Kilohearts Updates the Entire Kilohearts Ecosystem to v2 - Including Phase Plant

[simmo75]

I bought phase plant at the weekend, I think it’s good but… why bother having a sampler module when it’s so limited, needs at least timestretch, pitch shift, the ability to slice and a granular option.

I love the synths and the GUI is great.

Really hoping the sampler module gets improved on, and a sequencer/arp everything else is awesome.

Slice? On a synth? AFAIK PP is meant to be a synthesizer, not a sampling workstation. It is true that the more the merrier but if less is more then the less the merrier!

Yes, slice is pretty standard on samplers, which this has. It claims to be a sampler too, or err.. it wouldn't have a sampler.

[scott_free]

Slice? On a synth? AFAIK PP is meant to be a synthesizer, not a sampling workstation. It is true that the more the merrier but if less is more then the less the merrier!

Ahh yes, but if less is more, imagine how much more more will be.

[zzz00m]

Thanks. It works. Synth is nice, but compared to all synths I have and most synths I have demoed, too many presets of phase plant unfortunately are real cpu hogs on my machine.

It might be helpful to others if you provided your system specs in that comment. CPU hog is a subjective observation...

[DCrown]

Thanks. It works. Synth is nice, but compared to all synths I have and most synths I have demoed, too many presets of phase plant unfortunately are real cpu hogs on my machine.

It might be helpful to others if you provided your system specs in that comment. CPU hog is a subjective observation...

It's always subjective, so actually not necessary to mention it and google search confirmed I am not the only one faced with it. It really depends on your computer first and foremost, some write Diva is high on cpu, but I never had any cpu peaks, Arturia Pigments demo medium high here, cherry audio is high, but still can use it, Avenger only very little presets are high, but not close as high as Phase Plant and the rest is/was ok, I demoed most of available synths.
I am fine with the synths I have, just wanted to demo phase plant, it's nice, but it won't make wanna upgrade my system to maybe be able to use it, freezing tracks is no option
for me, someone wrote me yesterday that he often freezes tracks with Phase Plant, also the cpu crackles are annoying with some presets. It's not for me and it's ok. Btw you can have similar computer specs, but different cpu usage, so other things also infuence it like daw, settings, buffer size, maybe also some pc's brand might be generally better than some other etc

[EnGee]

Some presets uses high cpu (about 35% to 40%) but most of the presets I use (and I make) are in the 10% to 20% on both my computers.

Personally, I don't have a problem in cpu usage even if I use 5 or 6 tracks of PhasePlant, which more than enough for my music. But if you use 50+ tracks, like some producers, you might have a problem. Maybe you can use a light cpu synth for some tracks would help keeping the cpu under control or make your own presets for bass and effects in PhasePlant.

[SamDi]

Some presets uses high cpu (about 35% to 40%) but most of the presets I use (and I make) are in the 10% to 20% on both my computers.

Personally, I don't have a problem in cpu usage even if I use 5 or 6 tracks of PhasePlant, which more than enough for my music. But if you use 50+ tracks, like some producers, you might have a problem. Maybe you can use a light cpu synth for some tracks would help keeping the cpu under control or make your own presets for bass and effects in PhasePlant.

Don‘t know what you all have with your computers. I once made an experiment, to test some synths how much CPU they use. And for Phase Plant, with a very simple patch (saw with filter and envelope), I had something around 500 instances, before my computer went down to the knees. It seems to have even a more lightweight imprint than Serum, which started to make problems around 400 instances.
And we are talking about a midclass CPU here. Clearly patches can get complex. But an average from 10 to 20% ?

[DCrown]

Some presets uses high cpu (about 35% to 40%) but most of the presets I use (and I make) are in the 10% to 20% on both my computers.

Personally, I don't have a problem in cpu usage even if I use 5 or 6 tracks of PhasePlant, which more than enough for my music. But if you use 50+ tracks, like some producers, you might have a problem. Maybe you can use a light cpu synth for some tracks would help keeping the cpu under control or make your own presets for bass and effects in PhasePlant.

Don‘t know what you all have with your computers. I once made an experiment, to test some synths how much CPU they use. And for Phase Plant, with a very simple patch (saw with filter and envelope), I had something around 500 instances, before my computer went down to the knees. It seems to have even a more lightweight imprint than Serum, which started to make problems around 400 instances.
And we are talking about a midclass CPU here. Clearly patches can get complex. But an average from 10 to 20% ?

Yes, every computer and setup is different.
I am also surprised sometimes to read plugin x is high on cpu when I don't have issues and vice versa, that's the way it is.
But cpu consumption influences my buying decisions, luckily most plugins can be demoed.
My most used softsynth Avenger 3.5 - 18% (average about 8%) depending on preset, but can not have lower buffer size than 128. Maybe 8 presets about 22%, that's acceptable. So depending on project I would be glad if even Avenger could improve cpu usage.

[EnGee]

And we are talking about a midclass CPU here. Clearly patches can get complex. But an average from 10 to 20% ?

That's on average for the factory presets. Why? What's strange?! How much these two presets hit your cpu?

Below are two screenshots from my Windows 11/ Ryzen 5800X PC (My Mini Mac is about similar, more or less).

Here is a chord of three notes for a Pad:

PhasePlant - Blue Messiah Pad.jpg

and here is single note repeated fast for a bass:

PhasePlant - Classic House Bass.jpg

[zzz00m]

Thanks. It works. Synth is nice, but compared to all synths I have and most synths I have demoed, too many presets of phase plant unfortunately are real cpu hogs on my machine.

It might be helpful to others if you provided your system specs in that comment. CPU hog is a subjective observation...

It's always subjective, so actually not necessary to mention it and google search confirmed I am not the only one faced with it. It really depends on your computer first and foremost, some write Diva is high on cpu, but I never had any cpu peaks, Arturia Pigments demo medium high here, cherry audio is high, but still can use it, Avenger only very little presets are high, but not close as high as Phase Plant and the rest is/was ok, I demoed most of available synths.
I am fine with the synths I have, just wanted to demo phase plant, it's nice, but it won't make wanna upgrade my system to maybe be able to use it, freezing tracks is no option
for me, someone wrote me yesterday that he often freezes tracks with Phase Plant, also the cpu crackles are annoying with some presets. It's not for me and it's ok. Btw you can have similar computer specs, but different cpu usage, so other things also infuence it like daw, settings, buffer size, maybe also some pc's brand might be generally better than some other etc

Interesting. My system runs Phase Plant factory presets without breaking a sweat. Although it is possible to create a patch that overloads the CPU due to it's modular ability to add unlimited components and polyphony.

But I have also observed that Arturia Pigments and some Cherry Audio synths, especially the GX-80, are medium high but usable on my system as well. I just don't see Phase Plant as way up there in the same manner. Just an observation. Not saying that you need a new computer, but was just wondering how or why Phase Plant was getting flagged as a CPU hog on your system.

[DCrown]

Well, I don't know. Pigments was ok, Cherry Audio can get critical sometimes, Phase Plant a lot of presets extremely high on cpu for whatever reason, Diva and Avenger and some more no cpu issues or rarely, Air synths generally super light on cpu, Omnisphere and Pianoteq light on cpu.
That's my experience, whereas I read several times people complaining about very high cpu consumption of Diva or Avenger.
As I wrote, every pc is different and has its preferences for plugins, it's like with food, some people like drinking milk, some have a low tolerance for milk.

[EnGee]

It's useless to just saying heavy or light cpu usage without providing numbers and details of the system used!

[zzz00m]

As I wrote, every pc is different and has its preferences for plugins

That is quite correct, and the reason I was asking about specs. It would be helpful for anyone reading your comment to be able to judge your statement in comparison to the system that they are running. It also could be of use for anyone trying to optimize their system for the plugin under discussion.

Making the statement "CPU heavy" is only meaningful when made in context of a specific system, as every PC is different. And even then, "CPU heavy" can have several degrees of what "heavy" is, ranging from mostly usable with a few limitations to completely unusable.

Will drop this nugget here before I go... I've made the observation with a couple of the "heavier" synths, including Phase Plant, that they are eating up a lot of GPU resources with their fancy animated "eye candy". I am lucky to have an Nvidia GTX 1650 GPU to take some of this load off of my CPU. I would hate to think of what that plugin's graphics rendering hit would be if it was all up to a CPU with integrated graphics!

One way to test for this is to close a synth's GUI while it is playing and you will see a big drop in CPU & GPU usage in your system task manager or 3rd party hardware monitor. Big difference! I frequently observe my GPU hitting 35% with a "heavier" synth GUI open, where GPU utilization normally idles at 4-5% with just the Reaper GUI open.

[DCrown]

It's useless to just saying heavy or light cpu usage without providing numbers and details of the system used!

Useless? What would you use these exact informations for? Some plugins work well on system of x and some don't simple as that. There is no bug or issue to be fixed.
I demoed phase plant and think it's a good plugin, but wouldn't buy it even if it was light on cpu, because I have enough synths, I just wanted to try it once, that's all. Maybe if one had a super computer all plugins would work well, I do not belong to this group, but most of the plugins I demoed were ok on my system and all I have purchased work without issues.
@zz00m
It's like fanboys are defending their fav plugin, the plugin is good, ok!, , but not for me and when you use google you will find out that I am not the only one experiencing that phase plant can be too high on cpu.
Cpu heavy means it's either no fun to use a plugin, because you would have to freeze a track each time, or cpu peaks cause crackles or you can't use a plugin at all, when cpu gets very high, what else should it mean?
I don't need to have every plugin anyway.

[DCrown]

deleted

[martiu]

It's useless to just saying heavy or light cpu usage without providing numbers and details of the system used!

2 cores amd, 1.5ghz each, 2 gb ram, 256 mb video