help with CPU duties from a multi core capable plug in like Diva. In case you aren't aware Diva and a few other U-He plug ins can use more than one core/thread, which is quite an engineering feat on their part because most DAWs including DP use one thread per track. Plus you know you're calling CPU freeing up "breathing room", which in no small way is improved core utilization. Do you really think CPU is improved by multi core and multi thread machines to the point to where you're not paying any cost at all for threads being used? There's a trade off with multi core machines in terms of CPUs, a four core 3ghz machine can handle more plug ins on a single track than an 8 core 2.5ghz machine. The exception here is Diva and the rare multi core capable plug ins out there that circumvent the DAW limitation of one thread per track. Diva I was guessing, could be hindered by background processing of currently non-record enabled tracks. I'm not quite sure why you think that this feature that isn't even out yet will cause no CPU hit because, threads!?

In any case, another thread at KVR has turned into a nit picking war, pre release of the feature we're dissecting.

[Dewdman42]

scold them? Is english your native language? Just curious, you have badly mis interpreted what I have written several times. Peace bro no need to get so upset is there?

The low latency and the new pre rendering feature are totally separate..you are conflating them.

Yes many software and especially DAW software will run multiple threads per core. This is a complex subject, but the only point is that DAW's are not constrained in the way you implied.

you wrote a lot of confusing things in this last post, not going to address them all, but the bottom line is that the new MOTU feature is going to make life much better for everyone, including those with 2 cores, 4 cores, 8 cores and those using Diva and every other high CPU plugin. It consolidates CPU usage, so actually the more cpu intensive your plugins are, the more its going to help you!