Powerful synths that are CPU friendly?

[gentleclockdivider]

Am I missing
The smoothnes/steps of a knob is determined by the number of pictures in a sprite , more pictures means more visual accuracy/feedback .
THe accuracy of the knob controlling the underlying parameter does not necessarily reflect the amount of pictures in the sprite

[exmatproton]

Am I missing
The smoothnes/steps of a knob is determined by the number of pictures in a sprite , more pictures means more visual accuracy/feedback .
THe accuracy of the knob controlling the underlying parameter does not necessarily reflect the amount of pictures in the sprite

Well, in, let's say Go2, there are quite some sprites available when dragging a knob. This shows when holding SHIFT (fine tuning the value). But loads of sprites are being skipped when the plugin is updating at a slow rate. You can even see the value jumping from value to value with big gaps. This is, however, only a visual thing. The knobs are still being recorded as smooth as other synths that are running at (i.e) 60 FPS. (NB, this is when using the mouse input, not midi).

However, and this is something i believe that is DAW-related; MIDI input is lagging when the UI is opened. Closing the UI fixes this (i have no explanation for this behavior). Also bridging the plugin fixes this...(talking about my situation here, with windows 10 x64 and latest FL Studio)

[mystran]

Have you ever made a knob? Dumbass.
Digital is always discrete.

yes and thanks to vector graphics you don't need image strips at all anymore. continuously movement in

You can do what appears to be continuous movement with bitmap images as well. The easiest approach is to simply render enough frames that features on the edge of the knob move at most around one pixel per frame (or ideally a bit less). Then you pick the two frames closest to the actual desired position and linearly interpolate between the frames. As long as there were enough frames to begin with, any "fading" happens on sub-pixel levels, blurring stays minimal and it's visually very similar to what you get using vector graphics with anti-aliasing.

While this works fine for smaller knobs, at higher DPI or larger knob sizes you do need a lot of frames to maintain the "at most one pixel" rule at larger radius. Roughly this means that the memory requirements grow in third (rather than second) power of the radius, which can certainly become a problem rather fast. You can reduce this somewhat, by using a slightly more sophisticated interpolation scheme. Instead of blending the frames directly, first rotate both of them slightly (which is basically free on the GPU if you can get away with just hardware texture filtering) so they align with the actual desired angle, then blend them together to keep things like lighting working right. How well this works depends a bit on the nature of the image data, but technically it's still pretty simple.

Finally, if your bitmap doesn't have direction dependent shading (ie. just abstract "flat" style or something) then you don't necessarily need image strips at all: just rotate the bitmap. If you use higher resolution pre-filtered (for anti-aliasing) source image to draw from, then in some cases this can give you even better results than rendering vector graphics on the fly. You obviously want to split the rotating and non-rotation parts into different layers (as with the previous scheme of blending rotated frames), but the additional rendering cost is mostly negligible.

Now, I'm NOT trying to say bitmaps are better than vectors, there's certainly advantages to the latter. I'm just trying to point out that even if your source data happens to be raster images, that doesn't necessarily mean your knob rotation needs to look like a flickery hand-drawn cartoon. Whether any given developer thinks this is worth spending the extra development time that could also be used to improve the software in some other way is another question.

[kv331]

In almost 20 years of using soft synths, I've never once seen the frame rate marketed, or even mentioned by a dev, or on a product description anywhere. In fact I've never seen anyone bring it up anywhere before this thread. So I'm more inclined to believe it's something some people notice using the software and are sensitive to for whatever reason, rather than getting suckered by marketing. This is not what anyone is talking about when selling vsts.

When it comes to "synth CPU performance", should we talk about the max number of voices you can run per CPU core or frames per second the GUI of the synth can deliver? I believe the former, we're talking about synths that churn CPU cycles to deliver sound, not games that deliver 60 fps.

[exmatproton]

In almost 20 years of using soft synths, I've never once seen the frame rate marketed, or even mentioned by a dev, or on a product description anywhere. In fact I've never seen anyone bring it up anywhere before this thread. So I'm more inclined to believe it's something some people notice using the software and are sensitive to for whatever reason, rather than getting suckered by marketing. This is not what anyone is talking about when selling vsts.

When it comes to "synth CPU performance", should we talk about the max number of voices you can run per CPU core or frames per second the GUI of the synth can deliver? I believe the former, we're talking about synths that churn CPU cycles to deliver sound, not games that deliver 60 fps.

For me, both parts are important. Fluid ui's and a good amount of voices. And this is certainly possible. There are tons of examples. And i don't get the comparison to games. Gaming is something else. Completely irrelevant to bring that up.
Synths like Falcon, Rapid, Avenger, Diva (etc..) deliver great sound, certainly a good amount of voices and do this at high refresh rates = win.

[Teksonik]

Well, i guess the wrapper of FL Studio does this. Just tested it with several plugins and yeah, when bridged, the UI of those plugins run like they were running before bridging, but the FL Studio UI keeps a steady 60fps with no more input lags.

Hmmm guess I'm not getting what the issue is then. Can you post a video capture or screenshot showing the problem please ?

Like I said I've used Go2 quite a bit and don't notice any issues with "frames per second" or input lag. Perhaps you've discovered a bug that is specific to certain system configurations or to a particular workflow.

I'm willing to test here to see if I can reproduce the issue then perhaps relay the information to Rob Papen. But I don't understand the issue so wouldn't even know where to begin testing.

[exmatproton]

Well, i guess the wrapper of FL Studio does this. Just tested it with several plugins and yeah, when bridged, the UI of those plugins run like they were running before bridging, but the FL Studio UI keeps a steady 60fps with no more input lags.

Hmmm guess I'm not getting what the issue is then. Can you post a video capture or screenshot showing the problem please ?

Like I said I've used Go2 quite a bit and don't notice any issues with "frames per second" or input lag. Perhaps you've discovered a bug that is specific to certain system configurations or to a particular workflow.

I'm willing to test here to see if I can reproduce the issue then perhaps relay the information to Rob Papen. But I don't understand the issue so wouldn't even know where to begin testing.

Sure, i will film what is going on. I hope it is possible to show the midi input lag. I mean, when i press a key and the sound delays.

[Teksonik]

That's latency no ?

[exmatproton]

That's latency no ?

No. When the ui is closed, the lag is gone, while the audio latency stays the same

[Teksonik]

Wow that's weird. Well it doesn't happen here but if you can post the steps needed to reproduce the issue I'd be happy to test.

You said FL Studio but just to check are you on PC or Mac ? I don't own a Mac so can't test there. Also what version of FL Studio ? I don't think I have the latest public beta installed but it is a recent version.

[exmatproton]

Wow that's weird. Well it doesn't happen here but if you can post the steps needed to reproduce the issue I'd be happy to test.

You said FL Studio but just to check are you on PC or Mac ? I don't own a Mac so can't test there. Also what version of FL Studio ? I don't think I have the latest public beta installed but it is a recent version.

I am on a pc. I use the latest fl studio (also the beta version btw, but it appears since 11 i think)

[Teksonik]

So does it only happen with Go2 or are other plugins also laggy when their GUIs are open ?

[vurt]

which key are you pressing to get the lag?
one on the gui or one on your midi kb?

[exmatproton]

So does it only happen with Go2 or are other plugins also laggy when their GUIs are open ?

More plugins; Synthmaster One, Arcsyn (latest is especially aweful when a lfo is running), Vecto, Hive2, to name a few. Some of them generate random midi input lag, others don't.

which key are you pressing to get the lag?
one on the gui or one on your midi kb?

On the midi kb. So weird

[Teksonik]

I've got Synthmaster One and Hive (soon the be Hive 2) and I don't notice any lag when playing from my midi keyboard whether the GUI is open or not. I think the studio computer runs at 6ms latency or 12ms can't remember which off the top of my head.

Sounds like a system specific issue or you'd think we would hear from other people reporting the same issue. Have you contacted Image-Line support or does this happen in other DAWs/Hosts as well ?

Anyway my offer stands. If I can help test in any way let me know. There must be a solution to the problem.