Chromaphone 3 - pitch bend and CPU spikes

[Muziksculp]

I also suggested multi core support (when it was released) and they just said that they don't comment on development.

Hehe.. That tells me that multi-core is not supported in Chromaphone 3. I won't bother emailing them to ask.

[yul]

So what happens when a plug is not multicore?

Does it just focus the CPU on a single core for real?

What about the other plugins? Does multithreading balance the CPU load for the other plugins or does something gets tipped off?

I am just curious. Reaktor (Prism) also has a similar scenario.

[zzz00m]

I turned down the number of Voices in Chromaphone 3 to Four Voices in the Settings, this helped in reducing CPU load a bit, I wonder if it supports using multiple cores ? Some VSTs have a multicore support that can be enabled to offer better CPU performance, Chromaphone 3 doesn't have this in the settings.

I think you may have something here. I had to search to find a Chromaphone 3 preset that had issues with the pitch bend. Many do not.

With the standalone synth using a factory library preset that defaults to 8 voices, "Cheerful FM", it instantly choked when I moved the pitch bend. While observing the Windows task manager, I could see that the load was all being carried with one of my 6 cores, nearly maxing that core out, on an i5-9600K with clock running at 4.6 GHz.

After dropping back to 4 voices on that patch, the pitch bend was playable with reduced CPU increase of several percent. But core not maxed out with 4 voices.

So yep, apparently not multicore aware either...

[Synthient Sound]

I just recently got Expressive E Imagine (done with AAS) and it appears to have the same single core problem. Sounds fantastic and I was seriously considering grabbing Chromaphone, but I'm a little disappointed by the CPU performance on Imagine.

[Muziksculp]

The CPU amount Chromaphone 3 uses, imho. is a direct result of AAS not coding multicore processor functionality.

I bet if they add it via a future update, the CPU usage will drop dramatically. But will they do it ? That hasn't happened so far, and I'm not feeling optimistic that they will do so.

[zzz00m]

The CPU amount Chromaphone 3 uses, imho. is a direct result of AAS not coding multicore processor functionality.

I bet if they add it via a future update, the CPU usage will drop dramatically. But will they do it ? That hasn't happened so far, and I'm not feeling optimistic that they will do so.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any examples of synths that do use multicore processor functionality?

[Muziksculp]

The CPU amount Chromaphone 3 uses, imho. is a direct result of AAS not coding multicore processor functionality.

I bet if they add it via a future update, the CPU usage will drop dramatically. But will they do it ? That hasn't happened so far, and I'm not feeling optimistic that they will do so.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any examples of synths that do use multicore processor functionality?

I'm sure I do.

Some Synths have an option to enable multicore feature, some do it automatically from within your DAW. I will have to do some digging into some of my Synths to see if I find one that has the option of enabling it in the settings, I forget which ones have it, given I have too many VST Synths

[Muziksculp]

OK. Found one.

Lush 101 Synth has it :

[gondii]

Just out of curiosity, do you have any examples of synths that do use multicore processor functionality?

Several of the u-he synths use multi core, like DIVA, Repro 1/5 and ACE. And the difference it makes, especially for the "heavy weights" like DIVA and Repro are massive.

[zzz00m]

Just out of curiosity, do you have any examples of synths that do use multicore processor functionality?

Several of the u-he synths use multi core, like DIVA, Repro 1/5 and ACE. And the difference it makes, especially for the "heavy weights" like DIVA and Repro are massive.

Yes, you are correct about u-he. I forgot about that.

I have Repro 1/5, and the multicore option is present (and enabled). Observing the Repro 5 CPU load in Windows Task Manager when playing, I notice that 4 cores were being evenly used.

Edit: That 4 core use was when I ran Repro 5 in "standalone" mode using NanoHost64. Just loaded Repro 5 into an Ableton Live 11 set, and it used all 6 of my cores.

So cheers to u-he, and anyone else who figures out how to make their synth multicore aware!

[Held]

I really don't see the benefit of multi-core support for most synths. Unless a single instance manages to overload the CPU, there's no benefit. Spreading out the work over multiple cores actually makes it slower. The only thing that really makes a difference is AVX for unison.

It's much better if you let the DAW put the different plugins on separate threads/cores.

[zzz00m]

I really don't see the benefit of multi-core support for most synths. Unless a single instance manages to overload the CPU, there's no benefit. Spreading out the work over multiple cores actually makes it slower. The only thing that really makes a difference is AVX for unison.

It's much better if you let the DAW put the different plugins on separate threads/cores.

If a modern CPU hungry synth exceeds the single core speed of a computer, the audio will breakup as the audio buffer cannot be updated in time, i.e., samples are missed.

So in that case, it would be better to utilize more than one core for that synth.

Regarding DAWs, yes they can offer plugin optimization, but synth tracks are usually routed to one CPU thread, as far as I have seen. My testing with Repro is the first time I have seen a DAW allow a synth track to access more than one core. So evidently, some DAWs are apparently aware of multicore aware synths and provide even more CPU optimization in that case.

[gondii]

I mean,... turning on and off multi core support in DIVA while looking at the CPU meter is really all the proof I need that it's working. I really hope that AAS figure it out for Chromaphone 3.

[Muziksculp]

Hopefully AAS will add Multi-Core Support for Chromaphone 3 via an update.

I will email them, and request this as well. It makes so much sense that they add this feature. I would also recommend other Chromaphone 3 users request this directly from them via email. At least that will make them aware that this is badly needed to make it more functional, and practical to use.

[Held]

I really don't see the benefit of multi-core support for most synths. Unless a single instance manages to overload the CPU, there's no benefit. Spreading out the work over multiple cores actually makes it slower. The only thing that really makes a difference is AVX for unison.

It's much better if you let the DAW put the different plugins on separate threads/cores.

If a modern CPU hungry synth exceeds the single core speed of a computer, the audio will breakup as the audio buffer cannot be updated in time, i.e., samples are missed.

So in that case, it would be better to utilize more than one core for that synth.

Regarding DAWs, yes they can offer plugin optimization, but synth tracks are usually routed to one CPU thread, as far as I have seen. My testing with Repro is the first time I have seen a DAW allow a synth track to access more than one core. So evidently, some DAWs are apparently aware of multicore aware synths and provide even more CPU optimization in that case.

We basically said the same thing I highlighted the relevant section in my post. Anyway, parallelizing stuff is hard and my guess is that most synth use one thread per voice. So it wouldn't solve the pitch-bend problem.

I will email them, and request this as well. It makes so much sense that they add this feature.

If you email them, it might be better to ask them to fix the pitch bend rather than asking for multi-core support. It would suck if the pitch bend still didn't work properly after they've added multicore support.