Full List of Participants and PC Specs: bit.ly/3kMzSLW
Comparison Data Folder: bit.ly/3XDQKmJ
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:06 - Comparison
3:00 - First Crash
4:19 - Final Crash
11:15 - Graphs
Black MIDI Comparisons are intended to showcase performance of community members’ computers in an application called Piano From Above. These comparisons have been in use for around 10 years in the community. This is the largest comparison I have ever created - I chose to use 30 (6x5) runs so I could use space at the top and bottom for MIDI info. Additionally, I decided to make the comparison in 1:1 scaling, meaning the raw resolution of the video is 11520x6480. I had to use Cheat Engine again to force my video editor above the resolution limit. There were very few issues with the hack, but some gaussian blur effects had to be adjusted due to the high values. All participants were required to submit runs in high-bitrate 1080p60 resolution in order to preserve the scaling. The audio was created in FL Studio using a few tricks I learned over the years to create the best audio possible.
This is what all comparisons should look like.
Analysis:
Septette for the Dead Princess (Also known as RST) 44.7 Million is very similar to previous versions of the MIDI in terms of crash styling. There are no massive sustain bombs (high polyphony), but the crashes get their strength from the large number of notes being played each second. This means that newer CPUs will generally perform better than older ones with few exceptions. The latest generations of Intel CPUs perform the best so far, likely due to a combination of high clockspeeds (over 5GHz), large L2 cache banks (2MB per core), and an optimized architecture. Although the latest Zen 4 chips from AMD feature improve upon the previous generation with double the L2 cache (1MB per core vs 512KB in Zen 3) and much higher clockspeeds, they seem to perform closer to Intel's 12th generation chips. Since this MIDI has a maximum of 7,627 polyphony, there is very little usage of the highest bank of cache, meaning that the L3 cache in the latest chips goes mostly unused.
Side Notes:
Mitchell MIDI's 3400G system utilizes integrated graphics, meaning that only 14GB of system memory is usable by the operating system. MIDI performance may suffer as a result.
TheWonder[WP]'s 7100U run was performed with just 12GB ram, resulting in noticeable pagefile lag.
Yun's 5.2GHz 7700K system performs on levels unseen on Skylake based systems. I need to compare with similarly clocked systems to ensure legitimacy.
Pat139's 1165G7 massively underperforms, likely due to some form of pagefile lag.
Reflection:
30 members is too many people in a comparison. I have found that around 16-20 members is the easiest to follow, much easier to edit, and easy to find people for. Additionally, VSDC gets extremely slow with 30 videos on screen, to the point where I needed to prerender sections of the video to replace sections of the final video. Lastly, 12K resolution is hard to work with; I had to downscale all my test exports to 4K resolution to play the video back because VLC won't even generate a video stream from it (even with software encoding), so I had to either use FFPlay, which resulted in about 5FPS playback on my overclocked R9 5900x, or spend 2 hours downscaling the video to 4K. Yikes. I think for any future comparisons, I will limit the video quality to 8K resolution max.
Thank you to everyone who helped me with this comparison! I would not have been able to put this video together if I did not have support from the people below:
Thinker-AI and Fits - Creating the MIDI used in the comparison
Orangepaprika 67 - Giving me a discord channel to communicate with
1%1 - Video background inspiration
Everyone who submitted - Read the full list and see full PC Specs here: bit.ly/3JjTn9f
MIDI Information:
Creators: Thinker-AI and Fits
Original Video: • Septette For The Dead ...
Download: BMC Discord (discord.gg/s42aft8) - bit.ly/404Ugbq
Notes: 44,687,648
Time: 4:41.9
Size: 340.99 MB
First Crash: 3:00
Max NPS: 1,477,841
Max Polyphony: 6,575
Final Crash: 4:19
Max NPS: 3,443,282
Max Polyphony: 7,627
Full Crash Point Information: bit.ly/3ZZzCtf
Video Editing: VSDC Free Video Editor (6.6.5.269)
Resolution: 11520x6480p60
Audio Editing: FL Studio 21 Producer Edition
Plugins: Loudmax, Fruity Limiter, Fruity Reeverb 2
Note Counter: Zenith 2.1.5 - bit.ly/3j7P9Xt
Intro/Outro Audio: RST 44.7 with FantasyPianoX4_2.sf2
Font: Mina
Thumbnail: GIMP
PC Info: (Editing, Not used in comparison)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
Nvidia RTX 3060 OC
128GB DDR4 3600
OC Settings:
CPU: PBO 1X
Ram: 3600 MT/s CL 18-22-22-42
Full specs: bit.ly/3H614gf
Copyright Notice: bit.ly/3XXLfzi
If you are planning on using or reuploading any of my videos, please read this document or contact me.