guys,
I absolutely love the sounds that come out of Biotek but I can hardly ever use it because it's such a resource intensive plugin. Keeping in mind that I also run other plugins and tracks, I set up some testing with a few compressors and standard things I would run on the Master fader. The only two tracks are the instrument track for Biotek 2 and the Master fader, and I'm in ProTools:
I started with a MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i7, 2.6 GHz, 4 cores. It keeps going over 100% CPU usage in ProTools. I made sure that the preferences are set to follow the session settings and not default to 32bit. I can put the session down to 24bit, 48kHz and it still sucks out more than 100% processing.
I love this thing so much that I took my Mac Pro out of our server room where we used it as a server for my development company, and I'm now using it again for recording. This computer has 3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon, which shows up as 12 cores. And I get the same results - Biotek 2 simply pegs the processing even though it's distributed across all cores, even at 24bit, 48kHz on this beast of a computer, making sure that ProTools is set to follow the bit depth of the session.
Is there any way to tone down the processing intensity of Biotek 2? Otherwise, it's a great but unusable synth plugin.
Biotek 2 Relentlessly sucking my processing power
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Wolfram Franke Wolfram Franke https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=222340
- KVRist
- 79 posts since 25 Dec, 2009 from Germany
Hi!
Yes, BioTek is quite a CPU-hungry plug-in, which mainly comes from its complex architecture plus the fact that a lot of the factory presets use several layers at once.
Changing the bit depth doesn't change anything in BioTek, so it doesn't matter if you use 24bit or 32bit. Changing the sample rate does, though, but 48kHz is just a bit more CPU-hungry compared to 44.1 kHz and you should certainly follow the project requirements (i.e. mastering for DVD or CD or whatever).
However, what is much more important is the audio buffer size that is used by your host. If it is set quite small, to i.e. 128 samples or lower, which is great for realtime audio recording, set it to a bigger size, preferrably 512 samples. This introduces a little bit of lag but allows BioTek to work with the resources much better.
You should also check in BioTek if Multi Core support is on. This distributes the voice calculation over all available cores, which in the case of the Xeon might result roughly in a 5 to 6 time performance increase.
Let me know if anything of the above helps you.
Best wishes,
Wolfram
Yes, BioTek is quite a CPU-hungry plug-in, which mainly comes from its complex architecture plus the fact that a lot of the factory presets use several layers at once.
Changing the bit depth doesn't change anything in BioTek, so it doesn't matter if you use 24bit or 32bit. Changing the sample rate does, though, but 48kHz is just a bit more CPU-hungry compared to 44.1 kHz and you should certainly follow the project requirements (i.e. mastering for DVD or CD or whatever).
However, what is much more important is the audio buffer size that is used by your host. If it is set quite small, to i.e. 128 samples or lower, which is great for realtime audio recording, set it to a bigger size, preferrably 512 samples. This introduces a little bit of lag but allows BioTek to work with the resources much better.
You should also check in BioTek if Multi Core support is on. This distributes the voice calculation over all available cores, which in the case of the Xeon might result roughly in a 5 to 6 time performance increase.
Let me know if anything of the above helps you.
Best wishes,
Wolfram