Cherry Audio Forums

I have been trying to find posts about performance. But the BBS software doesnt allow a search for the word "performance", it says it is too common.

There should be a stick post about this topic, at least including this link: https://www.adroitsynthesis.com/performance-tips/ I have already read this, but it doesnt look like there is anything for me to do. Everything is at default.

I have a 2018 Macbook Pro, 2.9GHZ 6-core i9. I just rebooted to and am only running a couple of web browser windows to search this forum.

I have spent several hundred dollars on Cherry Audio VM plugins this week before realizing just how easy it is to exceed what VM can handle:
1) I just downloaded a user patch for "Occidental destruction NO TOMS" - sounds like a total mess.
2) Arwen has so much glitch noise it sounds like a LOFI recording at best.
3) Load two copies of the Brass Pad V1 (by saving as cabinet, then loading two copies of the cabinet). Wire them up to the incoming poly notes, and run finger up and down the keyboard, and lots of glitch.

#3 is just 2/3rds of a screenful of stuff at 80% zoom. No sequencers, not a lot of complexity, other than the poly. But this will glitch out just with single notes, dont even have to get into polyphany.

Where is a CPU usage estimate on the screen calculated by VM?
Where is the warning on the screen that VM has detected that timings are being violated, and therefore audio glitches may be introduced?

With VCVRack, November 2021, I encountered similar audio glitching issues on this same machine. Something that helped a lot there was to not use VCVRack with a full screen window. Making the application window 1/2 or 1/3rd screen reduced CPU requirement, and it could run a lot larger patches.

VCVRack 2 seems to run a lot better with CPU issues, and old patches that glitched are no longer glitching.

I tried making the VM application window smaller, but this does not reduce VM glitching.

I am really worried I just invested a lot of money for Adroit, various other modules, to get software that quickly overloads my $4000 laptop.

Very concerned I put my money into the wrong modular.

DOH!

I just tried selecting "Use multiple threads for mixing". By doubled Brass Pad V1 is working a lot better now... In fact I now have 4 different miniverse presets running at the same time, for cpu steady at 188%.

Arwen cleaned up nicely too. It glitches just a little as I am typing in this browser window while it is playing. It's CPU is holding at about 325%. When it glitches because of what I am doing in browser window, there is no hint being given by CPU jumps in activity monitor.

Arwen really doesn't like me being over here cutting and pasting in this browser window.....

"Occidental destruction NO TOMS" - sounds better, but is glitching more than Arwen, eventhough CPU is only 234%.

More evidence that external CPU activity monitors are useless for monitoring why VM is glitching.

So another suggested feature for VM:
If VM were to detect audio packet supply problem, it should have suggested that change to settings.

TheGarnet wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:35 pm 1) I just downloaded a user patch for "Occidental destruction NO TOMS" - sounds like a total mess.

This is a Whole Sandwich patch. Not representative of the sort of patch any normal person would create. Ignore.

To TheGarnet,

Hi.

I can see you are feeling passionate about performance issues and performance issues are of great interest to me too. I don't speak for Cherry Audio by the way, just myself.

Can I suggest we discuss it on this thread rather than scatter around on multiple threads that are difficult to keep track of?

Sure, keeping the discussion here is a great idea.

If you have Miniverse, you can see where it falls over for me. It looks like 6 miniverse patches, which is 3 with poly modules, 3 with non-poly, is the tipping point for me.

Interestingly, Activity Monitor shows only 162% CPU when this is glitching, which is way lower CPU than obtained with other patches mentioned above.

I tried changing the number of threads for mixing, and it had no effect from the default 4. Given this is a 6 core cpu, anything more than 5 or 6 isnt likely to make an improvement anyhow.

With four Miniverses, (about 44 modules), it plays pretty well. But moving the mouse in front the VM window will cause audio glitches.

utdgrant wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 3:52 pm

TheGarnet wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:35 pm 1) I just downloaded a user patch for "Occidental destruction NO TOMS" - sounds like a total mess.

This is a Whole Sandwich patch. Not representative of the sort of patch any normal person would create. Ignore.

As an old school QA guy for Borland with Turbo Assembler, starting in '89, use cases put together by non-normal persons were of great interest to me!

But yeah, that sandwich was certainly not my cup of tea!

Hi,

I totally agree that VM needs a proper meter that shows us how far we are from buffer underrun. Many of us have been asking for this feature for ages because looking at basic CPU load meters is an extremely crude way of trying to figure out what's happening. It's a real shame that CA have ignored this need for so long.

However VM is still an excellent platform.

By the way for PC users, on a Mac performance is measured at 100% per core rather than a total CPU measure so that's why Mac users can get load numbers greater than 100%.

One thing I'm curious about is that the Macbook Pro 2018 seems to pop up more than one would expect as a platform that has problems running VM. I'm wondering if there is some particular quirk. Maybe the Java Virtual Machine or something strange about the interaction between VM and the audio drivers? I dunno.

What would be very useful for me is to learn the full name of your CPU. I bang on about this all the time and no doubt people are bored to death by it but it's important information given that many computers come with a wide range of CPU options and there are dozens of different CPUs with the same family name.

ColinP wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 3:53 pm performance issues are of great interest to me too. I don't speak for Cherry Audio by the way, just myself.

ColinP, I just came up with a killer idea to give VM a lot more performance headroom.

The Akai MPC hardware has a strict limit of 8 plugin synths at a time. Each preset you have loaded in a synth anywhere in your project counts against that limit. Most songs probably dont need more than 6 or 8 tracks with different instruments playing at the same time, or things get lost in the mix. But this limit counts across sequences, they cant go from sequence to sequence seamleassly if they are having to switch presets.

What if VM had a power button on each cabinet? One could turn off the cabinets they dont need at this point in the song! Then we could create patches equivalent to the 50 to 60 synths Klaus Shulze was said to carry on tours.

This could integrate very well with LSSP.

Processor name....
This seems to be more info on this model: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP776?locale=en_GB

With VCVRack, they couldnt deal with any laptop GPU. They also glitched badly on a top of the line Surface 7 Pro.

VCVRack 2 seems to have much better performance on my Mac than the prior version. I havent checked on my Surface.

TheGarnet wrote: ↑Mon Aug 22, 2022 4:46 pm What if VM had a power button on each cabinet? One could turn off the cabinets they dont need at this point in the song!

I've been pushing a similar idea for some time. But as a gate input on a plugin host that runs an embedded instance of VM rather than just a cabinet. Doing it that way one can create a hierachical system where all the complexity is hidden in black boxes. Kind of like functions in procedural languages and methods in OOPL. RAM would then become the main limiting factor.

The most recent mention is viewtopic.php?t=2444