Finding Bitwig Studio 1.3.15 more CPU efficient than Live! :-)

[Regnas]

@ humanbeingbeing

Your tests are great but you should look also in the individual processes, not just on the overall load of the cpu, because something else could be eating the cpu as well..

Cheers..

EDIT: Btw, that Live skin/theme sucks big time...

No, the tests are running the same processes and nothing is eating up the CPU, not even sure what you're talking about, the result shows minimal CPU usage and neither is being eaten up.... you're not suggesting something is adding to the Bitwig number?... just an FYI too, I'm a fairly successful computer scientist so this isn't complicated for me. and BTW, I do not care at all about the theme... the topic is CPU efficiency.

Ok, sorry...
It's just that I'm more familiar to monitoring stuff like that... I can spot things better that way...

[humanbeingbeing]

@ humanbeingbeing

Your tests are great but you should look also in the individual processes, not just on the overall load of the cpu, because something else could be eating the cpu as well..

Cheers..

EDIT: Btw, that Live skin/theme sucks big time...

No, the tests are running the same processes and nothing is eating up the CPU, not even sure what you're talking about, the result shows minimal CPU usage and neither is being eaten up.... you're not suggesting something is adding to the Bitwig number?... just an FYI too, I'm a fairly successful computer scientist so this isn't complicated for me. and BTW, I do not care at all about the theme... the topic is CPU efficiency.

Ok, sorry...
It's just that I'm more familiar to monitoring stuff like that... I can spot things better that way...

I'm familiar with the process list, it's actually not as thorough as the performance monitors I showed you... but this is a redundant test, you can see from my task manager that the machine is the same, the time is the same and obviously the same processes are running... so all you'd be looking for is a hidden program was executed alongside the apps.

[Regnas]

@humanbeingbeing

It's just more accurate monitoring the process list, imho...

[humanbeingbeing]

@humanbeingbeing

It's just more accurate monitoring the process list, imho...

it's not more accurate, it's more process specific, and lacks the dimension of time which is essential for music, the appropriately named resource monitor is more accurate, statistics aren't based on opinions, I'm trying to ascertain real numbers here, this thread lacks data -- the task manager will not skew the numbers in favor of Bitwig... but I did the test again, just for you- could you please share your process comparisons?

See below.

bitwigtasks.png

abtasks.png

[ThomasHelzle]

as for sandboxing, I'm not a fan of the feature, it strikes me as a way of blaming the 3rd party plugin for a crash, plugins crash in every session and they don't crash nicely with the sandbox, Live can stay open for days without crashing the same plugins--- I have literally never had Bitwig restore a plugin without losing the sound and it de-stabilizes the host, Bitwig acts strange and then eventually crashes again, sometimes the plugin crashes in an infinite loop, it's never restored the original sound, I do a lot of sound design, the feature is useless to me if it loses all my settings...I haven't been able to use a single VST3 without crashing... its a creativity killer, I usually move quickly back to Live for work, frankly I would rather it behaved like live, crash the host and then restore my project stable when I reload the host... Live has a similar quirk in that if I haven't done a save, I can lose my preset but if I have saved, my preset it restored on load.

Can't relate to that at all. I hardly see any crashes of plugins here, other than some bad eggs when I test something new, but those I sort out rather quickly. I mainly used to use the "every plugin" setting since for a while I was testing a lot of plugins. Nowadays, not that much.

If your settings are not restored, that is a case for the devs to look into. My last plugin crash was so long ago that I can't remember if the settings were saved or not. Nick Allen is very thorough in these matters, I'm sure if you can give him something to reproduce he can nail it down and fix it.

I don't think that has anything to do with where the plugin is running though? If you use "bitbridge only" with a 64 Bit plugin, it runs just the same way as in Live, inside the audio engine.

VST3 is a new feature, so if you encounter problems, better report it on the beta list right away so it can be looked into. I don't think I have had a problem with it, but I didn't do extensive tests there.

Did the different settings for plugins make a difference for you?

Cheers,

Tom

[humanbeingbeing]

Did the different settings for plugins make a difference for you?

Cheers,

Tom

Not really, I mean, not in performance that's all I tested, but I was looking for differences between Live and Bitwig--, I'm not seeing any of these huge differences people are suggesting... it's kinda harder to tell with regards stability, but I can try again this week with 'each plugin' set... I do need to say that the plugin crashing issue has been discussed with quite a few people, I don't believe I'm some special case. I'm not joking when I say it's lost my settings every time, so I'd imagine that is a common issue for people, you won't have experienced it without a plugin crash... I'm kinda shocked you haven't had a plugin crash in such a long time... I've had Reaktor crash constantly, Omnisphere has crashed, Z3TA2 seems to crash consistently, I mean these are big plugins.

VST3 have crashed eventually every time I use them, in fact every session so far with Beta 1 has ended with a plugin crash , it's unfortunate, but I suppose those are the breaks... I may submit some specific bugs to Bitwig if I have time, but I don't really have time to do this kind of thorough testing. I did this all before with version 1 and it's the same story as before.

[Regnas]

@humanbeingbeing

It's just more accurate monitoring the process list, imho...

it's not more accurate, it's more process specific...

Which is what we want, hence the accuracy...

...could you please share your process comparisons?

I would love to, but unfortunately I uninstalled both Bitwig and Live...

[ThomasHelzle]

Not really, I mean, not in performance that's all I tested, but I was looking for differences between Live and Bitwig--, I'm not seeing any of these huge differences people are suggesting... it's kinda harder to tell with regards stability, but I can try again this week with 'each plugin' set... I do need to say that the plugin crashing issue has been discussed with quite a few people, I don't believe I'm some special case. I'm not joking when I say it's lost my settings every time, so I'd imagine that is a common issue for people, you won't have experienced it without a plugin crash... I'm kinda shocked you haven't had a plugin crash in such a long time... I've had Reaktor crash constantly, Omnisphere has crashed, Z3TA2 seems to crash consistently, I mean these are big plugins.

VST3 have crashed eventually every time I use them, in fact every session so far with Beta 1 has ended with a plugin crash , it's unfortunate, but I suppose those are the breaks... I may submit some specific bugs to Bitwig if I have time, but I don't really have time to do this kind of thorough testing. I did this all before with version 1 and it's the same story as before.

I use about 10 to 20 Reaktor 6 instances in each and every session (I use it for my surround panner, my midi mangler and with many different ensembles, mainly from the user library. It never ever crashes with these in sessions of hours and sometimes days. I often have like 5 instances of it on a single track.

I have two very heavy Reaktor ensembles though that crash every time and I should finally get around posting that problem to Native Instruments again - Dom said they can't fix it since it's Reaktor crashing internally and they can't debug that. <- This was just fixed in Reaktor 6.1.1

I don't have Omnisphere and use Z3TA rather rarely, so I can't really comment on them from regular experience. Anything specific that makes Z3TA or Reaktor crash for you? I could take a look ...

Otherwise I use a lot of Chromaphone, Falcon and a host of effects with no crashes.

I'm not yet sure if VST 3 makes any sense/difference to use over VST 2 for me personally, so I haven't done much testing, but during Alpha and Beta I used them every now and then with no crashes at all (also for hours).

It would be great if you could post your findings to the beta mailinglist, since the devs are looking at that a lot ATM. Especially the losing of plugin settings on crash and the VST3 problems should be fixed ASAP, that as you say should not happen.

Cheers,

Tom

[humanbeingbeing]

It would be great if you could post your findings to the beta mailinglist, since the devs are looking at that a lot ATM. Especially the losing of plugin settings on crash and the VST3 problems should be fixed ASAP, that as you say should not happen.

Cheers,

Tom

If I encounter the issue again I will try to recreate, unfortunately the problems are intermittent and very hard to reproduce... I could probably record this Z3TA infinite crash loop as it happens so easily...actually if I record a session with VST3s, I'm sure I will trigger a crash with the preset loss, I'm not hopeful regarding bug fixes, I've submitted things before that tooks years to fix and others that were never fixed... but hey maybe this time it'll be different. It'd be great for me if 3rd party plugins didn't crash so frequently....

[ThomasHelzle]

If I encounter the issue again I will try to recreate, unfortunately the problems are intermittent and very hard to reproduce... I could probably record this Z3TA infinite crash loop as it happens so easily...actually if I record a session with VST3s, I'm sure I will trigger a crash with the preset loss, I'm not hopeful regarding bug fixes, I've submitted things before that tooks years to fix and others that were never fixed... but hey maybe this time it'll be different. It'd be great for me if 3rd party plugins didn't crash so frequently....

Somebody just reported the same about Z3TA2 VST3 on the mailing list. Maybe just add your +1 to it.
I currently re-install the plugin to test it as well.

If you have the time to post here, why not post there where the devs are collecting feedback ATM?
Users can't fix the problem for you...

Cheers,

Tom

[humanbeingbeing]

If you have the time to post here, why not post there where the devs are collecting feedback ATM?
Users can't fix the problem for you...

To be fair I'm just commenting on the CPU efficiency claims. I've kinda given too much of my time to Bitwig 1 but if I see a sure shot bug that I can report with minimal effort I will.

[ThomasHelzle]

I get an instant crash when instantiating the VST 3 Version of Z3TA in the Beta. No problem with VST 2.
Reported on the beta thread (that is what it's there for - but you are a developer yourself, so you already know that).

Cheers,

Tom

[incubus]

A cakewalk plug, having issues? ORLY?

As for the CPU part. For whatever reason when I first tried bitwig it was not really usable on this very same computer. Now, it's mostly quite efficient.

I wonder if win10 is part of that because FL studio used to give me fits with win7 as well.

What used to happen is that anything moderately vst/i loaded would build up to where quickly bitwig would start sputtering...maybe I could use 10% of the same plugs I did in live (9.2???? ) I don't have live right now though so not sure if live is just sick low cpu or what.

[humanbeingbeing]

A cakewalk plug, having issues? ORLY?

Yeah I hear ya but thinking practically if I'm using it in Live and I want to use it in Bitwig, and it works in Live and not in Bitwig that doesn't feel great to me, and it is made worse by the sand-boxing looping the crash. I'm glad it's been noted and will hopefully be addressed... for me it's always a straight a b comparison between Live and Bitwig in the most practical production context.

[incubus]

I know, just being a PITA. LSS, I have some vst3 issues in FL studio and have to use the vst2 version. For me, I'm not sure I understand the difference since I'm not a master sidechainer, but it's annoying nonetheless!