It would be good to note what settings you have on each plugin. For example DIVA in Divine mode uses considerably more CPU than in Draft mode and so on. It would also be good to know what sample rate you're using like, 44.1, 48, 96 and the latency in samples. (e.g. 512 12ms) and whether you have multi-core support enabled or disabled in the plugins that have the option such as DIVA. All of these factors can have an impact on CPU demand.

@annother3350

Жыл бұрын

Ticking Multicore in Diva reduces the load by a lot!

@SergeTarasoff

Жыл бұрын

@@annother3350 it is on windows, m1 mac version suffers from that a lot however. On linux enabling it reduces the load using jack, but not pulseaudio. Kinda inconsistent

This is cool thanks... But it really would be useful to know exactly which cpu you have in order to form a meaningful frame of reference. Number of cores, clock speed etc Simply saying its 'mid range' is kind of arbitrary what one person might consider to be mid range, another might consider to be high end etc

I make VSTs and the are a lot thing we could do that would make them sound better but we can't yet because of limitations. Also apple silicon works different so tricks that would boost performance before don't have a broad of an effect across platforms.

Conclusion: We need another Woody Wave album, please.

@atrothe

Жыл бұрын

Who is we?

@mr_floydst

Жыл бұрын

@@atrothe Me and the 8 individuals who upvoted this comment

Great topic Woody, loving your videos as always, you are a true inspiration, cheers from down under.

Oh, BTW- For those of us who use FL Studio, we got a performance meter too in v 20. It even breaks down each VST, as does this meter here in Reaper. I mention this should anyone reading this want to take a look at their system.

Really interesting experiment. Would be interested to know if you had Diva in "devine" mode or not. That kills my M1 Macbook Pro with certain patches. You should add affiliate links though. I'm buying Sylenth off the back of that demo. The Tom Sawyer'esque bass sold it to me!

Thanks for your great Video Woody. I miss only the specifications of the pc. That would help too.

Omnisphere also would have been good to test, especially in multi mode.

Every time I upgrade there's still a DIVA preset that starts crackling and popping. One day I'll be able to use every thing in it. One day. I normally end up bouncing to audio clips. I've also got a decent PC as I sim race and need a decent CPU.

Thanks Woody, I nearly own all of these classic VST´s and really, really, like these kind of comparisons. It is a lot of work, but well spent, I think. (I´m sorry if I´m getting repetitive, but please do consider showing an indication like: “Now playing Diva”, “Now playing Massive” etc. while using the specific synth.)

Awesome content Woody! Makes me realize; time to get a new laptop! ;)

The “augmented” series of Arturia synths bring my Ryzen 3700u PC to its knees. The latest Cherry Audio synths are also kind of processor heavy.

Diva can still eat up a lot of CPU (yes, even on my M1 Mac mini) depending on several things: "Accuracy" modes such as "Divine", whether or not you're using the "Multicore" mode, the number of stack voices selected, and one of the most overlooked things: the BITE highpass filter, which is actually _THE_ most CPU intensive module in Diva. _But_ _there's_ _good_ _news!_ U-he's new CLAP plugin format takes advantage of something called "thread pooling", which makes the Multicore mode _SO_ much more efficient now. But there are still a few bugs in the beta versions of u-he's CLAP plugins, so we gotta wait for a bit 'till they are ready for primetime.

One thing a faster CPU may help with is reduced latency. I noticed that when upgrading from a Core i5 2500 to a newer (though still old!) Core i5 4590 recently, though it was subtle.

@Magnus_Loov

Жыл бұрын

Yup! This test is very reliant upon the latency settings. A low buffer setting, like 32 or 64 will make the CPU meter bounce wildly. Second, I have learnt that it isn't the internal CPU-meter that you should trust, it is better to judge by Windows own resource monitor which gives the more correct numbers. For once, just one CPU-percentage as you see in a DAW will probably be some kind of average for all the CPU-cores. That isn't necessarily the most important thing. What matters is the CPU-load on the core that has the highest load, where spikes will happens first. But, even so, most modern CPU:s are insanely powerful. If you have at least a 6 core (12 threads with hyperthreading) CPU then it will be hard to max it out with a normal project.

Thanks this is quite illuminating.

Recently, I'm working on a project with 75 tracks and 8 FX busses and 4 synths in Reaper. And every track is populated with 1 or 2 plugins, I don't come even close on 25% CPU usage. I must say that I have 32Gb DDR4 memory installed, which also takes a bit of the pain away from the CPU. Synths are, Knifonium, Oberheim, Kontakt player and Thorn. And the Realsample5000 from Reaper itself.

@Metallkoo

Жыл бұрын

What is your CPU?

@Bluelagoonstudios

Жыл бұрын

@@Metallkoo AMD Ryzen7 5800X3D, and a nVidea Quadro 4000 GPU. Build not long ago. In a Rack PC enclosure. Used only for mixing and mastering with Reaper.

I've done a little experimentation of my own (on my i5 4-core @3.8GHz), mostly between SurgeXT and Vital (both free, but Surge is open source). I've found that the amount of notes you're playing and the specific patch you're using have a huge influence on performance. If I play one note on the Surge patch called "CPU hog" by Vospi, it's 2.5% cpu usage, but if I play 10 notes, the CPU meter hits 12-14%. You have to also keep in mind that it's not really that hard to exceed 10 note polyphony if you're using a slow release time or a sustain pedal. If I move from one 10 note chord to another, it's processing 20 notes at once, and it starts to glitch, hitting 20-25%. That is obviously an extreme case though, considering the patch is called CPU hog. Most of the pads on Surge run at about 1-2% on single notes and 3-4% with 10 note polyphony. For Vital, most pads run at 3-4% on single notes, and 7-8% on 10 note polyphony. It seems like layers and modulation have a feedback effect with polyphony. If you increase both at the same time you'll use exponential amounts of CPU.

@Marklar3

Жыл бұрын

I should note that those numbers are from the track CPU meter, and not Reaper's total reported CPU usage, AND more importantly, Reaper's total CPU usage is usually WAY lower than what is shown in Windows Task Manager. Reaper's CPU reading is often only 50-60% of what is shown in Task Manager.

Nice one Woody, thanks!

Nice experiment. Even my 4th gen i7-4790 music PC takes quite a lot of synths to choke, so not great deal for me either. And you can render tracks to audio and trimm requirements as you said

Yeah, I'd say this is in-line with my findings - soft-synths really are the load factor. It used to be the case, but today it's just not that "interesting" from the musical side. Others may argue this or that, but really I think your practical approach isn't a bad way to look at this. I don't even look at system loads much anymore, even with a ton of effects loaded up. I think the major improvement area still yet to come is latency - as a live sound engineer (not my day job!) I'd love to be able to fire up a laptop and plug in some of the studio tools I use - but while it's possible in some cases, I still need to be careful about latency - The latency will rise much faster than the absolute CPU load. And digital audio still has too much latency baked-in - It's hard for me to not incur 2-4ms just in USB overhead even before hitting buffers. BTW - the beard is looking good! You should keep it...

I have a 2018 i7 laptop with 16gb RAM. Certainly some VSTs use a LOT of CPU, so much so that I freeze/flatten the track as soon as I'm happy with that track.

@Metallkoo

Жыл бұрын

What does "flatten the track" mean?

@lundsweden

Жыл бұрын

@@Metallkoo In my DAW Ableton Live, you can flatten the track, which means you can't make any more changes, and it uses less CPU. I think it just records your VST to a track, more or less.

What is the model and year of your ryzen pc?/..still very low cpu levels..similar to my 4 core itel fro 4ears ago in studio one.

You're absolutely right that a nowadays a decent computer should be able to handle all of these synths no problem... But we have to keep in mind that there are so many levels of software and hardware abstraction between the user playing a synth and the actual "metal" carrying out the computation that performance may vary enormously depending on which libraries the programmers used, if your hardware configuration has some bottleneck etc. The performance of a particular program can be very good or very bad compared to similar programs, and for no apparent (at least to the user) reason...

Very thick and lush sounding, yet very clear. When I try to layer that many synths it gets kinda muddy sounding.

One instance of pre-patch Diva could take up to 45% of my i5 if I play a 7-chord with a complex enough patch.

@saricubra2867

Жыл бұрын

My 4th gen mobile i7 can't handle more than 6 instances of Roland Cloud Jupiter 8 playing a triad and complex sounds.

Interesting! I'm still using an old Acer core I3 (maxed out with 16gb ram) and tweaked for performance, and for the most part it's surprising what I can still run on it. Some plugins known for hogging CPU (IK stuff) run perfect, however, a cheapo Soundspot limiter can lock up my pc after a few seconds, and wave table synths with high voice counts can spike hard. Rendering down or multi sampling my patches has actually benefited my creativity in a way because I seem to make better decisions when limits are imposed lol.

Used to have to bounce everything but got a new PC last year with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor and can now run Diva etc fine.

The REAPER performance meter doesn't seem to be accurate. It seems to just total the utilization of the entire CPU-including all cores and virtual threads-even though most of these synths only use a single thread (Diva is the exception, if optionally enabled). Since synths and DSP for the most part don't generalize to multiple threads (which carry their own overhead to begin with) well at all, this vastly underestimates the actual workload and how much resources are available. In reality the actual CPU usage is, assuming the instances are processed in parallel, the highest load imposed by any of the 4 instances multiplied by the thread count, which is 12 in this case. I'm sure REAPER has a proper meter for measuring this, but clearly the performance meter is not appropriate. As far as demanding synths, the worst ones these days are rather Chromaphone 3, Arturia's Pigments, Kilohearts PhasePlant (depending on the patch, some use 80% of my Ryzen 2700X CPU just to play a couple extended chords), U-he Repro in the Prophet-5 mode when played polyphonically and Knifonium from Brainworx. All of these can _easily_ use more than 50% of a modern CPU with a regular amount of polyphony. Especially Knifonium is incredibly resource hungry. I have a track work in progress where I use it for the bass, arp and lead sounds, and those 3 instances alone exhaust my CPU resources nearly completely (80-90% usage), and in practice due to other tracks and effects used I need to bounce those tracks into wave files for the song to be playable in realtime. And that's at 44.1 kHz sampling rate, so I cannot go any lower either.

With complex arrangements and lots of effects my i7 struggles, but I offload plugins to other PC servers with Vienna Ensamble Pro 7 (rock solid), sometimes also using Audiogridder (it's free and already stable enough).

from my perhaps not super representative experience it is group processing in things like compression that eats the most cpu. nothing gets your project as much risk of stuttering as a chain of u-he satin and presswerk on master

Very interesting video Woody, but I would also be interested in seeing you put Diva into Divine mode. That gives the best quality from the plugin, and as another commenter has said even on a M1 Mac it can push the limits. On my old i7 3.4GHz intel iMac with 24GB RAM running Logic Pro X I could just about manage 4 instances of Diva in Divine mode. However on the M1 iMac 16GB I've gone over 15 or 16 instances without any issue. Really impressive as well to see how these run on a PC - I think Reaper here is the winner, as Logic Pro X is a huge overhead on the mac. Would also be interesting to have compared Arturia's V collection - I feel those aren't as CPU hungry as some of these, although I don't think they also have the power, weight and stage presence of plugins like Diva.

good stuff man whats the name of that lead in sylenth 2

omnisphere, analog lab, ozone, massive x, those tax cpu hard

There really is plugins out there that even on highend machines have a 25% or higher ammount for just 1 instance, but often they also have lots of effect processing or really lot going on. It also depends both on the cpu used and the type of audio i/o card used and how its configured, ammount of buffers, sample rate and bit deprh. Eg. Thunderbolt and even old type FireWire is much less demanding on the cpu than a usb type interface. But really for avg Home user a modern Ryzen 3 or Intel 9’th gen or newer should have no problems for normal usage. Kontakt generally demands more ram than cpu power dependent on how much effects used on the instruments. For Kontakt heavy use today a machine with 32gb ram or more is kinda recommended. Just the outgoing Amd 5900 or 5950 that is not too expensive is a killer spec and the ddr4 ram is so cheap now that getting 2x32gb ram is also fairly reasonable and should you need it you can throw 2x32 more in there later. But even a 5600 or 5700 will do too. Avoid the 5800x3d which is a gamer cpu. The more cores the better, and since ddr4 is so mature the more ram the merrier. Dont buy am5 and ddr5 right now cause its way too expensive

@comradedoggo9775

Жыл бұрын

have you come across any vids wit hlogic pro/mac, showing the cpu load comparison between the m1's & m2 apple silcon, using high demand plugins , eg NOVUM?

Thanks. Yes, Sylenth is incredibly well-written and efficient. I never have to worry about adding as many instances of Sylenth as I want (maybe not 300, though). Another crazy low CPU synth is Nexus, maybe even better than Sylenth.

@kirkanos771

Жыл бұрын

Nexus is a rompler. It eats RAM not CPU.

What buffer size are you using?

Top video Woody 😊

I think it's worth noting that Diva is inline with the newer VSTs like DCO 106 and Massive X, but it came out in 2011. So comparing that to things like Sylenth and original Massive, I'm not surprised it still has the reputation of being a CPU hog, especially for it's time. Almost makes you feel like it's about time for a Diva 2, we've had it 2 easy for 2 long.

Nice test, it shows some data. All the comments here ask for more details but the final conclusion is true. A good, decent computer is today able to manage audio production at a level that would have been impossible few years ago. But... Things are not so easy on notebooks. I have a tremendously bad experience with a new intel i7 10th generation on an expensive notebook of a famous brand. So bad that I had to sell it. Now I play live with a MacBookPro M1 and all the troubles are gone

My PC for music is over 10 years old, I can barely run some of these plugins on their own. It's ok for some rich youtubers and those with big budgets for a PC/MAC to be smug about the fact this isn't a issue for them. Not everyone can afford to keep upgrading their PC every 3 years to keep up to date.

07:47 excellent, really excellent synthwave track 👍👍👍

I thought it was just me: showing the front of the video of Diva. That thing was eating up processes back when I was running on windows 7, dual core.

Good scientific work, interesting. I really need a "Riffer" tutorial on Amplesound lap steel, when you are ready . . . regards

@FotoxBr_nl

Жыл бұрын

Not scientific at all, I am afraid. But if you are happy with the result, it is fine.

Freeze functions in most DAWs (except the one I use) remedy the CPU problem with thirsty VSTs.

I still have CPU issues with some CPU heavy synths, eg Osirus.

Serum is awful on my newish Surface Pro i7 Windows PC. Kontakt with Output’s Analogue Strings maxes out my CPU in my DAW (Bitwig). Wondering if UVI Falcon is CPU heavy?

@AutPen38

6 ай бұрын

Serum certainly gets CPU hungry if you have lots of modulation happening at the same time and particularly if you have loads of internal effects in a chain. Switching off the effects one by one can highlight the ones that use most resources. (But has the undesirable effect of usually making things sound much less impressive). I typically use a separate reverb on a bus, rather than use the built-in reverb on several instances of Serum.

@jamisbillson4872

6 ай бұрын

@@AutPen38 Omnisphere is easier on CPU than Serum. Is that just bad programming?

Interesting video, but somehow, I miss an explanation of cpu measurements in DAWs and perhaps a comparison between what the DAW displays vs the actual system load. THings like usage of multiple cores, dependency between ram transfer rate and cpu load, ASIO driver issues are just being neglected here. So, for me , this is an interesting viewpoint, but ultimatively falls short.

PERFECT TIMING! I'm wanting to run a single VST on one older i5 mini pc, with a dedicated midi controller, well labeled knobs and sliders, so as to create my own hardware synth remakes with all the tactile feeling of the real thing. So, hoping a single analog VST can run just fine on old 4th-5th gen i5. Not asking much out of it. That's for sure. :) It's a no brainer to build your own SYSTEM 8, KORG wavestate, and so many other great VSTs. You get the benefit of ready to go hardware, with the price savings of pc run VST. Mini PC's are 50-$150.00. Midi controllers 60-200 max. Audio interface, $40.00, old monitor free or cheap. You have the most flexible DIY hardware synth for fraction of real gear price! System 8, 1600.00 new, 1200 used. Roland cloud vst, and some gear as mentioned? MAYBE, $250-$300, and you are still so far ahead of game with a giant screen instead of the tiny lcd screens. :) Unlimited knobs/switches/sliders can be added to your new 'hardware' synth. Can't wait to do some videos. Almost was going back to hardware gear, but though this route might give me back the tactile feeling I was missing, the flexibility and affordability of any synth I could ever want, all while having DAW benefits without the full commitment to daw. Each VST setup can go to an analog mixing board (or digital) and I can still mix and record into a dedicate digital zoom or equal modern recorder. This is all win win win. :) Wish me luck

@doug_I_do_not_consent

Жыл бұрын

I've been using retired i5 laptops with Behringer UCA202's (no mic input) I buy on sale for $20 plus keyboards I buy on ebay that have broken keys I replace to create setups for kids who want to get into music production.

i have a 2018 i7(6cores+6virtual) with 64gb ram, & in logic pro some of the new granular plugins(not sample plugins), like NOVUM, is putting high load on the cpu, and if i have an arpeggiator on it maxes out the cpu's. Can you pls pick some of the worst CPU offenders and do some tests on them, thank you.

I wouldn't say that it doesn't matter, its just not as much of a bottleneck as some people think it is. You don't necessarily need to get to 100% CPU usage before you start hearing little glitches and pops. Additionally the CPU usage of a plugin is greatly dependent on how many voices and effects are being used, and then your other effects on each track will add CPU usage as well. Its fairly common for songs to grow to 50-150 tracks in size depending on your genre and style. If we assume a song with 100 tracks has 50 synth layers, some of which have 6X unison, effects and plenty of polyphony, you can pretty easily start getting buffering issues in your track with a modern midrange computer. 100 tracks can easily have 100+ compressors and 100+ EQ's too, some tracks have none but its not uncommon to have a synth track with multiple stages of compression and EQ. You can of course just freeze tracks or bounce them to audio. This is why it doesn't matter in many cases how CPU intensive a plugin is. If you use your computer in a live situation and want a Diva track, people often just make a basic multi-sample of the preset they're using and use a low CPU-usage sampler to play it back. However freezing / bouncing can be annoying since it slows down the creative process, and as a result this is why we care about the CPU usage of synths. Nobody should skip using Diva just because it takes more CPU, but everyone should be aware of how CPU hungry their plugins are so they can make smart decisions along the way before they end up with a 100 track song their computer can barely run without bouncing everything to audio.

Open a bunch of Arturia Pigments copies, each with a preset with heavy modulations and MPE activated and run a fast sequence.

@thampex

Жыл бұрын

Yeah pigments is very CPU heavy

Arturia's upgraded emulations of vintage analog synths are CPU intensive but sound way better now than previous versions. Roland Cloud kinda is CPU intensive too, there is the physical modelling collection of SWAM audio. U-he Zebra 2 and UVI Falcon when pushed hard are intensive. When you take a synth and you use oversampling (specially to remove aliasing from FM synths) it's CPU intensive. Diva is nothing compared to the beasts above.

unfortunately this is a common problem because the more complex the song gets the more plugins you add causing more latency. the solution in most daws is freezing track and then converting to audio. remember when you freeze it will bake those effects in unless you copy the track and then delete the effects and make a dry version then copy the original effects from the original track on to the dry bounced audio version.

I bought a VST from the sixteen company. At that time they advertised |the only synth you will ever need" True enough, this overloaded my CPU on many presets and I was unable to load any other vst. Let me wait another few years to try again.

My 2018 HP probook struggle with CPU using some Arturia plugins such as Augmented Strings, and several of the dubble presets in Analog Lab. Ableton 11 hardy works at all CPU drain so high that, I cant even finish a single song on there. Reason 12 and everything in it works perfectly, had no issues. Is Reason 12 just much less CPU intensive then Ableton? I dont really understand how when it's new GUI should be way more taxing then Ableton which has the most basic GUI?

@6581punk

Жыл бұрын

Software is written by humans, some people are better at writing code than other people. There's often compromises made to allow for easier portability between OS platforms at a cost of performance. There's just so many reasons why X may run better than Y. Also, the HP probook is a corporate laptop which means using slower more robust designs that can cope with being switched on and running jobs for a whole working day. A gaming laptop will perform better but might not last as long. This is what we found at one work place where some of the software developers were using consumer laptops with higher specs, they had a huge failure rate.

@PeranMe

Жыл бұрын

GUI shouldn’t make much of a difference in an audio app. Your results are really weird tho, what soundcard are you using, at what latency, and what drivers (DX, MME, ASIO etc)?

@6581punk

Жыл бұрын

@@PeranMe A good GPU does help. Integrated graphics that share system memory means graphic operations can load the memory bus a little. A graphics board or CPU with its own fast video memory avoids that.

@HOLLASOUNDS

Жыл бұрын

@@6581punk Yes I am aware that this laptop is not really ment for music production apps or gaming, It is interesting how Reason 12 works but Ableton 11 does not, but yes I definitely need to get a more appropriate machine.

@PeranMe

Жыл бұрын

@@6581punk You’re absolutely right, but on the order that Reason runs just fine and Ableton is unusable …sounds too much to me. Also, great nick!

Interesting video 👍 Really noticed how thin and weak sounding both versions of Massive are in comparison with these other synths, I’m really not a fan, used it for years and I’ve never got the sound I was after with it.

Jupiter 8 (Roland's own VST) has a high CPU load on my PC.

Id be curious to see how the access virus emulator runs on modern system, I got a 4th gen i7 that gets absolutely slaughtered when running the code of the Virus, it's rather intense. I think the project is available in github if memory serves!

@conorgilligan2418

Жыл бұрын

That's because it's emulating the DSP chip that the virus runs on rather than running the program that runs on the chip. I have a TI and I have been following the project closely as I love the TI but the hardware won't last forever, mine is full of festival mud and slowly getting glitchy, I doubt they'll be making them indefinitely, and it's probably one of the best hardware synths ever made, so an emulated version would be awesome given that access will probably discontinue it soon enough.

I think they improved Diva at some point - I remember CPU usage dropped considerably after an update a couple of years ago. However, I wish preset designers for Diva would stop using such long release times... that really is a CPU killer when sessioning sounds,.

@NuisanceMan

Жыл бұрын

Surely you can just tweak the release times.

enlightening content

Wonder how the ACB Roland plug-ins compare

@saricubra2867

Жыл бұрын

LOL. Roland Cloud Jupiter alone has like 4 times the CPU use of DIVA, Arturia's new Jupiter 8 v5 emulation is kinda there.

It matters with my iPad mini4 . 3 or more synths in AUM and it's drop out city.

You should focus mainly on Cherry Audio VST's(particularly Dreamsynth, Sines & Elka-X)...as these synths absolutely rape CPU power. With certain presets such as PAD sounds, I cannot even run ONE instance(with the oversampling on 1X)...without my DAW sputtering, popping & crackling and I am running a Ryzen 5 with 16GB of RAM. These synths as VST3's however, run a bit better...but creating a complete song with them, is impossible.

@RobertSaintJohn

Жыл бұрын

And yet, people create complete songs with our synths all the time. As you say, “certain presets,” but those are ambitious sound designs often using multiple layers, integrated effects, max voices, extensive modulations, and so on. There’s so much unsaid in your characterization (sample rate, detailed hardware specs, which presets), and I’m not going to hijack Woody’s post with a support issue (you know how to reach us!). There are many ways to “tame” presets by adjusting the above factors. But our synths are not significantly more or less CPU intensive than others in the market. We’re going to keep pushing the envelope with more synths like Dreamsynth and Sines, and more presets that show what can be done with the latest platforms (alongside plenty of less intense presets for everyone). We publish detailed system requirements and make free demos of everything available, so no one is buying blindly.

@HighlandStudio91

Жыл бұрын

@@RobertSaintJohn Yes...I'm sure people with $2,000 monster computers create complete songs all the time, but that's beside the point, isn't it?? As obviously, I'm not a professional...with a professional budget. I've been involved with softsynths since 2007 and NOT ONCE, did I ever have such intense CPU issues...as I have had and still have, with Cherry Audio VST's. My computer has been optimized to the max, so please spare me the operator error rhetoric. Synthmaster 2 is also a very ambitious synth and it's also a monster and yet, I can run mutiple instances in my DAW's with not even so much a hiccup, from my CPU. All of the CA synths I've bought(Sines, Dreamsynth, Quadra & Elka-X)...have serious CPU issues and such issues are clearly addressed by legions of CA users in various forums(such as KVRaudio) and said issues have been mentioned by many consummate professionals on KZread. Speaking of ambitious CA plugins, running 4X oversampling is ambitious, but not being able to run a single instance of Sines or Dreamsynth at 1X oversampling...is F**KING RIDICULOUS. EVERY other software developer out there that I know of, manages to create reasonably CPU-efficient VST's and yet, Cherry Audio is notorious for making CPU killing software. Cherry Audio software sounds superb & has brilliantly programmed presets(which rival many other more expensive software)...but nothing is priced over $39. High end sound...low end price...something is terribly wrong here, as this just does not compute. Well....the old adage; you get what you pay for...really says it all. By the way...I did not buy my CA synths blindly(as my main PC is down)...which does a better job of handling Cherry Audio's heavy load.

@CoachBobbyFinstock

Жыл бұрын

I can hardly run Elka-X at all! whereas I thought Synths like Dune 3/Repro would struggle more but run ok, Best i've found efficient are TAL-U-NO-LX, KORG: M1/Wavestation, Arturia: CS80, Softtube Model 84, Virtual CZ, and the old NI synths like FM8 for emulated synths, Air xpand!2/ Tubesynth and like you said Synthmaster 2 run really well too.

@HighlandStudio91

Жыл бұрын

@@CoachBobbyFinstock Synthmaster is pretty sweet(powerful, yet very CPU-efficient!) I recently bought AAS's Ultra Analog VA-3 and it's a BEAST! Also...the most CPU-efficient VST I have ever used. AAS is having a 50% off deal on Ultra Analog(my cost was for an upgrade from VA-2 of $39)...so for new users, it's $99(normally $199.)

@CoachBobbyFinstock

Жыл бұрын

@@RobertSaintJohn I really like the synths, but they are significantly more CPU intensive than other powerful synths from my experience.

Thank you for this video. Can ypu please tell us the EXACT specifications of your computer? 16 GB RAM DDR4 or DDR3 f.e.

Wow Serum used almost nothing lol. Very cool. I wish you would have tried VITAL, though! Enlightening video, thank you. Very relevant to me specifically, as I use a Ryzen 5 3600 @ 4.2ghz.

Strange, I've never had Serum get too CPU hungry. You want some CPU hungry plugins, try EastWest Opus (not a synth though)...

Reaper is amazing at VST efficiency. So well written. Faster CPU, RAM & nvme SSD helps as well. Thank you computer games

Hallo Woody can you do the test also for iOS iPad synth plugins please 👍

@WoodyPianoShack

Жыл бұрын

thanks for the suggestion, but a couple of issues, i don't have ipad and well, i'm not into making music on tablets, due to the lack of pro connections.

System8 plugin uses alot of CPU, good reason for owning the hardware, basically all of Roland's synths in one with detailed control

I can record and run simultaneously 5 instances of Opus(2xchoirs, 3x orchestra ) 3 x instances of Omnisphere in 1x instance Unify in Cakewalk 35% cpu 45% ram , running intel i7 11700 32gb ram no problems what so ever. I find using unify for vst’s like Omnisphere you can run so many more instances at once due to the way Unify works.

@catpriest

Жыл бұрын

Imagine telling that to a producer from 90s. A whole orchestra just inside your tiny SSD, processing in a small CPU. Holy crap

@hozzer68

Жыл бұрын

@@catpriest that was full patches as well not even the light version, it’s frightening what can be done on a pc, you should see what’s on my iPad Pro, it would be £10,000’s if I was to buy hardware versions and in a studio mix (not Live) you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference

@catpriest

Жыл бұрын

@@hozzer68 Exactly. Music creation has become very available. No need to buy a new overpriced instrument or gear. Just load a new program and you're good to go

@cassetteo

Жыл бұрын

Pc master race! I can run more than that on my M1

@hozzer68

Жыл бұрын

@@cassetteo so can I, it was just an example, show me an M1 for sale for £900 or for an extra £120 running 64gb ram

@Woody Piano Shack can you reach out to your viewers for their favorite free VST Synth?

With SERUM I think you used the default (1x or Draft quality you should have used 4x oversampling) With Massive (the old version you can max out the quality at ULTRA by default I think it's normal or Eco quality) With DIVA (you can switch on HQ mode & Multicore buttons) Anyway I don't have to care anymore I'm runnin on a Ryzen 5600x no matter what I throw at it it handles everything maxced out withou any glitch at 18-20ms latency

This music is too thick and lush 😂 - thanks for doing this - answers questions VST users often wonder about.

I mean, turn up unison in serum and play some arps, 4x oversampling enabled. An easy way to choke a modern cpu. I can't do this with sylenth.

totally should export this as a wave file without the lead playing for folks to play with

Its embaressing to admit how old my PC is, but I am a pretty heavy user of Vital and its a newer synth, and runs without much effort. The only vst sampler synth emulator that gives me any issues is Decent Sampler and sometimes Kontakt. Reaper is my main DAW its already pretty efficient . A faster PC would help as far as rendering and freezing tracks but there is a work around that, to play back tracks into another 'project tab', using loopback . This was covered in a recent Kenny Goia tutorial. I use it for all kinds of things now, a pretty powerful feature of Reaper

Woody you should test roland vstis they are very pc consuming. And also arp oddysey vsti from korg and buchla easel and synthi v from arturia. these are most cpu loading vstis.

@EarDrumBeatz

Жыл бұрын

So true, the Roland's consume so much CPU even just an instance of Jupiter 8 and nothing being played. MY CPU meter is at20%

@cookiemasta1658

Жыл бұрын

@@EarDrumBeatz exactly! I wonder how korg arp oddysey can let's say at one preset consume like 15 percent of cpu and on another preset it consumes 85 percent cpu that's some kind of developer "being high" level of software development

What I learnt via the Steam hardware survey is that the average PC spec is pretty paltry. So it's probably the case that the people who grumble do so because they don't have the money for decent hardware, these are the same people who moan when a poly Moog synth costs £4000+. People who can afford a powerful computer are less likely to moan.

@Curious_Skeptic

Жыл бұрын

Gaming, very different than sound. Doesn't matter the GPU. It's all about RAM, efficiency of audio interface, and some reasonably newer four core or more CPU. I game with 12th gen i7/ 64GB ram, 3070ti, and I still want better, LOL. Not a matter of money for me, matter of patience for the next big leap. Which may be 5090ti. Not sure the 4090ti will be worth the fuss. This round. 5090ti, we'll finally have a killer card and that will be equal to owning a Moog synth that costs $5000.00 USD. LOL. End all, be all with no compromise! Music DAW desktop builds? Mah. Mac has been killing it in music market for ages on ancient tech. The difference was solid programming, solid hardware, and efficiency. The world of music programs/software was really sloppy when it came to running under Windows xx. Anyway... Don't pick on people who can't afford stuff. Gaming should never have come to a point you need a $10,000.00 rig to run a AAA title. That's bad on the part of devs. They NEVER bother to utilize the current tech. Always building on the back of old engines, and testing on the latest cards. Sort of B.S. if you ask me. :)

@MrJediAl

Жыл бұрын

Maybe you could also consider those who need dozens of plugins or so much ram that it's not feasible to run everything on one machine. Especially with orchestral work, but definitely not just that... then again, maybe I'm a poor moaner 😉

@Curious_Skeptic

Жыл бұрын

@@MrJediAl LOLZ. Really, you can go with AMD/older motherboard/ CPU/ affordable ram (32-64GB not too expensive) affordable m2 drive, you'll have all you need right there. Without too much moaning. LOL. I have an old 6700k system with 16gb ram, and ssd, not even m2, and it runs just fine. You can mix down to audio much of your work as you go along to save resources. Save your original tracks as backups if you need them back. You can layer and economize your project according to the ability of your CPU. If you can't afford the gear, there's always a way to make it work with what you have! Think outside the box. (I have half dozen pc builds around, some for testing, some for future video projection projects, and one for design work/gaming). I enjoy pushing the old builds to drive audio work. Soon to be doing testing on what the smallest CHEAPEST mini pc will be to run a single VST. Like the VMACHINE, but without the stupid dedicated bull crap that brought with it!

@MrJediAl

Жыл бұрын

@@Curious_Skeptic In case you really mean it (not sure because of those lolz...), your advice is fine for many people who want to start with music making, or those who truly are on a tight budget, etc. I meant my last sentence ironically though + see my other comment about offloading vsts, which is the only way how I can cover computational power required for the music production I do (still not close to Junkie XL's setup ;-)

@Curious_Skeptic

Жыл бұрын

@@MrJediAl the take away should just be that you don't need all the vsts loaded at once. Work a part, bounce to audio wav file or whatever audio format, offloads that vst for a new instrument, and so forth. If you are worried about retakes, you can always pull back up the midi track and the vst to redo a partical part. You don't need to have 20 or 30 vsts running at once. On a budget, you can in fact adjust your process and mix down from vsts midi track to audio tracks to open processing power.

I often run into the dreaded “cpu overload / audio dropouts detected” error message in Cubase, even with just a few audio tracks. I have a 9th generation core i5, and 32 gigabytes of ram. I just wonder what the bottleneck could be as I’ve configured windows to Steinberg’s performance recommendations. With my 2017 iPad I never run in issues like this with Cubasis or Gadget. To be fair, I use a somewhat old version of Cubase which is version 9. I wonder if the newer versions have better resources handling in the multithreading code.

@afxtwinreverb

Жыл бұрын

Same, I had more problems with an i7 7h gen than with a base ipad 2018.

The only time cpu burden is an issue is when multiple fx buses are being used or time based fx on VSTS e.g. NIs hybrid keys or noire piano particles engine. Apples macs are so expensive for equivalent intel pc specs people often go for second hand apples with less than the optimum 32 GB ram, and only 1TB disk. When in the pc world for less money you can get 64GB ram 2TB nvme drive just for plugins, another 1TB nvme for project saves. Timed based fx over midi are the killer. Cheap apple users are advised to bounce midi to audio to save cpu and ram. No need if you use pcs or are rich enough to afford a mac studio at 5k. For reference on my i9 i run 64 midi instruments with time based fx and 16 audio channels for hardware synths all capable of recording at the same Time and recording video direct to OBS via nvidia GPu backed recording codecs.Combining omnisphere and komplete kontrol.

Wow i think i am falling behind. Not that i "need" a new laptop but my 2019 Mbp 6 core has a lot (a lot) more Cpu load when i use similar amount of plugins. I remember once i loaded the Memorymoog emulation by Cherry Audio and with some presets i saw 20-30% Cpu load with 1 instance.... My settings are most time 48khz and Buffer 1024. Also before this i had a Mbp of 2015 with an i7 Quadcore and 1 instance of Multiplicity was almost sufficient in order to bring it to its knees. On the 6 core it works just fine. I wonder if it has to do also with the Sowtware Platform. Your Pc seems to be flying. Nice However,, as i said. The times i used 100+ tracks in a project are long gone and now i achieve the same level of "satisfaction" with 8-10 tracks. As time goes by Computers get faster and faster but if you are lucky thank God so is your Mind`s efficiency

Roland Sound Cloud instruments!! Why??

There are still issues with disk types and ram speed. Minimum ssd and not external usb drives either, has to be internal connected. Which is why macs are crap only one nvme slot

What are the Pc Specs ? that was the important thing.

@WoodyPianoShack

Жыл бұрын

as i said a mid-range windows pc from a few years ago, average stuff, nothing special.

I'm sure the comments are all from people who happily run 67 instances of Diva on their laptops. Or maybe, here in the real world where people use normal computers, most people often get glitches if they have ten synths (or fewer) playing simultaneously.

Watching people's CPU capacity running out makes me think otherwise. e.g. Data Broth, Polarity Music, Venus Theory. I'm inclined to regard your testing as inconclusive. Granted, a lot can be taken up by FX rather than synths on their own. And, Yes, one can apply strategies to circumvent CPU overload. If you want to try a Real guzzler take a look at Odin 2.

@AutPen38

6 ай бұрын

I often listen to or watch podcasts featuring actual hitmaking producers talking about how they made chart records and they are often apologising that they can't remember the name of the synth preset and/or effects plugins they used, because they had to bounce down several tracks to WAV files, because their computers couldn't cope. And it obviously occurs on KZread tutorials too (where admittedly there is a screen recorder using some CPU too) and the audio starts breaking up or glitching with less than a dozen sounds playing at once. I don't know how/why Woody's system coped so well, but I think most people have constant battles with plugins when they are building up tracks with multiple layers.

I can vouch that Arturia's OB Xa is a TOTAL memory hog. Some sounds use 100% according to Cubase's CPU meter even to the extent that it goes beyond and causes crackles, making the plugin virtually useless (no pun intended).

Massive X is CPU hungry, that's true. But for that it sounds best of all plugins.

Did you miss the announcement at namm that a company figured out how to run vst on gpus? It’s also not about the vst being cpu hungry. It’s about how many processing effects you’re using at once. Which means this music/ demonstration was an inadequate representation of a bogged down computer needing to “bounce a track”. I watch several streamers that try to not bounce tracks on stream but sometimes have to on new PCs.

This was a loooooong video about nothing really. Different presets in different synths uses a different amount of voices. Which internal effects and filters was in use? And most importantly... You didn't specified your computer set up.

@Curious_Skeptic

Жыл бұрын

Ouch? LOL. I thought it a bit inspiring. I'm working on a project where a single VST will run on a single 4th-5th gen mini PC as the heart of a hydrid 'hardware' synth. On midi controller/one dedicated midi keyboard controller, one monitor. Not asking a lot out of old school CPU. This video assured it will work, as I'm not even asking a 1/3rd of what he just did with CPU usage. PS: Sorry, I agree about the lack of PC specs, sort of pointless to have base reference. Point of video was just showing the various plug-ins and how they affect work loads on CPU. Didn't have to be about any given CPU, just in general.

Enabe MULTICORE in Diva come on... RTFM ;)

I think U-He's claim shouldn't be an asset or anything to brag about. I use Arturia v collection 9 exclusively. And while some of those guys can eat up some CPU more than others, there were pains put fourth for accuracy and performance from Arturia's end. However, I've noticed performance differences with the same plugin based on what DAW I'm using. Studio one seems to have higher CPU usage than Bitwig, and I find Reaper sits in between both. Logic has always been the worst.

👍

To me. Diva is the best "analog" vsti.

Great video. Strange that people who have tested Diva over the years have some different results to yours, though

you could run these on a cell phone then?? HAHA! Triumph of the dream!

regarding sound, for me unsurprisingly Serum far away best sounding.. it's wavetables inmolementstion ans filters are really ahead of it's time of release...

Better test would be to have a multi-track arrangement, definitely including Omnisphere and some CPU-hungry mastering plugins like iZotope Ozone 10. Then comparing how that is handled/performance with different CPUs. I appreciate you probably don't have different computers around to do this on, but when video gamers review the performance of a PC game, they apply equal settings and then benchmark against different GPUs. The number of instances is meaningless, but thanks for the video anyway. :)

Not a very scientific test to be fair. Most people who hit high CPU usage have the wrong latency settings. You also need to factor in effects. Switching on a reverb per instance will greatly increase CPU usage. I don't own any of these synths, however, the synths I have, Omnisphere, REFX Nexus and VPS Avenger don't impact my Ryzen 7 at all.