CPU Issue

[Darryl Ramm]

OK so testing with dither likely showed it’s not denormalization related, so likely just some other programming bug in Omnisphere.

But do a another quick test: move all other plugins out of the plugin folder and just leave the Omnisphere (the very latest versions) .aax files in the folder and trash prefs and start Pro Tools... is that more stable? Usable at a larger buffer size? (What is the smallest buffer size it is usable at?).

I’ll leave it to you to check that’s the very latest version on Omnisphere, and I hope you have that system fully optimized, every last thing done, regardless of how inconvenient or silly it seems. like WiFi and Bluetooth disabled. You are trying to find a baseline if the plugin is ever usable.

If you still have a problem you need to take it up with the plugin vendor.

[Darryl Ramm]

And thanks for the Sandra report, I can’t see anything there that looks bad, we just don’t see enough Ryzen CPU systems to know much about them.

Lots of drives, I am not sure where you are putting your audio sessions, remember you can’t do that on FAT32 partitions, and remember to enable Fisk cache in pro tools (set it to a size to enable, say 8GB.).

And while there make sure stupid “dynamic plugin processing” is disabled.

[Alexlimbert]

Thank you Darryl,

I am storing sessions on the SD Drives. All drives are NTFS. Disk Cache set to normal.

I'm not sure how to do the following three items.

1. "move all other plugins out of the plugin folder"

Q. Where can I find this folder?

2. "trash prefs and start Pro Tools."

Q. How do you trash prefs?

3. "I hope you have that system fully optimized, every last thing done?"

Q. Not sure what this means or how to do it? Reset the bios to optomized settings?

[Darryl Ramm]

you need to reread the info under “help us help you” all this should be explained there.

BTW trashing prefs should be an automatic thing to do any time you have a problem. You can do that by hand or use a third party tool to help.

Plugin folders:

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...older-location

Optimizing your system is also documented in the Pro Tools Installation Guide... which you should have followed.

[Southsidemusic]

Remember to ALWAYS restart the computer after changing anything no matter how insignificant it might seem. Many people just reinstall software or trash preferences etc w/out restarting and keep having the same issue until they turn off and goto bed and in the morning it works again and think a miracle has taken place

So to everyone : Always Restart after making changes on the computer !!

[Alexlimbert]

lol Thanks guys. I will follow the above and come back with my findings.

[bronsoncox]

What I've read RE: Ryzen performance is that handling VIs can be finicky. Single core performance still seems to trump all.

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2017/03...ook-for-audio/


"So the big problem here appears to be inefficiency at lower buffer rates. The ASIO buffer is throwing data at the CPU in quicker bursts the lower you go with the setting, so with the audio crackling and breaking up it seems that the CPU just isn’t clearing the buffer quickly enough once it gets to around 70% CPU load at those lower 64 & 128 buffer settings

Intel at this buffer setting looks to be hitting 85% or higher, so whilst the AMD chip may have more RAW performance to hand, the responsiveness of the rest of the architecture appears to be letting it down. It’s no big secret looking over the early reviews that whilst AMD has made some amazing gains with the IPC rates this generation they still appear to be lagging slightly behind Intel in this performance metric.

So the results start to outline this as one of the key weaknesses in the Ryzen configuration, with it becoming quite apparent that the are bottle necks elsewhere in the architecture that are coming into play beyond the new CPU’s. At the lower buffer settings the test tends to benefit single core performance, with the Intel chips taking a solid lead. As you slacken off the buffer itself, more cores become the better option as the system is able to spread the load but even then it isn’t until we hit a 192 buffer setting on the ASIO drivers that the performance catches up to the intel 4 Core CPU.

This appears to be one section where the AMD performance still seems to be lacking compared with the Intel family be that due to hardware bottle necks or still not quite having caught up in the overall IPC handling at the chipset level."

[Darryl Ramm]

Something is really broken here, with just two instances of Omnisphere falling over. Assuming the system is properly optimized and things set up OK (always the first suspicion) and this is still happening then the plugin vendor ideally will get involved here. I would not overplay the Ryzen processor being a suspect.

[Alexlimbert]

I was thinking the same thing as bronsoncox however, I just ran a test where I had 128 tracks with 10 plugins on each track (including Sansamp, DVerb, etc.) and I had no problem whatsoever recording and playing back 10 minutes of audio. Having said that, I will perform the same test with my Intel based system to see what happens.

I did do one more test with the 10 instances of Omnisphere. I took off the preceding dither plugins and Pro Tools shut down within a second, much quicker than the 5 seconds I got using the preceding dither plugins. Not sure if this helps.

I'm still in the process of optimizing my system. I trashed the preferences, took all the plugins out of my plugin folder besides Omnisphere, took off overclocking, yet I'm still experiencing this CPU issue. I wrote to Omnisphere to see if they heard anything about their latest release. Waiting to hear back.

I will report back later.

[Darryl Ramm]

Oh Doh I'm an idiot, the dither comment was such a knee jerk response, that won't help here with a VI. If it seems to it may be some subtle interaction with plugin scheduling (make sure dynamic plugin processing is turned off).

I'd still suspect Omnisphere is the issue... by all means check out with a *fully* optimized system and explore the performance/stability vs. buffer caches sizes. VIs can be especially sensitive to IO buffer size. You may want to ask what IO buffer size other users on PCs are running at.

Is streaming turned off for Omisphere? (you have lots of memory so should be . good to do that). Where are the samples stored? Where are the session files? Is Pro Tools disk cache enabled- what size it is set to?

You may need to reach out to the plugin vendor. If there are CPU issues contributing here (and I'll remain skeptical) debugging of that is something the plugin vendor is best suited to help with.