u-he

auricle · Post by **auricle** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:12 am

Urs and Howard,

My hats off to you two gentlemen! Congratulations!! Other people have eloquently put forward their views on the update and new sounds.Fantastic.

However, I have noticed a rather alarming problem:

Any patch that uses the arpeggiator causes severe CPU spikes when I apply any MIDI based modulation i.e. aftertouch, pitch bend and modulation wheel.I am talking about the new Howard presets, I deleted my old Zebra installation and did a fresh install.

[edit] Also confirmed with Cakewalk Project 5. However, in project 5, if I send some aftertouch data or mod wheel, the arpeggiator will stick on the current step and then crash project 5. I get an unhandled exception error window:

Code: Select all

An exception has occured in C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Project5 Version 2\Project5.exe
Project5 will now close.

(Exception code: c0000005, address: 6a4988:1:2a3988.)

My system:

Intel Core2Duo quad Q6600 2.4GHz
3Gb DDR-2 800MHz Kingston RAM
ASUS P5B-E Plus motherboard
2 x Sata hard drives
Lynx L22 sound card.
Novation Remote SL 61 keyboard (connected through USB)

Windows XP Professional SP2
Cakewalk Sonar 7.0.1 - the problem spikes the quad core so much that the audio engine switches off and I have to restart it to continue.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 12:09 pm

Hmmm... I had heard about cpu spikes in Project5 if the gui is open and if there's a compressor in the fx grid.

That was the next thing to check out... I'll do so today, maybe all issues (see FL crash in other thread) are related...

Cheers,

Urs

mellotronaut · Post by **mellotronaut** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 12:24 pm

i had that problem too in Live 6, but i have to check again, which patches. It wasn't in every arp-patch, only 3 or 4 behaved that way.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 2:21 pm

It's interesting... In Sonar6 I get crackling and cpu spikes when I send MIDI while the gui is drawing something. Thus, when the compressor is visible, when a user wave lfo is visible, the swing LED blinks, knobs rotate by automation or when the arpeggiator is visible THEN and only then I get crackles on NoteON/Off and Wheels.

I've tested with multiprocessor support off, but that didn't do anything.

I will try some stuff, and it might be related to the FL problems...

Later,

Urs

bk · Post by bk » Sat Nov 10, 2007 2:56 pm

Urs wrote:Hmmm... I had heard about cpu spikes in Project5 if the gui is open and if there's a compressor in the fx grid.

Same issue in Tracktion 3. If gui is open and compressor module is actually showing. Same issue as one of the recent betas...
btw-when I updated to 2.2, my Zebra still says it's a beta, is this correct?

mäxchen · Post by **mäxchen** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:23 pm

as i mentioned in the howard thread. cpu-spikes with some presets. maybe it has something to do with the compressor, will examine this a little bit more......

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 4:43 pm

bk wrote:my Zebra still says it's a beta, is this correct?

No... the latest download should just say "Zebra 2.2" ona new instance... I'm currently in MacOS, I can verify it later.

Urs

auricle · Post by **auricle** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 7:49 pm

So, it's a recognised problem!

Confirmed! - any moving or animated element in Zebra's gui will spike the CPU in Sonar or Project5 when any MIDI controller is used. It is most noticable in the arpeggiator for me.

I also tried Sonar and Project5 in Vista64 and it's the same. I tried it in Tracktion 3 in Vista64 and I had no problems.

tylenol · Post by **tylenol** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 12:58 am

bk wrote:btw-when I updated to 2.2, my Zebra still says it's a beta, is this correct?

I noticed that the installer installs to /Library, maybe if you had the old version in ~/Library you need to delete that? I didn't have to but I wasn't exactly sure why.

bk · Post by bk » Sun Nov 11, 2007 2:32 am

tylenol wrote: I noticed that the installer installs to /Library, maybe if you had the old version in ~/Library you need to delete that? I didn't have to but I wasn't exactly sure why.

Thanks. I'll check that.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 11:29 am

Yo, I'm on the case, debugging this thing and there are some interesting things to observe.

The crackling came in between Z22 beta 1 (15th of July) and beta 2 (18th of July). This is exactly the time when I managed to get rid of the redistributable MS Runtime library. I also updated all my third party libs in these days, and added higher optimization levels.

Now, the crackles don't go away when I

- use the separate runtime libs
- don't optimize

Now, the central 3rd party lib we talk of is pretty tricky. The update required a lot of changes to the code. So I can't just revert that stuff.

Nevertheless I think there's also something fowl in the way certain hosts handle things - when I mouse the XY controls while having arpeggiator & modwheel going, no crackles occurr. So I think it's a threading problem. I think that their idle() timer has too high priority, so that MIDI gets blocked. MIDI furtherly gets scheduled before the process() thread, and thus blocked MIDI might also block the process thread -> stalls -> crackles. Something like that.

Nevertheless, maybe drawing just takes longer than it used to. Will see what I can do about it!

Urs

auricle · Post by **auricle** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 12:32 pm

Urs wrote:Yo, I'm on the case, debugging this thing and there are some interesting things to observe.

The crackling came in between Z22 beta 1 (15th of July) and beta 2 (18th of July). This is exactly the time when I managed to get rid of the redistributable MS Runtime library. I also updated all my third party libs in these days, and added higher optimization levels.

Now, the crackles don't go away when I

- use the separate runtime libs
- don't optimize

Now, the central 3rd party lib we talk of is pretty tricky. The update required a lot of changes to the code. So I can't just revert that stuff.

Nevertheless I think there's also something fowl in the way certain hosts handle things - when I mouse the XY controls while having arpeggiator & modwheel going, no crackles occurr. So I think it's a threading problem. I think that their idle() timer has too high priority, so that MIDI gets blocked. MIDI furtherly gets scheduled before the process() thread, and thus blocked MIDI might also block the process thread -> stalls -> crackles. Something like that.

Nevertheless, maybe drawing just takes longer than it used to. Will see what I can do about it!

Urs

Yes, the XY controls are fine here, too. No crackling when I use them. At least you are getting to the bottom of the problem

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 5:48 pm

Please try

http://www.u-he.com/Z22_WinDebug.zip

Bug fixed?

kingtubby · Post by **kingtubby** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 6:03 pm

Urs wrote: Bug fixed?

Yay! - that fixes the sluggish gui problems I've been experiencing since early v2.2 betas (winXP).

Thanks Urs

Mart.

bk · Post by bk » Mon Nov 12, 2007 5:06 pm

Urs wrote:Please try

http://www.u-he.com/Z22_WinDebug.zip

Bug fixed?

Urs,
This fixes the high cpu usage in Tracktion 3, with compressor gui showing.
Thanks!

u-he

KVR Audio

Incredible update - mind blowing sounds but found a bug :(