Serum 2

[classic]

Is there anybody else experiencing crackels and wired noises while playing with Serum 2.
I had this from the beginning.

Anything I can do against it?
My system seems to be to slow may be:

Prozessor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz
Installierter RAM 16,0 GB
Speicher 932 GB WDC WD10EALX-009BA0, 932 GB SSD SanDisk SSD PLUS 1000GB
Grafikkarte Radeon RX 570 Series (8 GB)
Systemtyp 64-Bit-Betriebssystem, x64-basierter Prozessor

Thanks a lot:)

[starflakeprj]

Could be Serum 2 is a little bit too damanding for your CPU in general.

[HcDoom]

It's 11 year old CPU, even latest CPUs struggle with certain S2 presets. So, if you are able to upgrade your system, go for it. If you cannot, dont dismiss S1 - still one of the best around.

[whassup]

I don't want to pee into the Serum party but:
For years my CPU was too slow for hefty synths and so I was kinda "forced" to use less CPU demanding synths and often that was Hive.
Great sound, and sure not only for the CPU usage.
Just sayin.
By all means use Serum.

[dionenoid]

viewtopic.php?t=619315&start=675

[Gam456]

It's 11 year old CPU, even latest CPUs struggle with certain S2 presets.

I'm not strungling with any preset I can even use a lot of instance of heavy preset
on a 7950X and low buffer

It's a matter of optimnisation

[JO512]

I've had lots of problems with pops and crackles with Serum 2 and I have last year's model Lenovo Legion gaming laptop with a Core i9 14900HX. Serum 2 is the only plugin I've had significant performance issues with. And I get crackles with it even when I see low CPU utilization. I turned off core parking and that helped a bit. I also have a USB audio interface, a Motu M2. It isn't one of those expensive thunderbolt ones. Maybe that would work better. I also have an NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU and NVIDIA drivers are known to cause hell with audio. If I do a DPC latency test, I find problems. I've torn my hair out for hours and hours trying to solve that with all sorts of optimizations, using process lasso and all sorts of crap I can't even remember, and have finally just given up on trying to get better results there.

If I am running Serum 2 and I open Chrome and get on YouTube at the same time, my audio just falls to pieces with stuttering and crackling.

I am tempted to get a Mac just for audio, since they seem possibly better in this area.

I can run a Reaktor blocks patch with a whole bunch of Monark oscillators and filters and no issue. But Serum 2 with a single oscillator and a single filter can cause problems for me. It isn't perfectly consistent though. Serum 1 isn't a problem even with very large numbers of unisons.

A new update to Serum 2 came out a while back that was supposed to improve performance a bit. I haven't used Serum 2 enough since then to decide if it helped on my system or not. Cursory tests seem possibly promising.

Ever since Serum 2 came out, with all the problems I've had and all that I've seen reported by others, I suspect there has been something wrong with the code somewhere. I don't know. But maybe it's fixed now.

Are you using the very latest version?

[Razzia]

A new update to Serum 2 came out a while back that was supposed to improve performance a bit. I haven't used Serum 2 enough since then to decide if it helped on my system or not. Cursory tests seem possibly promising.

Ever since Serum 2 came out, with all the problems I've had and all that I've seen reported by others, I suspect there has been something wrong with the code somewhere. I don't know. But maybe it's fixed now.

I had checked out on Serum 2 until CPU woes got fixed or at least mitigated. Figured I'd see a lot of discussion about it once things got fixed. It's a great synth but I've got lots of those and even the worst resource hogs in my library give me more leeway with CPU & buffer.

My experience with the update is pretty much like yours. Quick 5-10 minutes of flipping through factory presets last night and trying out arps, polyphony, etc... It's not "good" but it's a lot better than it was. Some patches, especially ones that use Clip and Arp together push my CPU meter past 40%, but I don't get crackles at 512 buffer just for trying to play a factory patch with a simple 8th note arp like before.

Of all the things that synth can do, it's almost always the Arp module that fries my CPU. Something's wrong with that. I haven't taken the time to pick apart the worst offending patches and see if there's just a lot of stuff happening on a per-voice basis that's being aggravated by the arp, but I can't think of another synth where the arp module makes everything go crazy, including Avenger where the Arp module is super sophisticated.

[djanthonyw]

When I demoed v2 I wasn't experiencing playback issues, but did notice that the CPU usage was incredibly high. The whole time I was demoing I was asking myself why was this using so much CPU when the sound is incredibly lackluster and sterile sounding, then proceeded to uninstall it.

[Alexander_D]

I really hope that they will reduce CPU in the future updates...

[mabian]

Hello, just wanted to add my findings.

I've been trying Serum 2 on an i7-7700k - self built desktop computer and i7-6xxx (can't remember now the exact code) - HP Pavillion aged laptop.
Both systems are 7/8 years old. Just playing some preset preview and:

- The laptop is unusable, with continuos stutter, crackle and buffer underflows on most sounds played.
- The desktop system can play some presets correctly, on others again with artifacts and timing issues.

CPU values in REAPER for Serum 2 alone shows over 10-15%, and even more in many cases on both systems, while playing preset previews or very simple parts, both WASAPI mode and ASIO (RME Fireface UC or Berhinger UMC204HD)
Buffer 128 samples, 48000 Hz sample rate.

Now I have a new laptop, a Lenovo Legion with i7-14700HX.

I have browsed a lot of Serum 2 presets and the CPU meter in REAPER barely moved over 3% even while playing lots of notes.
I'll test more precisely in the next day, but I can already say that the difference is impressive.

On the i7-7700k I can use Arturia Analog Lab, Diva, Vital, Many synths and effects with no problem.
So, I guess it's a lot hit-and-miss depending on your system. Which is not good, obviously...

Thanks,
Mario

[Korg Supporter]

Hello, just wanted to add my findings.

I've been trying Serum 2 on an i7-7700k - self built desktop computer and i7-6xxx (can't remember now the exact code) - HP Pavillion aged laptop.
Both systems are 7/8 years old. Just playing some preset preview and:

- The laptop is unusable, with continuos stutter, crackle and buffer underflows on most sounds played.
- The desktop system can play some presets correctly, on others again with artifacts and timing issues.

CPU values in REAPER for Serum 2 alone shows over 10-15%, and even more in many cases on both systems, while playing preset previews or very simple parts, both WASAPI mode and ASIO (RME Fireface UC or Berhinger UMC204HD)
Buffer 128 samples, 48000 Hz sample rate.

Now I have a new laptop, a Lenovo Legion with i7-14700HX.

I have browsed a lot of Serum 2 presets and the CPU meter in REAPER barely moved over 3% even while playing lots of notes.
I'll test more precisely in the next day, but I can already say that the difference is impressive.

On the i7-7700k I can use Arturia Analog Lab, Diva, Vital, Many synths and effects with no problem.
So, I guess it's a lot hit-and-miss depending on your system. Which is not good, obviously...

Thanks,
Mario

I have an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X in my desktop PC and also own an M1 MacBook Air. I wonder what I should upgrade my PC to.

[Razzia]

I have an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X in my desktop PC . . . I wonder what I should upgrade my PC to.

Let me tell you from experience, definitely not a Ryzen 9 3900x


Unless you want to do everything other than run Serum. It's pretty good for that.

[kvotchin]

Wonder if anyone’s done some benchmarking with Serum, comparing current and recent AMD, Intel and Apple CPUs.

[martinjuenke]

The Serum AU component is still just a bl@@dy VST wrapper.
Just lame.