Jim Roseberry

With the Vermeer 5xxx series, AMD finally got their low-latency performance together. One thing with the 5950x; the cores heat up quickly under load... causing fan-speed ramp-ups (which can be annoying). Otherwise, a fantastic performer...

I bought the Revv Generator 120 mkIII (based on liking the D20 and G20 and the G2 and G3 pedals). Didn't like it at all... Probably the most disappointed I've been in any amp purchase. I'm wondering now if the amp was defective.

I'm not spreading any misinformation whatsoever. You might want to look closer at the picture in my above post. That is from a M1 mini that has 16GB RAM. Bottom line is that you're not going to be doing anything serious with 8GB RAM. The OS and one standalone Kontakt instance with The Grandeur and you're already above 8GB of RAM used.

FWIW, None of those virtual-instruments are using deep-sampled libraries. Single instance of The Grandeur (Kontakt standalone - no DAW application open) puts Mac Mini well over 8GB RAM.

M1 Mac Mini running OSX Big Sur v11.3 This is with most extraneous things disabled. Running idle, it's using well over 7GB RAM. Open standalone Kontakt 6 and load The Grandeur (piano library)... and memory usage is 8.37GB. That's no DAW application... just a single large piano sample library running standalone. More details to follow

Anybody else notice that performance at ultra low latency (96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size - 1ms total round-trip latency) is significantly better than before? You can now run Helix Native at 1ms round-trip latency (above settings)... without ASIO peak overloads. That wasn't the case with Cubase 10/10.5. I'd been putting off upgrading to Cubase 11... because ultra low latency performance wasn't particularly great. Didn't see anything listed about performance improvements for v11. I might just go for Nuendo 11. Somewhat affordable (relatively speaking) at $240 for the crossgrade

No need to watch videos... ? I'll grab one with 16GB RAM... and put it thru some real-world circumstances.

Speed: PCIe 4.0 NVMe currently sustains ~7GB/Sec DDR4 sustains ~20-25GB/Sec Response Time: NVMe is ~0.05ms DDR4 is ~0.00005ms NVMe is sequential (not Random Access like RAM) While NVMe drives are fast... they're not a good substitute for RAM. There is no magic/voodoo with machines. Slower hardware means slower performance. The M1 MacBook Air is passive-cooled.

They're loaded into (and stream from) RAM.

Uhhh... yes. First, not all virtual-instruments stream samples from disk (Superior Drummer 3, EZ Drummer 2, Addictive Drums, etc). Those Vi's that do stream from disk... buffer the transient of each sample using a small bit of RAM. I'll use Reaper as an example (MacBook Pro in this case)... as it's cross-platform and extremely small-footprint. Open an empty project, add a single instance of Kontakt... and load up The Grandeur (acoustic piano). With just Reaper and The Grandeur loaded, OSX shows 4.51GB of RAM being used. Now, add a second track with Super Drummer 3... and load the "clean" Ayotte kit. OSX now reports 6.61GB memory being used. On a MacBook Pro with 8GB, you've got less than 1.5GB of free RAM. I wouldn't consider a two track piano/drum project to be "heavy orchestration". ? If a machine runs out of physical RAM, it'll use the VM swapfile (in lieu of physical RAM). That kills performance. Professional composers working on TV and Film are running a minimum of 64GB RAM (most are now running 128GB). Many of these folks are clients...

It would blow away your older MacBook Pro. I'm not much of an Apple guy... and not a fan of ultra small form-factor machines for "workstation" purposes. A laptop that's passive-cooled with 8GB of RAM is suitable for it's design purpose (Surfing the Web, office duty, etc). With 8GB RAM, a small handful of virtual-instruments would have the machine RAM-starved. Open up Chrome with half a dozen tabs active/open. You can chew thru RAM quickly. Even using compression to stretch that 8GB further... it's running lean. If small-form-factor also means small-cooling, that's going to limit performance. Some folks will try to tell you the M1 (mobile CPU) will out-perform something like the 5950x (desktop CPU). If expecting that level of performance, the laws of thermal-dynamics (tight enclosure) are going to disappoint you. ? If you're expecting a great performing mobile CPU, you'll be pleasantly surprised. It will be interesting to see what Apple does in a desktop version of the M1. My idea of a great small-form-factor machine: Lian-Li TU-150 mini-ITX case - allows full-sized Noctua 140mm cooler Full-sized cooler means you can run a high-end desktop CPU... at full speed. Up to 64GB RAM Multiple internal SSDs (including M.2 NVMe Ultra) Small... but zero performance compromise Runs near dead-silent

It is a bit ironic. ?

Had a MB Badlander 50. Crunch was fantastic. Onboard Cabclone IR sounded very good The internal fan was LOUD... to the point I couldn't deal with it. Otherwise, it was a fantastic amp... and (compared to Friedman, DR-Z, ec) reasonably priced. Had a DR-Z CAZ-45. It's billed as a high-gain amp. If this makes any sense, it's extremely well built... but... (to me) just didn't have any umph (insert your favorite adjective for "balls"). I'm generally into modded-marshall (gain wise). Wanted to love the CAZ-45... but just didn't care for it. DR-Z is located here in OH, has a great reputation, etc. Wound up with a BE-100 Deluxe, Bogner Shiva, and 20th Bogner Shiva. Of course, this was during the height of Covid. What in the world was I thinking buying 50-60 pound heads? Nothing at all "practical" about them. ?

At 96k with 32-sample ASIO buffer size, the round-trip latency is 1ms. It's going to be right about 2ms at half the sample-rate (48k). I've measured this with a loopback test... so it's accurate.

You should get a Thunderbolt cable. ?

If you've tended to all the details, you can achieve lower round-trip latency with Thunderbolt. Think of Thunderbolt as "external PCIe" Under ideal circumstances, you can achieve PCIe level performance with an external audio interface. The best USB audio interfaces achieve round-trip latency of ~4ms. The best Thunderbolt audio interfaces can achieve round-trip latency of sub 1ms. All USB audio interfaces I've seen/used/tested that connect via USB-C... are actually USB-2 devices. I've been running Thunderbolt audio interfaces on PC for a couple years. UA Apollo, RME UFX+, Presonus Quantum, and Antelope Orion Studio Synergy Core (can they make the name a little longer? ?) All have been rock-solid. If you're getting a new machine, be aware that there are currently issues with Thunderbolt-4 controllers. Ironically, TB4 is not working well with Intel based machines... but works just fine on the Asus ProArt B550 Creator (AMD 5950x Vermeer CPU). Ultimately... this will be ironed out.

Single core performance is still extremely important... especially if you're pushing the limits of ultra low latency performance. ie: Let's say you have a Thunderbolt audio interface that yields 1ms total round-trip latency at 96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size. With those settings, you can play/monitor thru plugins like Helix Native with 1ms round-trip latency (equal to or better than the Hardware). At those settings (96k/32-sample ASIO buffer), the machine has ~half a millisecond to process the next ASIO buffer and get it in cue for playback. This is not something that lends itself to being heavily multi-threaded (spread across multiple cores). If anything interrupts this process, you'll hear glitches. If you try doing to above with the Threadripper 3970x (~$2000), you'll hear glitches. The 10900k (~$500) can do the above with zero glitches. The new 11900k shows performance improvement in many benchmarks (vs the 10900k), but there were some changes in architecture that make it more latent. If you're pushing the limits at ultra low latency (32-sample ASIO buffer size or smaller), the 11900k is a step backward. The newer Ryzen Vermeer series (5xxx series) has greatly improved low latency performance. The 5950x (~$800) can run the above example glitch-free. Unlike Threadripper (280w TDP), the 5950x is a much more manageable (quiet) 105w TDP.

Covers the new features... but doesn't go into much detail. ?

I hadn't heard... ? RIP Bill

Just saw there was an update for Bandlab Assistant. Installed it... and it seems to have resolved this issue. CbB is now installed.

Version that was just released solves the issue some of us were having the past ~48 hours.

Heard back from Morten. They are aware of the issue... and they're working to resolve.

I've contacted Morten. I'll post when I have a response/solution.

For anyone else experiencing this issue: Just installed a new version of the Bandlab Assistant (available today). Same error message upon trying to install CbB

Today I went to load CbB for a client... and got this message (below). Uninstalled CbB from my own machine... and now receive the same error message. I wish there was a dedicated download/installer. Dead-in-the-water... Unhandled Promise Rejection Error: spawn EBUSY at t.<computed> (electron/js2c/asar_bundle.js:5:2208) at C:/Users/Jim Roseberry/AppData/Local/Programs/bandlab-assistant/resources/app.asar/index-win.js:403:7 at new Promise (<anonymous>) at install (C:/Users/Jim Roseberry/AppData/Local/Programs/bandlab-assistant/resources/app.asar/index-win.js:402:12) at queueInstallers (C:/Users/Jim Roseberry/AppData/Local/Programs/bandlab-assistant/resources/app.asar/index-win.js:720:7) at C:/Users/Jim Roseberry/AppData/Local/Programs/bandlab-assistant/resources/app.asar/index-win.js:794:13 at runMicrotasks (<anonymous>)