Poor performance from Spectrasonics with Mac Pro and Carbon

[dominicperry]

I recently bought Spectrasonics Keyscape and Omnisphere and yesterday tried to get them working with Carbon as my interface. Although both Spectrasonics products have a stand-alone mode, because I wanted to use the mains (which have a sub) and the headphone output (to feed the monitors near the keyboard), I had to run stuff inside Pro Tools. (The standalone version only allows one stereo out).
I have my Nord Stage 2 as a midi input, with dedicated USB-A port connected to the Mac Pro 7.1, 16 core with 48GB RAM (which gets nowhere near used up).
I'm running at 96KHz to try to reduce latency, but I ended up with the PT buffer at 512, as smaller sizes were choking and crackling. I'm only playing one track live - a double-layered patch in Spectrasonics - and not hitting record, this is just a test of the VI inside PT. Essentially the performance is lousy - I have to increase the buffer size to the point that I can detect latency when playing. I'm running Big Sur 11.5.2 - using the Carbon means that Big Sur is kind of a necessity due to the problems with AVB on Catalina.
Is there anything I can do, or is this the nature of VI's - up until now I've always blamed having a laptop as the reason for poor VI performance, but really, you can't get much better than a 16 core Mac Pro 7.1 - the clock speed is higher than the 24/28 core versions and I have so much CPU spare - Spectrasonics reports 3% in use.
So, any suggestions, or do I just give up with VI's!!?

[Kyle Splittgerber]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

I recently bought Spectrasonics Keyscape and Omnisphere and yesterday tried to get them working with Carbon as my interface. Although both Spectrasonics products have a stand-alone mode, because I wanted to use the mains (which have a sub) and the headphone output (to feed the monitors near the keyboard), I had to run stuff inside Pro Tools. (The standalone version only allows one stereo out).
I have my Nord Stage 2 as a midi input, with dedicated USB-A port connected to the Mac Pro 7.1, 16 core with 48GB RAM (which gets nowhere near used up).
I'm running at 96KHz to try to reduce latency, but I ended up with the PT buffer at 512, as smaller sizes were choking and crackling. I'm only playing one track live - a double-layered patch in Spectrasonics - and not hitting record, this is just a test of the VI inside PT. Essentially the performance is lousy - I have to increase the buffer size to the point that I can detect latency when playing. I'm running Big Sur 11.5.2 - using the Carbon means that Big Sur is kind of a necessity due to the problems with AVB on Catalina.
Is there anything I can do, or is this the nature of VI's - up until now I've always blamed having a laptop as the reason for poor VI performance, but really, you can't get much better than a 16 core Mac Pro 7.1 - the clock speed is higher than the 24/28 core versions and I have so much CPU spare - Spectrasonics reports 3% in use.
So, any suggestions, or do I just give up with VI's!!?

Hi Dominic,

Any difference with “Limit Number of Real-Time Threads” checked or unchecked in the Playback Engine? Also, does this issue reproduce with selecting Built-in Output or another non-Carbon device in the Playback Engine?

[dominicperry]

Originally Posted by Kyle Splittgerber

Hi Dominic,

Any difference with “Limit Number of Real-Time Threads” checked or unchecked in the Playback Engine? Also, does this issue reproduce with selecting Built-in Output or another non-Carbon device in the Playback Engine?

Thanks Kyle - I'll try and get back to you.

[unkJE]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

… I wanted to use the mains (which have a sub) and the headphone output (to feed the monitors near the keyboard), I had to run stuff inside Pro Tools. (The standalone version only allows one stereo out)….
I'm running at 96KHz to try to reduce latency, but I ended up with the PT buffer at 512, as smaller sizes were choking and crackling. I'm only playing one track live - a double-layered patch in Spectrasonics - and not hitting record, this is just a test of the VI inside PT. Essentially the performance is lousy - I have to increase the buffer size to the point that I can detect latency when playing …
Is there anything I can do, or is this the nature of VI's - up until now I've always blamed having a laptop as the reason for poor VI performance, but really, you can't get much better than a 16 core Mac Pro 7.1 - the clock speed is higher than the 24/28 core versions and I have so much CPU spare - Spectrasonics reports 3% in use.
So, any suggestions, or do I just give up with VI's!!?

(I don’t have Carbon – this is just my view of using Spectrasonics in Pro Tools)

Now Spectrasonics 2.7 includes VST3 versions, use PatchWork Synth to control them in Pro Tools

https://www.bluecataudio.com/Doc/Product_PatchWork/
The synth version now includes multiple output busses (up to 16 output channels). The standalone application now offers up to 16 audio I/O. Sub plug-ins audio i/o routing: connect the inputs and outputs of each plug-in to any channel. Latency is now compensated for individual channels when a plug-in is processing only a subset of all available channels

More Aux Outputs and Plug-In I/O Routing:
https://www.bluecataudio.com/Blog/pr...in-io-routing/

Blue Cat's Patchwork V2 Quick Start
https://youtu.be/2Ocv6ez5-8c
Side Chain Input @ 4:33
Parameter Mapping and Control Settings @ 7:29
Learn Mode @ 8:14
Control from external Keyboard – MIDI Learn @ 8:52
Map the throw of the external control/Control Settings @ 9:23
Audio I/O Recording @ 9:57
Custom Plug-in Configurations – save Plug-ins and Settings @ 11:17

Free Demo:
https://www.bluecataudio.com/Product...uct_PatchWork/

[MarkH]

Have you tried the plugins with the default Mac Pro speaker instead of Carbon? This will help dissect if it’s Carbon or some other software on your Mac. I have the same spec Mac Pro 7,1 and Spectrasonics plugins and it does not have that issue. I don’t run 96k but I would try it at 48k and 96k with default speaker to see what the result is.

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

I recently bought Spectrasonics Keyscape and Omnisphere and yesterday tried to get them working with Carbon as my interface. Although both Spectrasonics products have a stand-alone mode, because I wanted to use the mains (which have a sub) and the headphone output (to feed the monitors near the keyboard), I had to run stuff inside Pro Tools. (The standalone version only allows one stereo out).
I have my Nord Stage 2 as a midi input, with dedicated USB-A port connected to the Mac Pro 7.1, 16 core with 48GB RAM (which gets nowhere near used up).
I'm running at 96KHz to try to reduce latency, but I ended up with the PT buffer at 512, as smaller sizes were choking and crackling. I'm only playing one track live - a double-layered patch in Spectrasonics - and not hitting record, this is just a test of the VI inside PT. Essentially the performance is lousy - I have to increase the buffer size to the point that I can detect latency when playing. I'm running Big Sur 11.5.2 - using the Carbon means that Big Sur is kind of a necessity due to the problems with AVB on Catalina.
Is there anything I can do, or is this the nature of VI's - up until now I've always blamed having a laptop as the reason for poor VI performance, but really, you can't get much better than a 16 core Mac Pro 7.1 - the clock speed is higher than the 24/28 core versions and I have so much CPU spare - Spectrasonics reports 3% in use.
So, any suggestions, or do I just give up with VI's!!?

I have the same Mac Pro. I think the issue here is running at 96Khz. Yes in theory the latency is lower but I’ve never got useful performance out of any VI at that rate. 48Khz is the way to go! I don’t have Keyscape but Omnisphere works fine here in PT at 48Khz. Also, as Kyle suggested - you might benefit from turning Limit Number of Real-Time Threads on in Playback Engine. It’s certainly helped here with VE Pro.

[dominicperry]

Thanks all, I'll try all your suggestions and report back.

Dominic

[JFreak]

The VI's that benefit from 96k are very rare...