2CAudio Kaleidoscope | It's A Trip | Latest Update 1.1

[ontol]

[Sampleconstruct]

Since the last Logic update to version 10.2.1 I noticed a significant performance drop with KS, it was getting as frustrating as in the early days of kaleidoscoping, so today I spent about 2+ hours trying to figure it out and the solution is:

Logic introduced multi-threading in the latest version and this seems to badly interfere with KS, before I had multi-threading set to 400% in KS and buffers in KS and Logic to 1024 samples, that way I could easily play 5-6 instances in real time on my 12 core MacPro (ashtray) and even make a video screencast, after the update it was 3 instances max and whenever I changed a parameter in one of my KS presets, Logic would simply stop playing.

So now I set multi-threading in KS to 100% and the streaming buffer in Logic to “large“ (instead of medium before), this has much improved the performance so I could make this live-on-video impro-jam with 3 instances of KS and some fresh presets just now (processing 3 different external noise sources in each instance).

Still performance is not as good as before the Logic update but at least the frustration is gone again

[Krakatau]

beautiful !!!

[Sampleconstruct]

beautiful !!!

Thank you

[SJ_Digriz]

I still can't use 1 instance no matter what I set buffers to. It's also been a week since I opened a support ticket. No reply so far.

[secretkillerofnames]

Pretty odd guys. I've not been able to use Kaleidoscope at all in Logic until the latest update as it used to overload the first core. Now I can clearly see it spreading across all 4. This is an i7 Quad 2.6 2012 MacMini server btw.

[Andrew Souter]

Logic introduced multi-threading in the latest version and this seems to badly interfere with KS,

we will take a look with the new versions...

In general I found that the 200, 300, and 400% threading settings did nothing positive for us. 100% was the best choice in my tests in logic etc. Denis added 200,300,400 as he thought he saw some speedup from it on his system, but I never saw it myself (except in the case of render times from Sound Forge, 300 was slightly faster than 100, but 200 and 400 were slower than 100). Probably we should remove the 200,300,400 settings.

This number is a "percent of physical cores on your machine". If you have twelve cores, 100% is already 12-threads. Actually 24 threads due to hyper-threading.... at some point there is little sense to thread more than we need to bc there is some overhead to split processing into threads and then recollect and combine them...

When running many instances of KS live in a DAW, it might even make sense to try lower threading setting like 50% or 25% since it will keep most of the processing for a single instance on a single core, and the other instances can be on a different core etc.

This stuff gets very tricky to predict on all the various hosts and OSs and hardware, so it is best to try them in your specific circumstances and see which is fastest for you...

so try 25%, try 50%, try 75% try 100% see which gives the best result for you.

probably we will remove 200,300,400 as they are likely excessive IMHO...

[Andrew Souter]

I still can't use 1 instance no matter what I set buffers to. It's also been a week since I opened a support ticket. No reply so far.

Sorry if i missed it. Can you send again? or tell me what name/email I am looking for?

or ask here if you like...

[Andrew Souter]

BTW Simon, and anyone else who wants to try, try this:

Download this:

http://www.2caudio.com/sitecontent/prod ... resets.zip

Try the following.

1) Set your host/hardware buffer to maximum size (1024, or 2048 is possible).
2) Set KS to use the same value.
3) Quit ALL other apps that are running on your computer.
4) Quit and relaunch your host just to be 100% sure.


5) Create a new empty project.
6) add a stereo AUDIO track. Add some audio file to it.
7) load KS on this track. Load Test preset 1.
Duplicate the track as many times as you can until you get drop outs.

how many tracks/instances can you achieve without dropouts?

try the same test for Test Preset 1, 2 and 3.

Try them both with Threading set to 0FF and 100%. So 6 tests total:

Test Preset 1, threading 100%:
Test Preset 2, threading 100%:
Test Preset 3, threading 100%:
Test Preset 1, threading OFF:
Test Preset 2, threading OFF:
Test Preset 3, threading OFF:

What results do you see?

If anyone tries, be sure to mention your Host and Hardware details.

In a test I just ran using Reaper on Win 8 inside Parallels 9, on OSX.10, I actually see slightly better results in this "max instance" test when KS threading is OFF, and we let the host do the threading for the multiple instances. This will depend really what else is happening in your host though since if you stall only one core on a 12-core machine you will get dropouts. So in a real world test, keeping our threading on, might be better for real-time when other 3rd part plugs are running too. And certainly if you are bouncing KS parts (only KS, not the master bus) you want threading at 100% for Offline so that renders are as blazingly fast as possible.

I saw some impressive numbers today on the build I am using now (427). You guys have 387. Hopefully we will have something to share with you shortly and you can all enjoy a nice performance boost compared to what you have now.

Very curious to know the results of your test though.

[Sampleconstruct]

Without having made the above test yet, I can already state that turning multi-threading off in the KS prefs is a bad idea in Logic 10.2.1 on Yosemite/MacPro 12 core (latest edition). I just tried one of my presets, with threading off (0%) it doesn't play at all, with 100% it plays like a summer breeze and Logic's internal core distributor shows up to 8 cores being used (whereas it shows 2-3 cores with multithreading set to 0%). So there seems to be a big difference from host to host.

[SJ_Digriz]

1) Set your host/hardware buffer to maximum size (1024, or 2048 is possible).

Just curious about this, but I can't actually set my buffers to exactly 1024 and I max out at around 1764. I think 1046 is as close to 1024 as I can get. I don't know if this contributes to my problems or not.

[SJ_Digriz]

I can run 32 instances comfortably without dropouts at 1102 (25ms) buffers. However, I still have the clicky artifacts regardless of 1 instance or 32. This is with multi-threading off in Kaleidoscope. Cubase seems to handle the distribution pretty well.

EDIT: Sorry forgot to say this is Test 1 preset.
EDIT 2: Average CPU usage is about 5% higher and has some higher peeks if I have multi-threading at 100%. But it still seems to distribute evenly in general.

[SJ_Digriz]

I can run 48 instances of Test 3 at 25ms buffers (1102), multi-threading off.

[Andrew Souter]

I can run 32 instances comfortably without dropouts at 1102 (25ms) buffers. However, I still have the clicky artifacts regardless of 1 instance or 32. This is with multi-threading off in Kaleidoscope. Cubase seems to handle the distribution pretty well.

EDIT: Sorry forgot to say this is Test 1 preset.

32 instances of TEST 1 preset!? Really?!?

That is a pretty insane number actually if true.... Test 1 is basically a Maximum CPU usage preset (for the sine resonator). You are sure they are all processing?

What CPU exactly? i7 980x? Is it overclocked?

this is significantly faster than my $10K 12-core Mac Pro if true... like more than 2x faster!

something strange maybe?

[SJ_Digriz]

I can run 32 instances comfortably without dropouts at 1102 (25ms) buffers. However, I still have the clicky artifacts regardless of 1 instance or 32. This is with multi-threading off in Kaleidoscope. Cubase seems to handle the distribution pretty well.

EDIT: Sorry forgot to say this is Test 1 preset.

32 instances of TEST 1 preset!? Really?!?

That is a pretty insane number actually if true.... Test 1 is basically a Maximum CPU usage preset (for the sine resonator). You are sure they are all processing?

What CPU exactly? Is it overclocked?

It's not currently overclocked, I've had it over 4GHz, but had a special cooler on it at the time. I'm sure all 32 (actually got it up to 40) are outputing audio. I'm not sure what Cubase does when you duplicate the track. I put the picture during playback inside Cubase. Just a sec and I'll try to get a screen grab that demonstrates better.