CPU Spikes: Windows 10, Pro Tools 12

[rodincoil]

Anyone have any idea why Voltage Modular is causing CPU spikes in Pro Tools 12 on Windows 10?

The computer has AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6GHz Processor; NVIDIA RTX 2070 Super 8GB GDDR6; 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM; 1TB SSD. The computer has been optimized for Pro Tools and essentially crushes everything I throw at it in audio and video with the exception here.

When running in standalone, this problem does not occur.

I've never had any problems with this system before and easily run over 100 tracks in a session with many plugins/vsts. If I create a new session and only the Voltage Modular plugin, the results are the same. Sitting idle, there are cpu spikes. When trying to play the simplest patches, I get distortion, pops, clicks, etc. I'm currently running version v2.2.5. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

voltage_modular_cpu_spikes.jpg (805.01 KiB) Viewed 5344 times

[cherryaudio Greg]

There's a new version on the way that will have some performance improvements.

[ColinP]

There's something weird going on there. On a machine of that spec you should be seeing a CPU load of around 1% for such a simple patch.

[ColinP]

I just had a thought - if in VM's Settings you have OpenGL Hardware Acceleration turned on then try unchecking it. It might not make any difference at all but I experience weird problems when it's turned on.

[rodincoil]

There's a new version on the way that will have some performance improvements.

Thank you, Greg.

[rodincoil]

I just had a thought - if in VM's Settings you have OpenGL Hardware Acceleration turned on then try unchecking it. It might not make any difference at all but I experience weird problems when it's turned on.

Thanks, Colin. I turned it off and it helped somewhat. The patch would play, but the CPU spikes would slowly cycle almost rhythmically. Of course, the session only has VM loaded and nothing else, so more testing is needed.

[tgrey]

I had a little bit of luck increasing my cpu thread count from 1 to 2 on an ancient macbook air. I also turned off all of the eye candy like 3d cables, animated cables, etc.

YMMV, but for me it's helped noticeably on hardware that is probably too old to be doing this

[rodincoil]

I had a little bit of luck increasing my cpu thread count from 1 to 2 on an ancient macbook air. I also turned off all of the eye candy like 3d cables, animated cables, etc.

YMMV, but for me it's helped noticeably on hardware that is probably too old to be doing this

Thanks, tgrey. The perplexing part is being able to run an absurd number of tracks loaded down with plugins (some are horrible resource hogs) on a pretty fast system without any problems, yet this running by itself without any patches loaded is killing it. I would be willing to guess it's probably a bug or hardware conflict rather than an underpowered system.

[tgrey]

Yeah, I agree... probably something hardware based and technical related to accessing the GPU from a plugin inside of Pro-Tools that would affect other plugins too if they tried? Do you know of any other of your plugins that use GPU you could compare against?

[honki-bobo]

Besides turning off all the eye candy, I found that the sample rate has an impact on the CPU load, too.

I've noticed that the CPU load is lowest when running on 48k and it increases when it is set to a multiple of 48k like 96k or even 192k. So far, so good, but I've also noticed that fractional sample rates of 48k, like 44.1k or 88.2k cause even higher CPU loads. I've tested this using the MS-20 patch "Big Vintage Sweep" with multiple sample rates and letting VM "rest" in the background without playing anything. At 44.1k I get a CPU load of about 9.2% on avg according to Windows Task Manager, 8.3% @ 48k, 9% @ 88.2k and 8.6% @ 96k.

So, if you're running VM standalone and Pro Tools on different sample rates, this could be a reason why VM hits your CPU harder. It could also be related to AAX. Do you have the option to test your patch in the VST version of VM?

Best regards,
Martin