I think everyone who posts in this thread should get a discount on the release.
** Audio effect processing on your video card **
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- Banned
- 6127 posts since 1 Apr, 2004 from Et in Arcadia Ego
Has anyone clued into the fact that this thread is probably free R & D for this guy?
I think everyone who posts in this thread should get a discount on the release.
I think everyone who posts in this thread should get a discount on the release.
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- KVRist
- 38 posts since 8 Dec, 2003
Is there really much decoding to do? Image and audio signal can be directly comparable: You can have audio at 24bit, the same as pixels, and 96 kHz means you would have 96.000 pixels output per second, a cheap ass GeForceFX 5200 can output 111.673.344 pixels at 32 bit(per second), while rendering Quake Team Arena!And isn't it highly likely that this conversion will take an impressive amount of cpy-cycles?
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- KVRist
- 38 posts since 8 Dec, 2003
Oh, and I think that to really unleash the potential of this idea, the first product they should release should be an easily expandable modular synth, like Native have done with Reaktor. The problem with this type of synth is always that it eats truckloads of CPU (at least for those of us who don't have a Nord Modular!) Who needs a convolution reverb anyway!
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- KVRian
- 1349 posts since 12 Jan, 2003 from Paris
A good convolution with no latency and no CPU usage ?????drfx wrote:Who needs a convolution reverb anyway!
ME !
I use SIR a lot and the latency and the CPU usage are 2 big weak points !
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- KVRist
- 401 posts since 4 May, 2004
So, is any of you insiders going to give us some bandwidth/latency figures cause I was unable to dig out any 
Anyway.. this all made me thinking... It's a widespread myth that turning of visual styles in XP has significant influence on system performance and is an often prescribed tweak in "tweak your PC for audio"-type tutorials. But simple A/B test on my system has shown it to be pretty irelevant so I chose "pretty/inspirational" over "squeazing the last drop of power", and compensated a bit by overclocking.
However, on MacOS X and the upcoming M$ Longhorn, all GUI drawing is/will be delegated to GPU. I don't know what kind of an effect this might have on these plans to use GPU for processing loops of audio plugins, nor do I know are Mac able to turn the "shiny" GUI off at all (M$ users, apparently, will be able to opt out to XP style CPU-driven visual styles or, finally, to old windows style-less GUI mode).
Anyway.. this all made me thinking... It's a widespread myth that turning of visual styles in XP has significant influence on system performance and is an often prescribed tweak in "tweak your PC for audio"-type tutorials. But simple A/B test on my system has shown it to be pretty irelevant so I chose "pretty/inspirational" over "squeazing the last drop of power", and compensated a bit by overclocking.
However, on MacOS X and the upcoming M$ Longhorn, all GUI drawing is/will be delegated to GPU. I don't know what kind of an effect this might have on these plans to use GPU for processing loops of audio plugins, nor do I know are Mac able to turn the "shiny" GUI off at all (M$ users, apparently, will be able to opt out to XP style CPU-driven visual styles or, finally, to old windows style-less GUI mode).
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- KVRAF
- 2548 posts since 7 Jul, 2003 from Huntington, WV
Hi peejunk,
If you are worried that the GPU won't have enough capacity to do both the system's graphics and some audio processing at the same time, let me remind you that you can always use more than one video card in the same system. It should be fairly easy to use one for actual graphics needs, and then use one or more additional video cards for audio processing.
On the other hand, once I had booted my computer, launced my programs, and got everything setup the way I wanted, I wouldn't even mind if I had to turn off the display to get the maximum speed boost for GPU audio processing. This would be sort of like the "headless" server boxes that are common in networking applications. You could even have a second computer set up to do nothing but audio, and not even use the video out on that machine, except for initial setup and occasional maintainence. With proper programming, this second computer could be controlled entirely from your first computer, which would naturally have its video output enabled.
The future of high-speed/low-cost computer music might be a cluster of cheap computers stuffed with multiple video cards, to use their GPUs for audio work. Unfotunately by the time all this is developed, the latest computers at the time might make this whole scheme obsolete.
later,
McLilith
If you are worried that the GPU won't have enough capacity to do both the system's graphics and some audio processing at the same time, let me remind you that you can always use more than one video card in the same system. It should be fairly easy to use one for actual graphics needs, and then use one or more additional video cards for audio processing.
On the other hand, once I had booted my computer, launced my programs, and got everything setup the way I wanted, I wouldn't even mind if I had to turn off the display to get the maximum speed boost for GPU audio processing. This would be sort of like the "headless" server boxes that are common in networking applications. You could even have a second computer set up to do nothing but audio, and not even use the video out on that machine, except for initial setup and occasional maintainence. With proper programming, this second computer could be controlled entirely from your first computer, which would naturally have its video output enabled.
The future of high-speed/low-cost computer music might be a cluster of cheap computers stuffed with multiple video cards, to use their GPUs for audio work. Unfotunately by the time all this is developed, the latest computers at the time might make this whole scheme obsolete.
later,
McLilith
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- KVRist
- 401 posts since 4 May, 2004
I think modern GPUs should have more than enough capacity to perform both tasks, I was thinking more in terms of being able to use both of these tasks at the same time.McLilith wrote:If you are worried that the GPU won't have enough capacity to do both the system's graphics and some audio processing at the same time, let me remind you that you can always use more than one video card in the same system. It should be fairly easy to use one for actual graphics needs, and then use one or more additional video cards for audio processing.
I don't know much about multitasking on a GPU: what kind of multitasking is available at all (AFAIK a lot of DSPs work best as single task, wind-up-and-roll kind of machines) and whether Apple, and especially Microsoft who seem to be pretty blind to existance of pro audio market on Windows, will have any intrerest to adapt their software to allow for more general usage of GPUs.
Obviously there will soon be a need for a software standard, and while I beleive Brook is a great step in that direction, if all these software players ignore Brook and eachother and go their own separate ways in utilizing our unused (I rarely play any games) but allready-there GPUs (which has happened too many times to great technological ideas in the past), it might take a long time before the potential is put to proper use.
Having two cards (and one of them still fairly unused) sounds like a decent temporary solution tho, and I suppose that with PCIExpress it will be possible to have two cards on a high-bandwith, low-latency interface, since I'm not really sure whether you can have two AGP cards. I mean, I suppose you could have something like an onboard card and one in the AGP slot since I'm not aware of any motherboards with more than one AGP slot (we must be aware that we're one of less interesting markets from global IT industry POV).
Adding another PC is allready possible with FX Max's tools, VST Link etc. so clusterized home recording is not the future, but rather the present (I'm sure there are allready a lot of people on this board using few computers in a LAN that way) but to me, the whole purpose of this idea is to have more power on EACH ONE computer (just imagine the endless possibilities).
What I'm saying is, why waste any cycles anywhere in your computer.
Warn me if I'm rambling nonsense, btw...
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- KVRAF
- 2548 posts since 7 Jul, 2003 from Huntington, WV
I was just wondering if video cards that support multiple monitors from the same card have more than one GPU? If so, that might be the ultimate implementation of this general idea.
I also had the thought that you might use a lowly PCI video card for your basic video needs, and use the advanced AGP card for audio processing only. I would rather use the faster card for audio, if possible. I'm not sure if peejunk's idea of using an onboard AGP chipset along with an additional AGP card would really work. I thought that you had to turn off any onboard AGP capability in order to use an AGP card. It would be nice if I were wrong.
later,
McLilith
I also had the thought that you might use a lowly PCI video card for your basic video needs, and use the advanced AGP card for audio processing only. I would rather use the faster card for audio, if possible. I'm not sure if peejunk's idea of using an onboard AGP chipset along with an additional AGP card would really work. I thought that you had to turn off any onboard AGP capability in order to use an AGP card. It would be nice if I were wrong.
later,
McLilith
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- KVRist
- 166 posts since 1 Sep, 2004
This is all very exciting. I hope my HP Laptop's Geforce 440 MX Go can take advantage of this technology. If i can get some good EQ's, a decent Delay, and a good Hi Pass Filter out of this technology , i'd be very happy.
i could see software companies licensing this technology, NI for example could repackage a Radeon 9800 Pro ($200 card) as a native DSP for their products. Or at the very least, TC could mark their stuff down... alot..
JamesOne mentioned on the osxaudio and ableton forums that it will also be available for Macintosh. Niiice.
i could see software companies licensing this technology, NI for example could repackage a Radeon 9800 Pro ($200 card) as a native DSP for their products. Or at the very least, TC could mark their stuff down... alot..
JamesOne mentioned on the osxaudio and ableton forums that it will also be available for Macintosh. Niiice.
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- Pick Me Pick me!
- 10241 posts since 12 Mar, 2002 from a state of confusion
well im not expert but I dont think so.. (IIRC) most that do dual monitors have dual ramdacs though (not going to help you with audio processing).. but one GPU..McLilith wrote:I was just wondering if video cards that support multiple monitors from the same card have more than one GPU? If so, that might be the ultimate implementation of this general idea.
however nvidia showcased some newer geforce cards just a couple months ago that does SLI again.. (meaning you can use more than one card (and thus gpu's) to process the graphics (say you have 2 cards - one card does the top half of the monitor and the other card processes the bottom half) which, naturally, means faster framerates...
in the end though.. a system like this would not be economically beneficial for a musician.. you'd be better off buying a couple powercore cards for the price of such a SLI system.
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- KVRian
- 1349 posts since 12 Jan, 2003 from Paris
The geforce 440MX has neither pixel shader nor vertex shader, i'm afraid you won't be able to run any plug on it...adamjay wrote:This is all very exciting. I hope my HP Laptop's Geforce 440 MX Go can take advantage of this technology...
Their schema says it works with pixel shaders...
So directX 9 hardware accelerated video card only.
Geforce 5x00 and 6x00.
ATI 9x00 (x>=5), X800, X600.
The cheaper will be the geforce 5200.
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- KVRAF
- 7315 posts since 7 Mar, 2003
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- KVRian
- 1349 posts since 12 Jan, 2003 from Paris
A 5200 costs around 60 euros in france (VAT included).Amberience wrote:Still cheaper than a dedicated DSP card
I know you talk about the UAD1 and powercore but you also have the emu 0404 which costs 99 euros and has a dedicated DSP...
So i think it's really about the quality of plugins.
And for that we have to wait.