Arturia Pigments 3 is out!

[Arashi]

Depends on the patch, and how you play it. A patch with a high voice count and long release will slaughter your CPU if you play a bunch of different notes in rapid succession.

Well you can say that about pretty much any synth ,some will kill your CPU with multiple voices and polyphony , but others won't.

True, but it's a difference of degree. With a sufficiently complex patch, it takes relatively few voices for Pigments to overload my CPU.

Don't get me wrong…I really like Pigments. It has one of the best workflows of all the complex "kitchen sink" synth plugins. I just wish I could go nuts and freely experiment with all that power without worrying that I'll end up with something that uses too much CPU to be practical. You end up having to make a mental budget and worry about how much every feature costs…for example, the new Jup 8V filter (which sounds great) is extremely expensive, and that cost is incurred per-voice.

I think it still has lots of room for optimization, and hope to see some big improvements there.

[muki]

I never owned a Pigments version before 3 so can't say if it's better or worse now.

i have it from v2.0 on

from what i can tell it's the latest, 3.1.0.1552 9th july,
which is noticeable, extremely slow on loading

iirc
the version prior to that,
3.0.0.1375 apr 20th,
was the faster (5 sec) one

loading an additional instance in another DAW's slot
is faster with the 3.1 version - around 9 sec
so maybe besides chache-stuff, the phoning-home-routine is doing its slowdown...?

p.s.:
i'm here in mac-AU-logic-land...

[Teksonik]

Yes I'm running 3.1.0.1552 as well just on Win 10. I just timed it again and 26 seconds for the first instance and 15 for the second. Doesn't sound like that long but when you're sitting there staring at the screen it seems a lot longer.

Pigments is the only Arturia synth I own so I wonder if they're all that slow?

Ooops I lied I've got Analog Lab 4 and V and both of them took about 45 seconds to load.

[muki]

after a fresh restart of the DAW
first launch of
the demo of buchla easel takes 8sec20
ditto (8"20) with the demo of CMI
both demos have also been updated and are the latest versions...

so i would say: it's pigment that has become slow-launching

[hoxclab]

I had Pigments for a while. Nothing really blew my mind with the synth. Nothing I couldn’t do in Omnisphere either. I don’t really care much for the GUI of Arturias stuff. Something seems unfinished but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

[LeVzi]

Depends on the patch, and how you play it. A patch with a high voice count and long release will slaughter your CPU if you play a bunch of different notes in rapid succession.

Well you can say that about pretty much any synth ,some will kill your CPU with multiple voices and polyphony , but others won't.

True, but it's a difference of degree. With a sufficiently complex patch, it takes relatively few voices for Pigments to overload my CPU.

Don't get me wrong…I really like Pigments. It has one of the best workflows of all the complex "kitchen sink" synth plugins. I just wish I could go nuts and freely experiment with all that power without worrying that I'll end up with something that uses too much CPU to be practical. You end up having to make a mental budget and worry about how much every feature costs…for example, the new Jup 8V filter (which sounds great) is extremely expensive, and that cost is incurred per-voice.

I think it still has lots of room for optimization, and hope to see some big improvements there.

Serum is a CPU killer in the right mode, same issue there, you can have a patch that's sitting at 50-60% but again, that's just a case of freeze and be done with it.

The more I experiment with Pigments I can see its in the same ball park, and that's not a massive issue, only problem is if you wanted to bring it in late in a project that's already pretty CPU heavy.

Thankfully there are always ways around it.

Zen 4 hopefully will be the answer too all CPU heavy items

[Arashi]

Serum is a CPU killer in the right mode, same issue there, you can have a patch that's sitting at 50-60% but again, that's just a case of freeze and be done with it.

The more I experiment with Pigments I can see its in the same ball park, and that's not a massive issue, only problem is if you wanted to bring it in late in a project that's already pretty CPU heavy.

Yeah, I suppose power = responsibility, and you just have to learn how to use your tools effectively. Maybe the reason Pigments stands out as CPU hungry is the UI makes it really fun and easy to spend your CPU budget very quickly, combined with the fact that some modes and modules are significantly more expensive than others.

[LeVzi]

Serum is a CPU killer in the right mode, same issue there, you can have a patch that's sitting at 50-60% but again, that's just a case of freeze and be done with it.

The more I experiment with Pigments I can see its in the same ball park, and that's not a massive issue, only problem is if you wanted to bring it in late in a project that's already pretty CPU heavy.

Yeah, I suppose power = responsibility, and you just have to learn how to use your tools effectively. Maybe the reason Pigments stands out as CPU hungry is the UI makes it really fun and easy to spend your CPU budget very quickly, combined with the fact that some modes and modules are significantly more expensive than others.

It is easy to overcook stuff if the synth has a plethora of inbuilt effects. I do that loads and then see the patch red lining the CPU lol

[Arashi]

It is easy to overcook stuff if the synth has a plethora of inbuilt effects. I do that loads and then see the patch red lining the CPU lol

By the way, is your sig a Mayday/Westbam reference? I believe that was the name/theme of one of their events in the early 90s.

[LeVzi]

It is easy to overcook stuff if the synth has a plethora of inbuilt effects. I do that loads and then see the patch red lining the CPU lol

By the way, is your sig a Mayday/Westbam reference? I believe that was the name/theme of one of their events in the early 90s.

No, but it may well have been. It was from the 90's rave called Helter Skelter, that used the motto "Forward Ever, Backward Never" not sure where the promoters (Dave & Penny) got that from tbh.

[Tj Shredder]

It is easy to overcook stuff if the synth has a plethora of inbuilt effects. I do that loads and then see the patch red lining the CPU lol

By the way, is your sig a Mayday/Westbam reference? I believe that was the name/theme of one of their events in the early 90s.

No, but it may well have been. It was from the 90's rave called Helter Skelter, that used the motto "Forward Ever, Backward Never" not sure where the promoters (Dave & Penny) got that from tbh.

It is a quote of the old GDR dictators…

[LeVzi]

It is easy to overcook stuff if the synth has a plethora of inbuilt effects. I do that loads and then see the patch red lining the CPU lol

By the way, is your sig a Mayday/Westbam reference? I believe that was the name/theme of one of their events in the early 90s.

No, but it may well have been. It was from the 90's rave called Helter Skelter, that used the motto "Forward Ever, Backward Never" not sure where the promoters (Dave & Penny) got that from tbh.

It is a quote of the old GDR dictators…

I know nothing about that, nor do I care, it was used as a positive motto for a 90's rave.

[zzz00m]

Yes I'm running 3.1.0.1552 as well just on Win 10. I just timed it again and 26 seconds for the first instance and 15 for the second. Doesn't sound like that long but when you're sitting there staring at the screen it seems a lot longer.

Pigments is the only Arturia synth I own so I wonder if they're all that slow?

Ooops I lied I've got Analog Lab 4 and V and both of them took about 45 seconds to load.

Pigments 3 and Analog Lab V both take about 10 secs to load here. So they are the slow ones.

My other V Collection 8 synths take about 5 secs each to load.

[Teksonik]

Well it must be GUI related then as Pigments and Analog Lab have pretty complex graphics. Or the loading of wavetables or all the content in Analog Lab.

I just tried Analog Lab V again and it took 1 minute 14 seconds to load on this system. I just remembered that while this system has an SSD system drive all my plugins are on the D: drive which is a spinning hard drive so that explains why they're so slow here. I'll time them on my studio computer just out of curiosity but I remember the last time I used Pigments thinking to myself "damn this is taking a long time to load".

[tactile_coast]

P3 15 seconds, ALV 20 seconds on an i5 4690k double that on an i5 6200u both on SSDs. I'm fairly sure it was much less than that back on P2 and AL4.