Apple announces new Mac Mini, Air + 13" MBP featuring their own M1 chip.

[antic604]

Want to process your synth's output with a chorus? Can't be done in parallel, your signal will have to finish the synth's processing before it gets to the chorus.

That's not true anymore even in case of VSTs. Diva is working perfectly in multicore mode i.e. rendering voices on different cores, summing them and then applying chorus

Yes, but Diva's multicore only matters when you're playing a polyphonic patch, e.g. a chord or a melody with overlaping, long notes. Every note gets its own thread/core and therefore can be processed in parallel. If it's a mono patch, like a bassline, there's no difference. PRECISELY because audio processing is inherently serial.

OBVIOUSLY when you have several tracks playing at once their processing can be allocated to different processors, but say you have 4 cores and 16 tracks. This means each core has to - simplifying, obviously - take care of calculating the load from 4 tracks. That's why single-core performance matters and WILL matter for foreseable future.

[antic604]

On modern hosts every synth-plugin usually runs on a separate core. If you got more VSTis than cores the load is distributed amongst the cores.
There are also a few plugins that support multicore. Icarus2 for example makes use of 3 cores per instance, RayBlaster uses 4 per instance.
That's why it makes sense to lots of cores when you run plugins

No one disputes that. But single-core performance is still - and will remain, I think - very important, especially if one's projects consist of fewer, but more complex tracks with heavy instruments and long chains of effects.

I'm not familiar with your plugins, but are you able to distribute monophonic bassline to 2+ cores for the entirety of the signal path? Parhaps oscillators can be split if there's 2+ of them - assuming there's no cross-mod or FM - but what about the rest of the signal path, like waveshaping, filter(s), effects, amps, etc.?

[Sascha Franck]

I'm not familiar with your plugins, but are you able to distribute monophonic bassline to 2+ cores for the entirety of the signal path? Parhaps oscillators can be split if there's 2+ of them - assuming there's no cross-mod or FM - but what about the rest of the signal path, like waveshaping, filter(s), effects, amps, etc.?

Precisely. And it gets even more obvious once we're not talking synths anymore but things such as guitar amp sims. Sure, in case you're running two amps in parallel, that can be taken care of by 2 cores. But any typical guitar amplification signal path is a completely serial affair. And there's quite some amp sims taking even the most powerful CPUs to their limits (such as the Neural DSP stuff), so you'll be running into trouble should you want to add some more stuff to the path, especially in case you want to run everything at the lowest possible buffersizes (which pretty much everybody should want in case timing is a thing in your world).

[antic604]

So, are there any real-life tests for Logic Pro?

Apple says (https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/):

Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction Mac mini systems with Apple M1 chip, and production 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3-based Mac mini systems, all configured with 16GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Logic Pro 10.6.0 with project consisting of multiple tracks, each with an Amp Designer plug-in instance applied. Individual tracks were added during playback until CPU became overloaded. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac mini.

...and I understand Logic Pro 10.6.0 is already out, too:
https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/l ... 59a2a6/mac

[Markus Krause]

I'll explain it again:
Under real-life conditions and with a modern host all synth-plugins are processed on separate cores/threads.

Synths usually also take more CPU than effects. So this is the bottleneck. More cores mean that you can load more synths.

You can easily proof this by yourself. Open the task manager and watch the CPU load.
Also feel free to ask another developer about it. But it seems that they do not longer join this discussion for certain reasons

[antic604]

I'll explain it again:
Under real-life conditions and with a modern host all synth-plugins are processed on separate cores/threads.

Synths usually also take more CPU than effects. So this is the bottleneck. More cores mean that you can load more synths.

I don't know if you really don't understand or just pretend for some kind of effect?

We are not talking about multiple synths or multiple tracks, where OBVIOUSLY multiple cores help. We're talking about single audio chain, like (to stick to U-He stuff) RePro-1 bassline -> Colour Copy delay -> Uhbik-A reverb -> Presswerk compressor -> Satin tape effect.

This, for the most part, can not be split into separate jobs to be processed in parallel, hence it requires fast single-core performance. So the longer the chain and/or more CPU-heavy the plugins, the more single-core perfomance (still) matters.

[chk071]

I'll explain it again:
Under real-life conditions and with a modern host all synth-plugins are processed on separate cores/threads.

Synths usually also take more CPU than effects. So this is the bottleneck. More cores mean that you can load more synths.

The problem arises when a single core can't handle a more expensive synth. That's why single core performance is very relevant.

[zvenx]

.........

We are not talking about multiple synths or multiple tracks, where OBVIOUSLY multiple cores help. We're talking about single audio chain, like (to stick to U-He stuff) RePro-1 bassline -> Colour Copy delay -> Uhbik-A reverb -> Presswerk compressor -> Satin tape effect.

This, for the most part, can not be split into separate jobs to be processed in parallel, hence it requires fast single-core performance. So the longer the chain and/or more CPU-heavy the plugins, the more single-core perfomance (still) matters.

I am not sure about that.

I ran Cubase 11 on my mac... Three different screen shots.
Repro Disabled.
One Track of Repro with a one note bass line
your chain (repro-colourcopy-uhA-presswerk-satin)
Sure looks like Cubase is spreading it out to me.
rsp

[Etienne1973]

[zvenx]

Finally... the ones that really matter for us.

Is the Alchemy though Native Silicon?
Thanks
rsp

[antic604]

I am not sure about that.

I ran Cubase 11 on my mac... Three different screen shots.

Thanks, that's very interesting and surprising to say the least. I'll do my own tests in the evening and post back. It's quite possible I'm wrong about this.

[zvenx]

Please do. I would be surprised if Studio One for instance shows (given its history) different results.
rsp

[Etienne1973]

Finally... the ones that really matter for us.

Is the Alchemy though Native Silicon?
Thanks
rsp

Alchemy 2 should be native because part of the Logic software. Diva as we speak I guess is translated Rosetta 2 stuff.

[zvenx]

Right, I imagine it should be but don't' know if it is.
But it would make sense that it is.
(thought, Nexus 3 was the first native plugin, might be the first third party)
rsp

[Etienne1973]

Hyper-threading seems an advantage for x86. Balancing load better on its way to system overload than M1 at the moment.