Is there any host sequencer on Windows that can effectively use 32 cores/64 logical cores?

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Amelia70 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:01 pm
stamp wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 3:42 pm @Amelia70 have you ever thought of using two machines synced via smpte instead of only one? You could go with 2 Ryzen 9 3950x having 16 cores each with better latency (less numa cores) and less hassle regarding cooling. This way you could probably reach higher single core clock speeds (given good cooling 4.4 maybe 4.5ghz).
I have thought about it but we'd be pushed for room, and the noise factor kind of worries me. Appreciate the thought though. Perhaps we are all barking up the wrong tree here and what I need is still a combination of dedicated DSP to monitor those incoming tracks, and a good strong CPU to play VI's when necessary. It just depresses me somewhat as it makes me think of PT HDX all over again, truly. The thing is though, that CPU would have to be able to deal with huge amounts of recorded audio tracks with effects. I know it's hard to believe, but I literally edit and *compose* better with audio tracks once the initial sequences are down, rather than midi. I'm not joking. I create and chop like a samurai with audio files..
Mmmh... I see. You have to still consider the fact that cooling a 32core Threadripper is not a trivial task considering its nearly 300w tdp whereas 2 3950xs with just 105w tdp will produce much less heat per chip and therefor less noise while cooling.

Anyway, I hope you'll find a solution that suits your needs.
Good luck!

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Amelia70 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 4:56 pm PS I found some of those DAW bench scores, and even the 3950X is annihilating the 9900K so i really don't understand why this processor seems to be the holy grail.
Got a link? I've Googled but for some reason don't seem to get anything like that. Thanks in advance!
Last edited by Funkybot's Evil Twin on Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Jim Roseberry wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:29 pm
stamp wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 3:24 pm Threadripper 3970x has 3.7 base clock and turbos up to 4.5 and is still Zen 2. If you have a good cooling solution it will for sure keep a stady 4.2/4.3 on all cores beating everything else out there. The 9900k can't keep all cores at 5ghz at the same time.
We've built countless machines using the 9900k... with all 8 cores locked at 5GHz.
Rock-solid...
The machine used to read/write this message is running said configuration.

Ryzen has tested/shown (relatively speaking) low OC headroom (across all three generations).

With both AMD and Intel, the higher the core-count, the lower the maximum clock-speed you can achieve with rock-solid stability.
Run a heavy stress-test with the 109980xe, 9980xe, and 3970x with all cores locked at max turbo frequency. It'll bomb...
Thanks for claryfying. I don't have any experience with that chip.

Edit: are you talking stock or overclocking?

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Also, read this interesting post from GS:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpos ... count=1021

This is just the DAW. So Cubase is out for low latency lots of plugins workflow.

You may not like how it looks... but Reaper is still a performance beast at lowest latencies compared to most other DAWs, except maybe Digital Performer, which uses a similar trick to Reaper's anticipative processing (they call it Pre-Gen).
Last edited by EvilDragon on Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:32 pm
Amelia70 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 4:56 pm PS I found some of those DAW bench scores, and even the 3950X is annihilating the 9900K so i really don't understand why this processor seems to be the holy grail.
Got a link? I've Googled but for some reason don't seem to get anything like that. Thanks in advance!
I couldn't find any DAWbenches with 3950X. It's only been out since Nov 25th... so it's pretty fresh. Will take some time for some proper DAWbenches to start coming in...

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EvilDragon wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:45 pm
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:32 pm
Amelia70 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 4:56 pm PS I found some of those DAW bench scores, and even the 3950X is annihilating the 9900K so i really don't understand why this processor seems to be the holy grail.
Got a link? I've Googled but for some reason don't seem to get anything like that. Thanks in advance!
I couldn't find any DAWbenches with 3950X. It's only been out since Nov 25th... so it's pretty fresh. Will take some time for some proper DAWbenches to start coming in...
That's what I thought too until I saw Amelia70's post. I read it as saying there was a DAW bench score comparing the 3950X and 9900K. Barring anything unexpected, I plan on building one or the other next year.

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Another thing to keep in mind is that the 9900k is a $500 (USD) CPU.
We're comparing it to CPUs costing $1000-$2000.
Due to the high clock-speed, you have to go with significantly more cores, under ideal circumstances (heavily multi-thread scenarios) to best its performance.

With the 9980xe, 109980xe, or 3970x... you're talking large water-cooler to keep heat in check.
Nowhere near as quiet as the 9900k...
Jim Roseberry
Purrrfect Audio
www.studiocat.com
jim@studiocat.com

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Also Amelia - Jim is a DAW builder and knows this stuff inside out. Take heed. :)

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EvilDragon wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:21 pm
Amelia70 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:01 pmThe thing is though, that CPU would have to be able to deal with huge amounts of recorded audio tracks with effects. I know it's hard to believe, but I literally edit and *compose* better with audio tracks once the initial sequences are down, rather than midi. I'm not joking. I create and chop like a samurai with audio files..
Once you're in audio track world with your VIs bounced, most any DAW should be quite alright with a gazillion of tracks going on. It's just a matter of how many plugins you can get going simultaneously.

BTW, Cubase DID have an issue when you had more than 28 logical cores in the machine, but they fixed this in Cubase 10 AFAIK.

Studio One got some CPU improvements recently, but it's still not as efficient with Kontakt as Reaper is, from my tests.
They have only fixed it for tracks that are playing back on "asio guard" . For tracks that have the record or monitor button engaged, Cubase 10 now limits the total cores it can use to 6, even if you had an 128 core cpu. That's the issue.. If we went Cubase we'd absolutely have to have a DSP solution to deal with the large amount of incoming tracks we monitor prior to recording. I have this info on very good authority.
Windows 10 Pro|Intel 9960X @ 4.4 GHZ|128GB Corsair|16TB SSD|AMD 5700XT|Gigabyte Designare|Avid HDX x2|Antelope Orion 32HD x2|Pro Tools 2019.12

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Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:32 pm
Amelia70 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 4:56 pm PS I found some of those DAW bench scores, and even the 3950X is annihilating the 9900K so i really don't understand why this processor seems to be the holy grail.
Got a link? I've Googled but for some reason don't seem to get anything like that. Thanks in advance!
Sorry I confused the colours on the graph.. they are all so similar. However, with magnifying glasses engaged at full tilt, I can see the 3900X is beating the 9900K by 15% at 128 buffer. However, it's the effects where it the word annihilation comes into play.. not VI performance (even though it is still ahead there) and the 3950X will only be better yet again.

There you go, 117 FX instances vs 91 at 64 buffer.. and that's only for the 12 core.. Unless I explained it completely wrong, effects power is what we need the most of.

http://www.scanproaudio.info/wp-content ... 19Q3-2.jpg

That's a very handy ~25%, showing it is scaling very well, and would have been an even bigger difference had the 3900X a stronger single core performance.

I am sorry but I just do not agree with anything most have said, and that's from my own experience. Maybe it's a windows thing, but on mac, PT scales perfectly across more cores, and our minimal experience with Logic showed the same thing. This is why the whole topic was about whether a windows DAW exists that would scale as nicely as those two do on Mac.

The last thing I just read, that the 16 core 4ghz will not be more powerful than the 8 core 5ghz, makes me want to honestly just close the topic. I am getting no where, as people are trying to indoctrinate me to their way of thinking, when all i asked was whether there was a windows DAW that was programmed to actually use 64 threads. It's either yes or no. Samplitude has a maximum 32 for example.
The 3970X will be an effects monster and I am sticking to that belief.

The 9900K will NOT do what i need, period. It will not allow 128 to 400 tape plugins and other effects and a few Vi's as well. This is pointless, and I will just test every host program for myself and find out. I'll try to get some time at a friend's studio who has a new mac pro coming (24 core), where she will allow me to install bootcamp and try a large multi core setup for myself. That's the answer. Please forget I ever asked this, and forgive me for such controversy. I have learned my lesson.
Windows 10 Pro|Intel 9960X @ 4.4 GHZ|128GB Corsair|16TB SSD|AMD 5700XT|Gigabyte Designare|Avid HDX x2|Antelope Orion 32HD x2|Pro Tools 2019.12

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PS Funky none of that was aimed at you personally.
Windows 10 Pro|Intel 9960X @ 4.4 GHZ|128GB Corsair|16TB SSD|AMD 5700XT|Gigabyte Designare|Avid HDX x2|Antelope Orion 32HD x2|Pro Tools 2019.12

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Amelia70 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:45 pmwhen all i asked was whether there was a windows DAW that was programmed to actually use 64 threads. It's either yes or no.
Yes. Reaper. 128 cores. From Reaper 6.0 changelog:

Multiprocessing: auto-detect up to 128 threads
Multiprocessing: increase anticipative FX hard limit to 128 threads, live FX hard limit to 64 threads


Other DAWs - I don't know, but Cubase obviously not as you've already found out. Live was never a particularly CPU efficient DAW. S1 is still not as good as Reaper overall, and I'm not sure Presonus ever divulged up to how many cores they support...
Last edited by EvilDragon on Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:55 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Yep, that was one of the nice new 6.0 updates.

Was interesting to see the "no major new features" complaints on the Reaper forums considering all the under the hood stuff that went in to HDPI and performance on top of the actual new features.

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EvilDragon wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 5:35 pm except maybe Digital Performer, which uses a similar trick to Reaper's anticipative processing (they call it Pre-Gen).
Haven't (yet) tried DP 10.1, but (IME) DP 10 is one of the worst performing DAWs when it comes to working at the smallest ASIO buffer sizes.

Using my same example from above, DP can't run a single instance of Helix Native (glitch-free) at 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size. Granted, this is pushing the limits of ultra low round-trip latency... but other applications can do it without issue.
Jim Roseberry
Purrrfect Audio
www.studiocat.com
jim@studiocat.com

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DP 10.0 on Windows wasn't exactly fun and games. They had a metric shitton of fixes in 10.1 so maybe worth a shot testing it again... Then again I'm not gonna do 96k/32 spls so probably not a huge deal for me. I work at 48k/128 spls.

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