Roland Cloud

[XpanderDude]

Yeah, I am mostly wondering if 8GB is just not enough. in activity monitor, I see that I am going into memory swap all the time when doing music related stuff on the computer, which worries me.

And, I am not overloading the cores, I think. Here's a screen shot of the utilization. F6B117A8-A8D9-4ECB-9361-6453347610F1.jpeg

EDIT: Got some wild cracking and popping, and did another screen shot. sometimes i get this one core just redlining it.

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[WatchTheGuitar]

That’s what I find with most of the CPU glitching I get that when I monitor what each core is doing you can pretty much guarantee one core is hammered while others aren’t even hitting 40%.

[PAK]

Yeah, that doesn't really say much other than something is overloading one of the cores. Maybe using "top" from the terminal command line might show more?..

[XpanderDude]

Here's a few new things and discoveries - not sure what "AU hosting services" is, but it makes the CPU go berserk.

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And then I get this error too

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[PAK]

Are you using an external sound card? If so, does it do the same when you switch to the onboard audio?

[XpanderDude]

Are you using an external sound card? If so, does it do the same when you switch to the onboard audio?

The odd thing about that message is that i *was* using the internal core audio sound. However, I get the same issue on my apogee duet interface as well.

[Arashi]

Wow.. 8 GB of RAM?? I think my computer from 20 years ago had that. Isn’t the norm like 32 GB these days? Regardless, how many instances of synths are you using, and exactly which ones? The ACB stuff (such as the Legendary series) uses far more CPU than the Zenology stuff.

8 is pretty low, yeah, though an M1 with 8 GB still manages to run pretty well because of how much faster the RAM access is (integrated with the CPU instead of traveling across a bus). The M1 (standard) only comes in 8 and 16 GB versions. At a glance it seems like they should only offer a 16 GB version, but 8 is probably enough for what most people do with laptops, and the M1 is also used in the current iPad Pro.

The new M1 Pro and M1 Max support up to 32 and 64 GB, respectively.

But RAM is not really relevant to running emulations like these (except, I suppose, when companies waste tons of memory on the UI…not naming any names…Arturia). CPU is what matters most.

[Arashi]

Yeah, I am mostly wondering if 8GB is just not enough. in activity monitor, I see that I am going into memory swap all the time when doing music related stuff on the computer, which worries me.

Unless you're using big sample libraries that need to load into RAM, you're probably fine.

I have an iMac with 32 GB of RAM and I've got 9 GB of cached files and 6.5 GB of swap used, even though physical memory usage is only at 24 (and I have a lot of development tools running). The main thing to watch is "Memory Pressure" — the graph in the bottom left when you're looking at the Memory tab in Activity Monitor.

But RAM is not likely to be the reason you hear stuttering in plugins — that's almost always just a plugin trying to use more CPU than a single core can handle. Roland Cloud plugins (especially ACB) have these occasional big CPU spikes that don't really make sense to me, and need a lot more headroom as a result. Try reducing your sample rate (44.1 is fine for almost everything, really) and set your buffer size to 256 samples. I actually run at 128 and don't have issues.

[XpanderDude]

The screen shots above used 256 samples and 44.1, so that is puzzling to me.

Just for reference, I swapped out all the cloud plugs on that little loop with all instances of Diva, and, of course, I'm getting less than 20% usage on all threads/cores. WTF. Should i be freezing tracks using roland cloud, then? Looks like I am not going to have much luck running 5-6 instances in real time.

[Arashi]

The screen shots above used 256 samples and 44.1, so that is puzzling to me.

Just for reference, I swapped out all the cloud plugs on that little loop with all instances of Diva, and, of course, I'm getting less than 20% usage on all threads/cores. WTF. Should i be freezing tracks using roland cloud, then? Looks like I am not going to have much luck running 5-6 instances in real time.

Quite honestly I find the CPU usage of the ACB poly synths to be unacceptable and generally avoid them. I have a System-8, so I mostly stick to running them on the hardware (and if I need another Juno or Jupiter, I use the Arturia or Softube plugins instead…and Diva can sound pretty close to either of those as well).

All the ACB emulations were made to run on Roland's custom DSP chips. My guess is the plugins are running that same code on some kind of emulation layer, which is why they're so inefficient. Arturia, Softube, and TAL have all managed to make excellent sounding Jupiter-8 and Juno-6/60/106 emulations that sound at least as good as Roland's, and they all use MUCH less CPU.

That said, the ACB mono synths (SH-101, SH-2, ProMars, System-100) are all pretty reasonable. I guess the performance hit for ACB isn't that bad for a single voice, but it just doesn't scale very well. The rest of the Roland Cloud stuff is all fine too (D-50, JV-1080, Zenology Pro, etc.).

Anyway, don't blame your machine. If you can run lots of instances of Diva, your CPU is not the issue. Roland's ACB plugins are just way too CPU hungry.

[qube123]

Often when you get CPU spikes its down to insufficient I/O on your drive so the CPU is waiting for information. Make sure the drive the project is on is decently quick and isn't the main drive on the computer.

[chk071]

Wow.. 8 GB of RAM?? I think my computer from 20 years ago had that.

20 years ago, the computers rather had 512 MB. Maybe 1 or 2 gig.

Considering that you pay royal prices for additional memory with Apple, I can well understand that you opt for less RAM.

[EnochLight]

20 years ago, the computers rather had 512 MB. Maybe 1 or 2 gig.

Crazy. One can easily forget how fast Moore's Law works and the rate at which storage increased every year back in those days. I see that Windows XP (typical of 2001) only needed 128 MB to run (I'd wager I had at least 512 MB, but probably 1 GB). My current PC build is about 10 years old, and it's got 16 GB of RAM - which was common for 2011 on higher-end "gaming" machines. So from 2001 to 2011, RAM just skyrocketed. Seems like things have really slowed down the past 10 years, though.

[chk071]

At the moment, it's kind of stagnating... I've been looking for a new computer for a while now, but, I'd want one with 32 GB of RAM, and, the prices for those, along with the other components I'd want, are just too high for me ATM. I would have the money, but, I'm not willing to pay such prices... better wait until that whole buying frenzy thing has cooled down a bit. Just a question when that will be really...

[fmr]

Often when you get CPU spikes its down to insufficient I/O on your drive so the CPU is waiting for information. Make sure the drive the project is on is decently quick and isn't the main drive on the computer.

No, that's not the case. That may happen when you are loading samples "on the fly" (Sample disk Streaming). That's not what happens here. These instruments perform many calculations in realtime, and if the CPU doesn't handle the data in time, you hear spikes. This is CPU overflow, as is indicated by the CPU metering. The error message displayed by Logic indicates the same thing.

Good news for those heralding the M1 More RAM may help, but I have my doubts.