Official Serum 2 thread!

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Cakewalk use multi-core process 'something',if enable it as option and i guess that's helpful when have more than 4 cores and work on let say 30-40 tracks mix.
I hesitate is it worth extra money for cpu with 16 cores,if can't use them...

Multiple cores will be used on multitrack project, it's the single instance of Serum that's not very well distributed across cores.

Let say i play 4-5 instruments made with Serum2,5-6 with other synths in real time,each Serum instrument will be processed by a single core,others distributed to more cores,so 16 cores should be making better job than 8,is that correct?
Trying to justify the money for more cores :):)
Will be interesting if somebody start a topic ''Most efficient vst Synths for multi-core cpu'' :):)
Cheers

[tumface]

Let say i play 4-5 instruments made with Serum2,5-6 with other synths in real time,each Serum instrument will be processed by a single core,others distributed to more cores,so 16 cores should be making better job than 8,is that correct?

Yeah, but if you can get the equivalent amount of performance in fewer cores, that's better. Because it's easy to split up a single core to do more work.

Let's say you have a CPU made by OneStrongCore Company with 1 super powerful core, as powerful as a CPU with 8 weak cores. And you have a DAW project with 5 tracks, each with 1 instrument. That 1 core CPU can handle rendering the audio of all 5 tracks, even if the 5 tracks in total use up like 80% of the available CPU power. It just renders them one at a time, and finishes before the deadline of the audio buffer needing to be played through your audio interface. No problem.

But then, let's say you have a CPU made by ManyWeakCores Company, which has 8 weak CPU cores that add together to be equivalent to 1 super powerful CPU core. If you take that same project with 5 tracks each with 1 instrument, now your 8 core CPU can't render it in real time anymore. None of the 8 cores individually are strong enough to render one of the instrument instances. The 8 cores can do their work at same time as each other, but there's still no way for them to meet the deadline. Because there's not an easy way to divide the work of 5 instruments among the 8 CPU cores with the existing VST API. Some VSTs have internal multithreading, where they "borrow" some CPU cores from the system behind the back of the DAW, but this can cause problems if your ASIO latency is too low, or if multiple plugins start "stealing" (it's not really stealing, it's totally allowed, but...) CPU cores at the same time, or if your system starts nearing 90% total CPU usage or above.

Of course, nobody makes super strong single core CPUs anymore, since we seem to have hit the limits of doing that. So, you have to get CPUs with multiple cores. If you can get a CPU with 10 cores with the same total power as a CPU with 16 cores for the same price, get the one with 10 cores.

[tumface]

accidental double post.

[Caine123]

why cant you set a default preset folder for Serum 1 and 2 for Serum 2? this is very cumbersome...

[Gam456]

The fx tail is still broken in Reaper
Basically, fx will stop at the end of the clip.

[nanostream]

I’m not sure the update is live yet. The website is showing a wrong release date, and hovering over the download link points to the old version (2.0.18).

[Igro]

There is no update yet.

[Bartone]

Nothing about CPU it seems?

[cb8rwh]

If you mean when you press stop on the transport then have you unchecked the 'Silence not + FX tails when host transport stops'?

The fx tail is still broken in Reaper
Basically, fx will stop at the end of the clip.

[jrwaltb]

Nothing about CPU it seems?

Like I said, I just ran Serum 2 and Phaseplant to compare and both took up massive identical+/- cpu for certain things except the resampling in Serum 2 kills Phaseplant and the quality of the oscillators/S2 filters/Sampler/Spectral plus the sync to BPM options is unmatched right now. I think Steve mentioned there might be an issue with certain chipsets so you might want to go to the Xfer forum as he answers posts frequently. I have an M1 so maybe AMD/Intel have a different issue.

BTW: The date on the download is wrong but its actually 2.19 like it says : https://xferrecords.com/product_downloads/serum-2

[vanerio]

Nothing about CPU it seems?

Like I said, I just ran Serum 2 and Phaseplant to compare and both took up massive identical+/- cpu for certain things except the resampling in Serum 2 kills Phaseplant and the quality of the oscillators/S2 filters/Sampler/Spectral plus the sync to BPM options is unmatched right now. I think Steve mentioned there might be an issue with certain chipsets so you might want to go to the Xfer forum as he answers posts frequently. I have an M1 so maybe AMD/Intel have a different issue.

BTW: The date on the download is wrong but its actually 2.19 like it says : https://xferrecords.com/product_downloads/serum-2

That's your case, not everyone's.
My test: x3 osc (unison x8) -> 24 dB/oct lowpass filter -> x4 notes chord
Results:
Serum 2: 18 % CPU
PhasePlant: 13 % CPU
MSoundFactory 1 % CPU or 2 % with oversampling (yes, 1%, 18 times less)

[tumface]

MSoundFactory 1 % CPU or 2 % with oversampling (yes, 1%, 18 times less)

I believe MSoundFactory uses internal multithreading by default, meaning that the DAW will not see the additional load on the CPU up until the moment you run out of CPU, when it will suddenly report 100% and you get buffer underruns. That doesn't mean it's literally using 1% the CPU of the others.

(But I do agree with you that Serum 2 performance seems to vary a lot by chipset.)

[vanerio]

MSoundFactory 1 % CPU or 2 % with oversampling (yes, 1%, 18 times less)

I believe MSoundFactory uses internal multithreading by default, meaning that the DAW will not see the additional load on the CPU up until the moment you run out of CPU, when it will suddenly report 100% and you get buffer underruns. That doesn't mean it's literally using 1% the CPU of the others.

(But I do agree with you that Serum 2 performance seems to vary a lot by chipset.)

Not the case, same behaviour with Multi-core on and off. (and of course task manager checked)

[tumface]

Not the case, same behaviour with Multi-core on and off. (and of course task manager checked)

Interesting. Might make sense if MSoundFactory has specific unison implementations for its modules, instead of cloning the oscillators. I believe Hive, Dune, and a few others work that way, but Serum and Phase Plant do not. Just guessing. Impressive either way.

[tumface]

That's your case, not everyone's.
My test: x3 osc (unison x8) -> 24 dB/oct lowpass filter -> x4 notes chord
Results:
Serum 2: 18 % CPU
PhasePlant: 13 % CPU
MSoundFactory 1 % CPU or 2 % with oversampling (yes, 1%, 18 times less)

I tried your test, but slightly changed, on my M1 Pro Mac. 48khz, 128 sample buffer.

2 saw oscillators at 16x unison, into a clean 24 db/oct lowpass filter, playing 4 notes. I just eyeballed this on Live 12's CPU meter. I could take more accurate measurements using Bitwig's DSP graph, but I think this is good enough for a rough approximation.

Dune 3: 2%
Hive 2: 2%
Phase Plant (have to use 4x osc, because of 8x unison limit): 7%
Serum 1: 27%
Serum 2: 12%

Maybe Serum 2 added a smarter unison implementation?

Notes:
- Dune 3, Hive 2, and Phase Plant have dedicated saw oscillators. Serum 1 and Serum 2 don't have dedicated saw oscillators and are always in wavetable oscillator mode.
- Hive 2 is set to "Clean" mode to more closely match Dune 3's default behavior, which is also clean. "Normal" mode uses more CPU than Dune 3. (But choosing a more expensive filter in Dune 3 also makes its CPU go up.)
- Phase Plant's normal (non-non-linear) filter cramps and doesn't sound great, unlike the filters in all of the other synths here.
- Phase Plant's CPU starts going up as soon as you add an envelope modulator for the filter, which isn't the case for Hive and Dune when using the fixed-routing modulation envelopes. Using the mod matrix probably makes the usage go up, though it was too low to measure. Serum 1 and 2's usage goes up less per envelope modulator than Phase Plant. The mod matrix probably gets more expensive in Dune 3 if you set its modulation rate to audio rate.