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75 workflow improvements to make Cakewalk more intuitive (+ appearance, implementation, etc.)


Olaf

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7 minutes ago, Olaf said:

I don't think they're perfect. To me they sound very unnatural.

It was meant to be ironic🧐. I meant so overly processed and polished, that any natural origin is lost, and so is the soul/emotion of the voice.

 

On 1/18/2021 at 2:18 PM, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

If you don't know how to make digital sound good, that's not a problem with the sound.

There's a simple, one fits all solution to this: use analog emulations to the max😄 (oh, and don't over-quantize😘)

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41 minutes ago, Olaf said:

Actually they wouldn't, as it turns out, it's ironical, isn't it ;)? They thought they did until they made the comparison - I've already answered that - and realized you can actually sound even worse than you did with distortion and noise - you can sound "digital", that is. That's why they invented the term. And you can clearly see it, in the ton of analog emulations, noise and saturation plugins that they use now.

It's not hard to see it everywhere, beyond blank in-vitro considerations without applicability, like "compromise", "limitations". What you may fail to see is that they overcame those limitations, in a way that works best with our ears, whereas all you have to offer for the lack of good sound is sterile considerations that actually come from a distorted theoretical perspective - 0 Kelvin - a so called neutral point that no one can use or needs.

Wrong again. This is been done and dusted several times. All the pleasing characteristics of analog sound are either harmonic distortion or lack of high frequencies.

As Ethan Winer from RealTraps puts it:

Quote

In my frequent visits to audio forums, I notice much fascination with old audio gear. I don't know anyone who prefers old cellphones, or old computers, or even old medical cures, for that matter. Audio recording is based entirely on technology, and for the most part, technology only improves over time. So I don't understand the obsession with 'old' when it comes to recording. Sure, wood used for musical instruments often improves with age, but I'm talking about gear.

I'm old enough to remember vintage gear when it was brand new! In those days, gear designers aimed to avoid the 'tube' sound, not to mention the hiss and distortion of analogue tape. The design goals back then were for gear to be as quiet as possible, with minimal distortion. Transformers were used because they were needed, not to add audible 'colour'. Chemical engineers worked hard for decades to formulate magnetic tape with as little distortion and hiss as possible. Equalisers made with inductors can ring when boosted, and once upon a time that was considered a bad thing!

In years past, thousands of amazing-sounding records were made using only the stock preamps in whatever console was available. Those preamps were designed to be as clean as possible, not coloured with some 'vintage' quality. The best recordings of years past still hold up today — but they sound great despite the limitations of the gear used, not because of it.

Advertising these days is filled with colourful adjectives like you'd read in a hi‑fi publication. Endorsements by famous engineers are more common than ever. Science? We don't need science! This EQ sounds sweet, and Joe the Pro puts one on every track.(...)

(...)One huge difference between productions from days past and project studios today is the environment used for recording and mixing. Most professional studios 40 years ago had a live room large enough that reflections from the walls and ceiling were softer and 'later' than recordings done today in a bedroom. In a pro studio, you can pull the microphones back far enough to capture a full sound from an acoustic instrument, without it sounding boxy and off‑mic, as happens in small rooms. Likewise for mixing. My first experience in a pro studio was in the early 1970s at A&R Recording in New York City, playing guitar on radio commercials. The live room was very large, with a simple linoleum floor, and the control room was large too. Those rooms were also acoustically treated, unlike the typical untreated bedrooms so many use today.

And so on.

50 minutes ago, Olaf said:

No, digital sounds harsh because it sounds harsh - and that's why I prefer analog sound. That's the correct logical sequence. There's no "fetish" for analog sound that you're freely and baselessly attributing to people that you don't know. By the way, great way to turn a conversation on principle into personal attacks. Do I sense you becoming defensive? Hint: when you feel you do, it might be a sign you need to rethink the things you're defensive about.

If anything I could say I see a fetish for digital from those using uninsightful and sterile considerations that they attach their ego to, instead of their ears.

While there is a margin for personal interpretation and taste, obviously, you can't "subjective" your way out of everything - while the speaker still sounds the way it does. There's also a right and a wrong, and it pertains to the natural quality of a sound, and the timbre of the source.

For instance this below is not "clear", it's harsh - and it comes from a bad instrumental mix.

And it's easy to tell the difference, beyond the bullshit: ask yourself if you've ever heard a human voice, anywhere, sounding like that. While we improve clarity, hype-up and change the natural sound all the time, apply cheat-codes - it's what we do - there's a margin for that before you lose touch, and things actually start to sound bad.

Yet again a repeat of "digital sounds harsh because I prefer the sound of analog".

54 minutes ago, Olaf said:

I'm not gonna go into personal considerations of what I can and can't do 😉, it suffices to say that this very sentence should have made you think, if you had the inclination - it's a sentence that actually says analog sound is better, if you took the time to take it in.

With good sounding analog you don't need to make anything sound good, it just did - obviously in relation to the source - by running it through the gear. What you would do is make it sound different, as needed. That's actually a good sign to recognize good gear, you can't make it sound bad - you can make it sound different in many ways, but not bad, tone wise - and you don't need to "make it" sound good - it already does. That should tell you a lot right there.

Anyway, I'm withdrawing from the conversation, don't feel like engaging in a personal to and fro. Suffice to say that, for all the incredible tools that we have these days, I've never seen a larger amount of bad sounding mixes on commercial radio than these days - and it seems to be the norm. That's another thing that should tell you a lot. And they come from sterile considerations like that, that miss the point from an attachment to words.

Wrong again, as explained in the quote from Ethan Winer I put before. Those recordings sound great because they were made by people who knew what they were doing, ironically, using the best technology they could afford back then. Not because it was done with analog gear. These people would still give you a great sound recording no matter what. This reminds me of that Chet Atkins anecdote, where someone saw him playing and said his guitar sounded great, to which Chet stopped playing, placed the guitar by itself on the stool he was sitting, then asked how great the guitar sounded now.

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16 minutes ago, Teegarden said:

It was meant to be ironic🧐. I meant so overly processed and polished, that any natural origin is lost, and so is the soul/emotion of the voice.

No, I agree they are smoother and more polished now - I've nuanced this is my original comment. But, yeah, all natural quality and emotion is lost, exactly, and they have a stock, one size fits all timbre, that you don't even know who's singing anymore. You used to recognize a well-known singer from the first word, before. Now you need to flip a coin.

19 minutes ago, Teegarden said:

There's a simple, one fits all solution to this: use analog emulations to the max😄 (oh, and don't over-quantize😘)

Absolutely, that's what I do, and I'm very happy about it.

I've recently discovered that I need a DI box, I thought I didn't because I already have instrument/Hi Z inputs on my interface, but I've tried an... emulation 🙄, and it makes a big improvement in the transient quality. So, I figure I need one after all. Turns out, beyond the theoretical manufacturer reassurance, that maybe USB cannot push enough voltage in the preamp. I want to buy a new interface, change my setup, and revisit the issue then.

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23 minutes ago, Teegarden said:

It was meant to be ironic🧐. I meant so overly processed and polished, that any natural origin is lost, and so is the soul/emotion of the voice.

Music rarely sounds exactly like the actual thing, even down to the early recording setups where you had a horn picking up the entire band as it was registered by a disc cutting lathe when the signal entered it. You could theoretically do it but you'd run into the acoustic advantage thing. Some instruments are naturally louder than others and there's nothing you can do about it. This is the primary reason orchestas have that particular arrangement. Even then, scores have to exercise caution with dynamics as percussion can still be louder than the rest of the orchesta.

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14 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

Wrong again. This is been done and dusted several times. All the pleasing characteristics of analog sound are either harmonic distortion or lack of high frequencies.

Don't bother, I'm not even gonna read it. You don't actually read what is being written, you fly over the points, so basically you repeat yourself over an over, with stuff that's been already answered, but somehow you missed it. I'm gonna return the favor and not read it, myself. Besides, the first phrases already show the more-sterile-theorizing over using your ears approach, even though even the theory is wrong, because it's oversimplified theory - that doesn't involve psychoacoustics, principles of physics, etc. There's not point to it, and I don't really care what Ethan said.

Besides, somebody who enjoys saying "you're wrong" so many times - while a decent guy actually tries to avoid saying it, I could have said it, and maybe more than that - clearly has an emotional agenda behind his "certainties", so I suggest solving that first, and then having certainties. But once you do, you'll probably find you don't need "certainties" and to dizzy yourself with talk, as much, and you'll probably become more open to understanding and (somewhat) objective assessment. Again, we're all subjective, but not everything is entirely subjective. And I see a avoidance mechanism here, so...

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2 hours ago, Olaf said:

Don't bother, I'm not even gonna read it. You don't actually read what is being written, you fly over the points, so basically you repeat yourself over an over, with stuff that's been already answered, but somehow you missed it. I'm gonna return the favor and not read it, myself. Besides, the first phrases already show the more-sterile-theorizing over using your ears approach, even though even the theory is wrong, because it's oversimplified theory - that doesn't involve psychoacoustics, principles of physics, etc. There's not point to it, and I don't really care what Ethan said.

Besides, somebody who enjoys saying "you're wrong" so many times - while a decent guy actually tries to avoid saying it, I could have said it, and maybe more than that - clearly has an emotional agenda behind his "certainties", so I suggest solving that first, and then having certainties. But once you do, you'll probably find you don't need "certainties" and to dizzy yourself with talk, as much, and you'll probably become more open to understanding and (somewhat) objective assessment. Again, we're all subjective, but not everything is entirely subjective. And I see a avoidance mechanism here, so...

Yet you bother responding to it, on top of going to personal attacks right before calling me out for allegedly doing so.

Once again, no matter how much you show videos of people using analog gear or some processing done in modern setups, it won't make digital sound harsh, because digital does not sound harsh. And if it did earlier, it was already fixed. All the stuff we still use in digital sound today has been determined since the 1930s.

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29 minutes ago, Bruno de Souza Lino said:

There's no way to disable that. The box is greyed out.

Hard to judge what's going on without seeing it. Usually in Device Manager you can right-click a device and select "disable device". Do you run everything with administrator rights?
Here's a link to programs that might help you: 6 Tools to Forcefully Enable Grayed Out Disabled Buttons

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Good description. Moral, even on a decent configuration, anything that resembles real life and not an aseptic configuration, where you don't even look at the screen and tread very lightly, leads to crashes, and, even with that, performance issues. Direct monitoring recording is basically not being able to record - other than maybe vocals, but not helpful for a good performance even then.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/333570523387557/permalink/3698301283581114/

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7 hours ago, Olaf said:

Good description. Moral, even on a decent configuration, anything that resembles real life and not an aseptic configurations leads to crashes, and, even with that, performance issues. Direct monitoring recording is basically not being able to record - other than maybe vocals, but not helpful for a good performance even then.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/333570523387557/permalink/3698301283581114/

That Facebook post is a very nice example of how complicated and demanding DAWs are and how problems in many cases are related to hardware and configuration and not necessarily to the DAW itself (not saying that DAWs are bug free..)!  

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5 hours ago, Teegarden said:

That Facebook post is a very nice example of how complicated and demanding DAWs are and how problems in many cases are related to hardware and configuration and not necessarily to the DAW itself (not saying that DAWs are bug free..)!  

Yeah, I know, but wouldn't at least acknowledging the problems - and the fundamental causes - be a required step towards solving them?

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22 hours ago, Teegarden said:

Yes, the problem with problems is that the cause often is not clear... 

Sure, but giving up the "it's all plugins' fault, all the time" attitude would be a good place to start.

Last night I had a crash after trying to close several windows in short sequence, and a short hang up. At least it wasn't five crashes, and I haven't noticed my Tape reset randomly a few times a night either, recently. I'll give a thumbs up on that - getting conditioned to low expectations 😳.

Sphere won't start after the update. It worked before, didn't touch it in the meantime. And my WA Prod plugins won't visualize anything - I mean not even the knobs moving or the number values changing, let alone the waveforms. They work, audio wise, I can hear the changes, but not visually. Close them, open then up again, I get the updated values and new knob positions - which I adjusted blindly, but no movement in real time.

A million and first confirmation that it's connected somehow to the graphics/visualization/multimedia core in CW, or to the integration with that part of Windows. I'd bet on CW for some strong reasons.

My latency buffer if 512 samples - 10 ms one trip latency - I can mix fine, no hangups, no stutter, plenty of CPU headroom (but no engine headroom, strangely, which overshoots), until I record - and there's half a second of latency, on that setting - or any other. I'm sure I can reinstall and it will go away - but I'm tired of reinstalling and migrating my settings all the time - pretty much after any update. In a year and 4 months I must have reinstalled around 10 times. The same orphaned automations which you still can't delete, 16 months later. And lots of workflow "longcuts" and strange behaviors.

EDIT: The WA Prod visualizations worked last night on a different project, until adding the plugin that topped the CPU load, when they stopped. It seems they stop responding visually when the CPU is full - the same conflict I was talking about.

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Agreed, from what I can see the CbB team does take possible bugs in the DAW itself serious. They are a small team with limited resources, so many things will be on the waiting list, probably with lower priority. I guess that's the downside of a free DAW, but I can live with that. I still think that it outperforms many paid DAWs and they've squeezed an impressive amount of bugs over the last two years.

Sorry to hear about the many reinstalls (just CbB or the whole Windows operating system?), which is certainly not what most users need to do. There must be something specific to your configuration that makes it worse compared to most other PCs.

What I do know, DAW independent, is that Windows becomes buggy over time. After a few years a PC really from a complete reinstall if you frequently use more complicated software. The majority of users will not notice these problems, but with complex audio-visual software or other professional software I've witnessed this regularly. Also, another piece of software on your machine might mess with windows settings, negatively influencing a DAW without you being aware of it.

My system is not even four years old and I'm already looking forward to later this year when I hope to be able to afford a new one with an AMD 5900X or 5950X. My current PC is showing degradation of the EVO 960 PCIe SSD and other problems are starting to show up (and my first gen Threadripper is not yet optimised for audio latency). Software and probably also hardware issues are slowly getting worse. I use the machine heavily, so its no surprise. All electronic components are prone to damage due to changing currents and temperatures. Usually minor, but over time they might lead to problems and sensitive software will suffer faster from it than a simple text writer or game. I've witnessed this kind of issues from the moment I've started building computers for myself and others 30 years ago.

Having said that, CbB graphics handling can certainly be improved. The team seems aware of that. In the last updates there were already some changes of memory management, also relating to the graphics buffers from what I understood. Let's hope they continue improving on that path. A well installed solid new GPU might provide some benefit.

If you've got an NVidia card you can do the following:

  1. NVCleanstall for a clean driver install without extras and to make sure there's nothing from NVidia installaions left:
     
  2. Nvidia Control Panel | Manage 3D settings, set "Power Management Mode" to "Prefer Maximum Performance"
  3. uninstall NVidia Experience
  4. disable NVidia telemetry: 
  • NvTmMon -- Nvidia Telemetry Monitor -- runs C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\Update Core\NvTmMon.exe, 
  • NvTmRep -- Nvidia crash and Telemetry Reporter -- runs C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\Update Core\NvTmRep.exe
  • NvTmRepOnLogon -- Nvidia Profile Updater -- runs C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\Update Core\NvTmRep.exe --logon)


Did you also check the difference between VST2 and VST3 of the problem plugins? Steinberg didn't do a great job regarding compatibility when defining these standards...

 

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On 1/22/2021 at 9:22 PM, Teegarden said:

Agreed, from what I can see the CbB team does take possible bugs in the DAW itself serious. They are a small team with limited resources, so many things will be on the waiting list, probably with lower priority. I guess that's the downside of a free DAW, but I can live with that. I still think that it outperforms many paid DAWs and they've squeezed an impressive amount of bugs over the last two years.

Sorry to hear about the many reinstalls (just CbB or the whole Windows operating system?), which is certainly not what most users need to do. There must be something specific to your configuration that makes it worse compared to most other PCs.

What I do know, DAW independent, is that Windows becomes buggy over time. After a few years a PC really from a complete reinstall if you frequently use more complicated software. The majority of users will not notice these problems, but with complex audio-visual software or other professional software I've witnessed this regularly. Also, another piece of software on your machine might mess with windows settings, negatively influencing a DAW without you being aware of it.

My system is not even four years old and I'm already looking forward to later this year when I hope to be able to afford a new one with an AMD 5900X or 5950X. My current PC is showing degradation of the EVO 960 PCIe SSD and other problems are starting to show up (and my first gen Threadripper is not yet optimised for audio latency). Software and probably also hardware issues are slowly getting worse. I use the machine heavily, so its no surprise. All electronic components are prone to damage due to changing currents and temperatures. Usually minor, but over time they might lead to problems and sensitive software will suffer faster from it than a simple text writer or game. I've witnessed this kind of issues from the moment I've started building computers for myself and others 30 years ago.

Having said that, CbB graphics handling can certainly be improved. The team seems aware of that. In the last updates there were already some changes of memory management, also relating to the graphics buffers from what I understood. Let's hope they continue improving on that path. A well installed solid new GPU might provide some benefit.

If you've got an NVidia card you can do the following:

  1. NVCleanstall for a clean driver install without extras and to make sure there's nothing from NVidia installaions left:
     
  2. Nvidia Control Panel | Manage 3D settings, set "Power Management Mode" to "Prefer Maximum Performance"
  3. uninstall NVidia Experience
  4. disable NVidia telemetry: 
  • NvTmMon -- Nvidia Telemetry Monitor -- runs C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\Update Core\NvTmMon.exe, 
  • NvTmRep -- Nvidia crash and Telemetry Reporter -- runs C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\Update Core\NvTmRep.exe
  • NvTmRepOnLogon -- Nvidia Profile Updater -- runs C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\Update Core\NvTmRep.exe --logon)


Did you also check the difference between VST2 and VST3 of the problem plugins? Steinberg didn't do a great job regarding compatibility when defining these standards...

 

I know, and you're right, problem is with all the generalized plugin blaming they don't seem to be aware of the problem. I've told them all this more than a year ago.

I've reinstalled CW many times, pretty much with every update, although I sometimes try to push it as much as I can - to avoid migration and stuff. It seems every update makes something not work, some visualization, some settings forgotten - for instance, now, the console view always opens half-way, instead of full screen, as i have it set. Windows I've reinstalled twice, I believe, when I switched to 10. And I need to redo it again, once I move in my new drive.

I've bought an m.2 drive, looking for an adapter to PCie, now, and I'm gonna install it, since my storage solid state is starting to drop. Next month, I'm gonna buy an AM4 motherboard, maybe the memory modules, too, for the new Ryzen 5800X that I'm planning to buy in the near future. Your 5900 will probably be better, but I think the difference is too great in price, right now. Compared to my FX 8 core, I expect a doubling of speed from the CPU alone, from some reported benchmarks, so, adding the new drive speed, new RAM and new motherboard, the increase should be even greater, so that should take care of that.

But how do you explain the fact that you've got incredible dropouts and stutter when the CPU shows a ton of headroom in the CW performance meter, even on the FX, and - check this out - only disabled the Ignite module on my Animate plugin - which is an exciter - and everything goes away? Or, even better, enable it back on, but when you switch the master from stereo to mono, it plays like a charm. It's optimizations, in my view, connected to the engine - CW, communicating with Win, I don't know, that's where my ability to tell stops. But if you don't do that, there's no point in adding to new features and new gadgets - sure, they're useful, but first things first.

You're right, I do have an nVidia. I haven't installed the Experience, I've disabled the telemetry, and I have unchecked the startup of the whole graphic application. Your link might be very useful, I'll check it out, too.

Check out how Reason reacts to a crashed plugins. Very elegant. What does CW do? Usually just crashes. Some Area 51 stuff: Colour Copy starts in CW, but not in Reason. Townsend Sphere starts in Reason, but not in CW. Now, I imagine that's something to do with the permissions - not blaming CW for everything - my antivirus at some point blocked all my exes, but the rest still stands.

When do you wanna buy the new CPU?

1712144488_Failedtoopen.thumb.jpg.680cbfdbb999a177b5e5e1e6ad6b3815.jpg

Permissions.jpg

Plugin Crash.jpg

Read Problem.jpg

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4 hours ago, Olaf said:

Check out how Reason reacts to a crashed plugins. Very elegant. What does CW do? Usually just crashes. Some Area 51 stuff: Colour Copy starts in CW, but not in Reason. Townsend Sphere starts in Reason, but not in CW. Now, I imagine that's something to do with the permissions - not blaming CW for everything - my antivirus at some point blocked all my exes, but the rest still stands.

Reason has sand boxing by design, as each component of the rack is a separate virtual module.

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3 hours ago, Olaf said:

But how do you explain the fact that you've got incredible dropouts and stutter when the CPU shows a ton of headroom in the CW performance meter, even on the FX, and - check this out - only disabled the Ignite module on my Animate plugin - which is an exciter - and everything goes away? Or, even better, enable it back on, but when you switch the master from stereo to mono, it plays like a charm. It's optimizations, in my view, connected to the engine - CW, communicating with Win, I don't know, that's where my ability to tell stops. But if you don't do that, there's no point in adding to new features and new gadgets - sure, they're useful, but first things first.

That's what I wondered about from the start, why on earth do I have problems when my CPU performance is at 15-20%? After some time I started to understand that it is more the engine load and late buffers that indicate if there's a problem. Even a slightly older CPU should still be up to recording an average project without too many problems. My impression (after reading tons of topics) in our case is that it has to do with the impaired internal latency of the former generations AMD CPUs, unfortunately. I guess @Jim Roseberry can say more about this.
I've managed to improve performance by tweaking my Threadripper system to the max, but at the cost of way too many unproductive hours and now my hardware is starting to wear out. So now, when I can finally record something decent, I might need to replace things again🤔

No clue how much attention under the hood optimisation has compared to new features. As good as each new release I see improvements that also relate to latency and overall speed. It needs to be a fair balance to keep the majority happy. My impression is that we are in the minority group (most users seem to be reasonably satisfied, Intel systems...?), so probably not first in line to be served. And if it really is the AMD internal latency problem the only real solution is getting the latest hardware.

3 hours ago, Olaf said:

Check out how Reason reacts to a crashed plugins. Very elegant. What does CW do? Usually just crashes. Some Area 51 stuff: Colour Copy starts in CW, but not in Reason. Townsend Sphere starts in Reason, but not in CW. Now, I imagine that's something to do with the permissions - not blaming CW for everything - my antivirus at some point blocked all my exes, but the rest still stands.

There's a recent topic that I can't find back where they were referring to that (I guess it was a comparison with Reaper that doesn't crash when a plugin fails) and gave a hyperlink to a webpage explaining that separate plugin sandboxing like in other DAWs is not a solution in the end. 
I do need to add that I don't really suffer much from instability. My main problem was latency related at lower buffer settings.

Did I mention that I have 32GB RAM so I switched of my paging file? That might also have helped. And since two weeks I've slightly overclocked my system (many advice not to do so, but I like to think that I know what I'm doing, so...) . Temperatures have not really gone up (got a good cooling), but everything is much more responsive. No crashes so far. With ryzen-dram-calculator you can find stable better settings for you RAM. It gives significant improvements. Next to that (at least for my Threadripper), the CPU is also flexible with slight overclocking (I use Ryzen Master to do so). If you consider such thing, read carefully the overclock forums first!
 

3 hours ago, Olaf said:

When do you wanna buy the new CPU?

I hope to have the budget in a couple of months... Anyway, there's a shortages of the top Ryzen CPUs, so they are overprized at the moment. I think that in about 4 months prizes and availability will be better. Thinking about the Ryzen 5900X or 5950X + 128 GB 3600 RAM.
Also there are new, faster PCIe 4.0 SSDs coming out with 2 to 4 TB. I would like to see how they compare  in tests the coming months.
I'm especially looking at the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB SSD (thinking about getting 2 of those).
GPU: one just under the top (because of the outrages cost for the fastest). Still waiting for info on whether a Radeon or NVidia  is better compatible with a DAW and which one plays better with Ryzen. There have been some significant changes and improvements on both sides...

I can survive till then. CbB works right now and I can do all the other things I need to do too. My real time backups ensure no risks in case of crashes.

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15 hours ago, Teegarden said:

My impression (after reading tons of topics) in our case is that it has to do with the impaired internal latency of the former generations AMD CPUs, unfortunately. I guess @Jim Roseberry can say more about this.
I've managed to improve performance by tweaking my Threadripper system to the max, but at the cost of way too many unproductive hours and now my hardware is starting to wear out. So now, when I can finally record something decent, I might need to replace things again🤔

CPU speed is certainly an important factor... but there are numerous facets that affect performance.

Just because you see "CPU headroom", that doesn't mean the machine is going to perform flawlessly (for DAW purposes).

 

Threadripper's multi-threaded performance is off-the-chain good, but it's ultra low-latency performance is poor (even the 3970x).

The new 5950x (Vermeer) is the first series of AMD CPUs where that's finally been resolved.

The 5950x can run loads at a 32-sample ASIO buffer size... that the 3970x just can't sustain (glitch-free).

That said, the new 10th Gen i9-10900k can run Helix Native (with a substantial patch using two 2048-sample Cab IRs) completely glitch-free at 96k using a 16-sample ASIO buffer size.  The first CPU to be able to effectively do this (no glitches).

 

Even with a 10900k or 5950x, if the machine's DPC Latency is high... you'll experience audio glitches/drop-outs.

Lets say you want to run Helix Native at 44.1k using a 64-sample ASIO buffer size.

That means the machine has 1.5ms to process the next audio buffer and get it in cue for playback.  

Anything that interrupts this process will cause an audio glitch/dropout.  (ie: Poorly written drivers can monopolize the CPU.)

 

Processes constantly running in the background (backup/sync, A/V, etc) can negatively affect performance.

 

There's performance and power throttling:

Say you have a typical song structure... where the song starts with maybe 8-16 tracks of drums, guitar, bass, keys, and lead vocal/melody.

When the song reaches the bridge, let's say it breaks down to just the kick and a single bass part.

At this point, CPU use (demand) is extremely low... so the system decides to throttle CPU clock-speed down to 1/4 speed... as well as parking several cores.

When the stripped-down bridge ends, here comes the massive chorus-out-vamp.  Huge stacks of backing vocals, synths, etc.

That massive CPU load now falls on the CPU running at 1/4 clock-speed... with several cores that have been parked.

Glitches at best... or a complete transport dropout.

 

The harder you're pushing the machine (heavier loads, lower latency), the more important all the details.

A general-purpose user wouldn't notice a few millisecond hiccup in data-flow.

For someone wanting to run at a 64-sample ASIO buffer size, those few extra milliseconds can result in glitches/dropouts.

 

 

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Getting the new Vermeer AMD CPUs (like the 5950x) is currently almost like winning the lottery.

When in-stock, they're gone within a few minutes.

 

FWIW, I still feel the 10900k is a great balance of cost/performance.

  • 10 cores
  • 20 processing threads
  • All ten cores can be locked at 5.3GHz

That's a lot of CPU for $500.

 

 

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Thanks for the clear answer!

1 hour ago, Jim Roseberry said:

That massive CPU load now falls on the CPU running at 1/4 clock-speed... with several cores that have been parked.

I guess that's not the case when your PC power profile is set to maximum performance all the time (and good cooling to avoid throtling)?

And what is the influence of the soundcard regarding latency?
I've got a ten year old RME PCIe AIO card that gives effective latency of 2.7 ms with 256 buffer, 24bit, 96kHz, 64 bit double precision buffer (ASIO reported latencies:  input 3.1, output 3.7, total roundtrip 6.8ms). That seem relatively good figures to me (working without glitches when all unnecessary background processes are eliminated)? 

And the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD's? Don't they also improve latency? The 10900k has only PCIe 3.0...

I agree regarding the cost/performance of the 10900k, but I'm quite interested in the new AMD, will just wait till its available at reasonable price🙂

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