ACE and its CPU hunger

[a-type]

Well after a copious amount of testing and comparison to find the best complement for my mainstay Zebra, ACE has come out on top. This will sound weird, but there is something very therapeutic about sitting down to tinker with ACE; it just seems to invite experimentation and exploration. I don't get that with any other synth from any other maker... except for Zebra of course (but that's just because I know it pretty well ).

So a few queries:

1. If I recall correctly at some stage in the dev cycle for Diva optimisations were made which cut the CPU usage fairly drastically. Is there any chance of something like this happening for ACE?

2. When you have the quality set to something other than Accurate, what happens when you do offline renders? Does it render audio at the quality setting? Or does it render higher than the setting (like Diva's "Offline: Best" option)

3. Could someone explain to me in simple layman's (layperson?) terms what is happening when you change the Quality setting? I actually like the sound of ACE in Draft mode... sort of sounds more gritty and chunky somehow. How does the Draft mode compare with what Zebra is doing?

4. How is it that u-he can rule my entire musical life and I'm completely fine with that?

[bmrzycki]

Howdy!

1. I believe those optimizations to Diva were discoveries in the equations used to model analog filter emulations. Ace doesn't use those models (yet). You can turn on multicore which may help spread the load across your CPU cores.

2. ACE plays and renders at the same quality. This always means you render what you hear real-time. If you want it rendered at higher-quality, change the pulldown before rendering.

3. From Howard's excellent manual, page 28

Tip: start with good and compare the sound with other quality settings. Depending on
modulation rates, filter distortion and/or whether the sound of high notes is important,
standard or draft can be used without compromising the result.

That's a good start to give you cues for what to listen to when changing the quality setting.

4. Amen.

[Urs]

I think (uhm), quality settings are mostly about internal sampling rates. Draft might not be oversampled at all, whereas the other modes certainly are.

The big difference betwen the others and accurate is certainly the update rate for the two main CPU drainers: Calculating Oscillator frequency and Filter frequency about 4 times per sample. I think good does it only once per sample while standard does it every 4 samples or so. Not 100% sure, but that's roughly what it is about. Everything else would be updated about 4 times per sample still.

The huge cut in Diva's CPU consumption was indeed soemthing else, which kind of brought Diva's CPU usuage down to ACE level for many patches.

There is a small chance for some improvement in ACE, but it comes with a change in tone. We're contemplating the addition of an optional different filter model, which might then drain less CPU and put another, most likely cleaner colour, on the table.

Cheers,

- Urs

[Urs]

Oh yes, detecting and using offline rendering modes happened with Diva first. We might add that to ACE too!

- Urs

[janlonden]

Oh yes, detecting and using offline rendering modes happened with Diva first. We might add that to ACE too!

- Urs

Yes, please do!

Would make our lives much easier

[a-type]

Thanks all for the information! This clears things up.

I seem to recall that there were some warnings about using Diva in Multicore mode over many instances in the one song. Does this apply to ACE too? Or can it be freely set in multicore mode without concern for any issues?

[Urs]

Thanks all for the information! This clears things up.

I seem to recall that there were some warnings about using Diva in Multicore mode over many instances in the one song. Does this apply to ACE too? Or can it be freely set in multicore mode without concern for any issues?

We always considered multicore support somewhat experimental. After two years I think it's safe to say, "it just works". You can switch it on for as many instances as you like.

[a-type]

Excellent.

I just can't say enough about how intoxicating the interface is though. So enjoyable to patch up.

You know what would be great - a synth like this but FM... or even a beta of something like this.... in the next few days... yeah, that would be just swell.

[Urs]

You know what would be great - a synth like this but FM... or even a beta of something like this.... in the next few days... yeah, that would be just swell.

[Sendy]

Excellent.

I just can't say enough about how intoxicating the interface is though. So enjoyable to patch up.

You know what would be great - a synth like this but FM... or even a beta of something like this.... in the next few days... yeah, that would be just swell.

Throw in some Casio-style phase distortion and I recon you'd have a hit.

[Howard]

Excellent.

I just can't say enough about how intoxicating the interface is though. So enjoyable to patch up.

You know what would be great - a synth like this but FM... or even a beta of something like this.... in the next few days... yeah, that would be just swell.

Throw in some Casio-style phase distortion and I recon you'd have a hit.

Through-zero FM and drawable waveforms would be aaahsome!

[Urs]

Through-zero FM and drawable waveforms would be aaahsome!

And maybe a realistic spring reverb to round things up

[Gosh]

please

[modifier]

Thanks all for the information! This clears things up.

I seem to recall that there were some warnings about using Diva in Multicore mode over many instances in the one song. Does this apply to ACE too? Or can it be freely set in multicore mode without concern for any issues?

We always considered multicore support somewhat experimental. After two years I think it's safe to say, "it just works". You can switch it on for as many instances as you like.

Multicore is somewhat strange...
I have a project with 17 instances that plays fine without multicore enabled.
I tried turning it on for every instance and it couldn't play back anymore.

Another project in which I have 3 instances seems to benefit greatly from
turning it on for all 3 instances.
So it works but the results can vary greatly from project to project.

Win7 64
i7 3770k
12gb
RME Raydat
Nuendo 6

[Urs]

Thanks all for the information! This clears things up.

I seem to recall that there were some warnings about using Diva in Multicore mode over many instances in the one song. Does this apply to ACE too? Or can it be freely set in multicore mode without concern for any issues?

We always considered multicore support somewhat experimental. After two years I think it's safe to say, "it just works". You can switch it on for as many instances as you like.

Multicore is somewhat strange...
I have a project with 17 instances that plays fine without multicore enabled.
I tried turning it on for every instance and it couldn't play back anymore.

Another project in which I have 3 instances seems to benefit greatly from
turning it on for all 3 instances.
So it works but the results can vary greatly from project to project.

Win7 64
i7 3770k
12gb
RME Raydat
Nuendo 6

Good to know! Then we stick to our recommendation that multicore should mainly be used to play live