Waldorf LARGO SLOW GUI Problems, vote please !

[Igro]

Interesting this thread seems to be just for Windows. I'm on a Mac Pro and I have nothing but trouble with Largo 1.50. Terribly sluggish GUI, spinning beach balls when changing patches (or at least trying in that awful browser) and Logic 9 suffers as well with the playhead freezing and faders becoming unusable whilst Largo makes it mind up. I have scores of plugins and they work flawlessly so I think I can rule out a computer problem. It's a fresh install as well and everything works great bar Largo. I have got one other synth actually that causes graphics problems as well and it uses the protection dongle as well. Wether that has anything to do with it I don't know. Would be interesting to hear from other Logic / Largo users out there.

Cheers.

Also may you check your native system CPU meter for CPU spikes when you change Largo parameters while project is playing.

For me, sluggish GUI is not main problem, my main problem is CPU spikes and continuous CPU increases while tweaking parameters(CPU can get 80-100% loading and stay here for some time or forever). Other than that, Largo is friendly on CPU.

[DiScO197]

Hi

Wolfram Franke asked me to post this message i just recieved back from him..
As a Waldof Blofeld and Largo beta tester im not able to discuss hardware/software or the workings of the above mentioned but below you will find a fair answer to the issues you users and i/us beta testers also have.
I'll also post this message on the Waldorf boards as asked.
Please read the email below

Hi Rob,

(please forward this text to the KVR forum and maybe to our user-forum, if you like)

It's not a bug so there is no "fix". It's a performance problem obviously depending on some components of the PC in question.

The reason is that I chose a Windows functionality Microsoft developed a couple of years ago and introduced in Windows XP called GDI+. This GDI+ was supposed to replace GDI, which was good since GDI is really outdated and misses a great lot of functionality Largo needs to display its GUI.

Microsoft made the more or less wise decision to perform the GDI+ functions completely in software and ultimatively sending the resulting bitmap to the graphics accelerator. Wise in that that was what Apple always did with their QuickDraw and Quartz 2D and which served them well for more than 20 years.

However, as it looks, Microsoft were (and are) still not able to achieve even a good percentage of the performance Apple was able to get out of their routines. It sometimes feels as if some routines are written in Visual Basic or Java rather than well-optimized C or assembly code that might use features of the CPU to some extent. So, they extended GDI+ to use hardware acceleration in Vista SP2 and Windows 7, which was again wise (if you can compare graphic speeds between XP and Vista or W7 on your various systems, please tell me the results). Apple also switched to hardware acceleration of their drawing stuff starting in 10.4 with Quartz Extreme.

Now, for Windows 7, Microsoft developed a completely new set of functions to achieve faster graphics performance called Direct2D. This new package is also available for Vista but not for Windows XP. And, because it tries to be as performant as possible, its functionality is very different from GDI or GDI+. So, this would mean a major rewrite of the graphic stuff of Largo while still maintaining the GDI+ code to make sure it not only runs on W7 and properly updated Vista installations but also on XP, which is still one of the most popular "DAW operating systems".

So, my choices are:

* Switch back to GDI. Not good for Vista and Windows 7 since GDI is now routed to GDI+ internally and probably has the same performance problems there. Good for Windows XP, though.
* Switch to Direct2D. Lots of work and renders Largo incompatible to Windows XP. Would mean I have to maintain two completely different graphic engines to assure XP compatibility.
* Switch to OpenGL. Very performant for 3D graphics but quite unsuited for 2D graphics. I *could* find my way through it but it would probably be a very inefficient method of rendering a GUI like Largo's.
* Switch to a completely different graphic framework. There are a couple of interesting frameworks out there but since implementing one or the other of them into Largo just to make some benchmarks takes a lot of time, I couldn't start doing so yet. Those graphic frameworks very often also render the graphics purely in software, but it looks like their developers programmed a "bit" more optimized for speed than Microsoft.

All in all, I'm a bit stuck right now. I am aware of the graphic performance problem on some Windows machines but right now I don't have the time to work on a major rewrite of the graphic stuff. I can only tell you that it has the highest priority on my list and I will take care of it in the near future.

The poll is interesting but it would probably be more helpful to know the computer configurations as well, i.e. CPU and GPU type, and RAM. I developped and tested Largo on a MacBook Pro with ATI Radeon X1600. I did notice that graphics is considerably slower with Windows XP (booted natively with BootCamp) than with Mac OS X but no CPU spikes here. It might only happen with NVIDIA graphic accelerators, don't know, though.

But, as I said, I will work it out, but cannot do so right now. I hope you have patience and I apologize for the inconvenience.

If you have helpful comments that could help me making a decision which graphics framework to use, drop me a mail on wolfram/at/franke/dot/net or wmf/at/waldorfmusic/dot/de.

Best wishes,


Wolfram

Thanks

Rob

As i posted a while back..Testing of Largo is still ongoing as is testing the Blofeld.
Waldorf are busy with the Musikmesse preparations atm but you need to email Wolfram direct as i spoke to him about this thread:

wmf/at/waldorfmusic/dot/de

I too have graphic problems but only some of the time in Studio One Pro/Sonar 8.
Largo works best for me in Live 8.

Thanks

Rob

Thats interesting thanks. I think I bought your Techno / Trance patches yesterday? Sorry if thats not you! I've yet to check them out properly due to the problems I'm having. I have actually recently changed from an ATI X1900 card to an NVIDIA 8800GT so perhaps that is why it is worse. I don't remember it being that bad with the ATI. Will be interesting to see if 10.6.3 improves anything when that lands. Cheers.

[DiScO197]

Interesting this thread seems to be just for Windows. I'm on a Mac Pro and I have nothing but trouble with Largo 1.50. Terribly sluggish GUI, spinning beach balls when changing patches (or at least trying in that awful browser) and Logic 9 suffers as well with the playhead freezing and faders becoming unusable whilst Largo makes it mind up. I have scores of plugins and they work flawlessly so I think I can rule out a computer problem. It's a fresh install as well and everything works great bar Largo. I have got one other synth actually that causes graphics problems as well and it uses the protection dongle as well. Wether that has anything to do with it I don't know. Would be interesting to hear from other Logic / Largo users out there.

Cheers.

Also may you check you native system CPU meter for CPU spikes when you change Largo parameters while project is playing.

For me, sluggish GUI is not main problem, my main problem is CPU spikes and increases while tweaking parameters.

I'll check that for you later. I've got a 3Ghz Dual Quad Mac Pro and I can generally run heavy projects without any cpu overloads but I have noticed spikes with this project. I'll get back to you on that later.

[rob_lee]

Hi

Yes that is me and thanks for buying the soundset I also asked about system config because the soundset i programmed was created with only minor graphic issues and all the audio demos were created without a glitch whilst moving parameters doing the demo.
When i did the audio demo i had 3 instances open with program changesetc going on all the time.

BTW

I test Largo on 3 machines and they're all Q6600 and none are connected to the net...

So my problem is not with cpu spikes etc at all..only the infrequent graphics issues..Largo like i said works bes for me graphically in Live 8.

Hope this helps a little.

Rob

[DiScO197]

Yes, some nice sounds in there rob! I couldn't get any of the arps to sync last night but I gave up pretty quickly when I couldn't really use the synth. I'll check that again later. Also, the sounds did not come with any installation notes so I went routing around for the folder to put them in. I tried the import function from the browser but I seem to recall logic quitting at that point. Will try it again later with a fresher head. Might be worth including a read me with the locations for the patches on Mac and PC.

Cheers.

[DiScO197]

Oh yes, system config:

Mac Pro 2,1 Early 2007 3Ghz 8 core
Nvidia 8800GT
12GB RAM
Snow Leopard 10.6.2
Logic 9.1 32 Bit

[Igro]

Yes, some nice sounds in there rob! I couldn't get any of the arps to sync last night but I gave up pretty quickly when I couldn't really use the synth. I'll check that again later. Also, the sounds did not come with any installation notes so I went routing around for the folder to put them in. I tried the import function from the browser but I seem to recall logic quitting at that point. Will try it again later with a fresher head. Might be worth including a read me with the locations for the patches on Mac and PC.

Cheers.

Mac:
Local Library: /Library/Audio/Presets/Waldorf/Largo/
User Library: [User home directory]/Library/ Audio/
Presets/Waldorf/Largo/

PC:
Local Library: [Largo installation path]\Waldorf\Largo
Sounds
User Library: [Documents And Settings]\[User home
directory]\[Application Data]\Waldorf\Largo\

[rob_lee]

Yes, some nice sounds in there rob! I couldn't get any of the arps to sync last night but I gave up pretty quickly when I couldn't really use the synth. I'll check that again later. Also, the sounds did not come with any installation notes so I went routing around for the folder to put them in. I tried the import function from the browser but I seem to recall logic quitting at that point. Will try it again later with a fresher head. Might be worth including a read me with the locations for the patches on Mac and PC.

Cheers.

My system specs are very much lower than yours but i don't have these problems with the sounds or i couldn't have programmed them to begin with

System i checked this:

Q6600 2.4ghz
XP32bit
ATI HD3450
4GB Corsair
x2 1tb Seagate HDD

Largo with Ableton Live 8 - Studio One Pro - Sonar 8.5


Rob

[DiScO197]

I just installed Largo on my PC, which is a Q6600 quad based machine (basic NVIDIA Graphics card) and tried it in Cubase 5. It's certainly more useable than the Mac version but moving knobs is awkward and when grabbing the gui and moving it around the playhead in Cubase stutters just as it does in Logic. There are very obvious problems with it. I need to start using this plugin and not spending a whole day trouble shooting it! To summarise, it performs very badly indeed on both my Mac Pro and Mac book in Logic 9.1 and it works far better under Cubase 5 on Windows 7 but it's not without it's problems. Changing patches is much smoother on the PC. Igro, yes I get spikes also both Mac & PC.

Cheers.

[Igro]

Igro, yes I get spikes also both Mac & PC.

Cheers.

Very good!
I mean good, that it's not just my machine and therefore it should be noticed by Wolfram.

[ekeaze]

I have Macbook Pro + LP9 and no problems with Largo, everything works perfect.

On my PC Win7 is Largo absolutly unusable... mainly if I have automated some parameters.

[ekeaze]

I will try to do screan video...

[Igro]

I will try to do screan video...

I just saw your video. Wow, that's real slow! How it sounds on the same time? I believe huge CPU overloading going on the same time.

[ekeaze]

I will try to do screan video...

I just saw your video. Wow, that's real slow! How it sounds on the same time? I believe huge CPU overloading going on the same time.

No problems with sound and CPU overloads only GUI is realy slow...

[ekeaze]

Some NEWS from waldorf ?