As an early 'whinger' about CPU, and having not commented since '.15' I thought I might give an updated opinion.
I am primarily referring to monophonic patches, primarily because the outstanding poly issues seem to be accepted and have actions in the pipeline.
I would say that there was a definitive improvement upon the earlier release of 2.0. Quite noticeable, in fact. BUT, such was the performance drop from 1.x, that even had .15 been the initial 2.0 release, I would have still bemoaned performance issues.
Whilst this varied from patch to patch, I would try to illustrate the 'typical' scenarios.
- In 1.x I had never noticed ANY CPU related limitations in my personal use (I could not comment if I had a lot of headroom, or was often close to maxing out, as I never had cause to look).
- In initial 2.0, there was barely a patch that would not crack or pop at least on occasion. Many / most were just a sea of maxed out CPU distortion. Complex patches. Forget it. Stutters or more or less nothing
- In .015 'most' non-complex monophonic patches that I tried worked with no, or only occasional artefacts (of course, occasional is still too much, but the improvement was notable). Complex patches seemed to occupy the ground that simple patches had before. Improved, but only to the point that there was an unusable mess, rather than occasionally broken silence.
However, I know my machine is not new. Despite lamenting the difference between 1.0 and 2.0 I equally understand that software will eventually dictate that I improve my equipment. Given that this is not possible for the foreseeable future, I set about trying some optimisation, as I had not done a thorough clean up for some time.
The result.
'Night and day' may be an exaggeration, but perhaps 'Dawn and Noon'!
I have not tried every factory or personal preset, but the vast majority are now fully usable. Not all (and I am still talking monophonic only) but a definite majority, and this INCLUDES a good number of complex patches. Certainly I can now use VM with a degree of 'hope' that I wont have problems.
I really haven't spent much time re-trying poly patches, but of those I did try a couple seemed to work ok ....most did not. , but I think it makes more sense to await the upcoming updates.
I must clarify though, despite the obvious need for my PC clean-up, the prior configuration obviously did not render VM1, nor any other of my current plug-ins unusable, so whilst I am happy with the fruits of may labour I still remain hopeful that future updates will just compound these improvements.
Good work everyone, including - if only this once - me.
