BitBridge has lower engine load - why?

[Mannymac]

Hi guys,

 

I have Ryzen a 3950x, Windos 10 64bit and an RME ADi2 Pro FS.

I love Acustica Audio plugins but of course they are crazy CPU hogs.

When I run ten of those in a session my engine load maxes out and the playback stops for some reason.

However, when I install them as 32bit plugins and let them load into Cakewalk via BitBridge my engine load is half of what they have when loaded directly as 64bit.

Anyone got an idea why that is?

Edited November 22, 2020 by Mannymac

[Promidi]

3 hours ago, Mannymac said:

I have Ryzen 3950x, Windos 10 64bit and an RME ADi2 Pro FS.

I love Acustica Audio plugins but of course they are crazy CPU hogs.

When I run ten of those in a session my engine load maxes out and the playback stops for some reason.

However, when I install them as 32bit plugins and let them load into Cakewalk via BitBridge my engine load is half of what they have when loaded directly as 64bit.

Anyone got an idea why that is?

The answer to that question is only going to come from someone who has deep programming knowledge.

Maybe drop a note Cakewalk support at https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000025633

[msmcleod]

When using either BitBridge or JBridge, the 32 bit plugin is run in a completely separate process.

As this is outside of CbB's internal engine, it won't be included in its performance measurements for the engine, or indeed "Overall App Performance".

It will however be included in "System Performance"

 

[Mannymac]

Hi guys, thanks for the answers.

That is what I thought @msmcleod. Obviously with BitBridge there is an increase in latency as well but it does allow me to run more plugin intensive sessions.

Isnt this a thing Cakewalk could implement?

The option to run heavy plugins outside of the engine in a 64bit environment?

Edited November 22, 2020 by Mannymac

[msmcleod]

2 minutes ago, Mannymac said:

Hi guys, thanks for the answers.

That is what I thought @msmcleod. Obviously with BitBridge there is an increase in altency as well but it does allow me to run more plugin intensive sessions.

Isnt this a thing Cakewalk could implement?

The option to run heavy plugins outside of the engine in a 64bit environment?

You can do this already using JBridge by clicking the "Use JBridge Wrapper" in the plugin options (assuming you have JBridge of course)

I do this for the UJAM Virtual Guitarist series.

[Mannymac]

Amazing! Will try that now!

 

Do you happen to know the extra latency introduced by Jbridge?

Edited November 22, 2020 by Mannymac

[DeeringAmps]

8 minutes ago, Mannymac said:

happen to know the extra latency introduced by Jbridge?

FWIW, I had “issues” with AmpliTube3x64 and had/have to run the 32 bit version with JBridge, no latency issues that I remember. 
 

tom

[Mannymac]

Wow okay! I'm posting this in case any other Acustia Audio plugin fan ever googles this.

 

Performance of Acustica plugins can be improved with Jbridge!

Wrap your plugins from 64 bit to 64bit with jbridge by enabling the option for the plugin in the Cakewalk plugin manager.

Then in the jbridge settings you will need to enable performance mode (otherwise there is no effect).

This has reduced my engine load running 5 Acqua plugins from 20% to 13% at 48khz on a Ryzen 3950x with an RME interface.

Very cool!

 

As an aside for the Cakewalk staff reading this: Can you please look into optimising potentally the performance of Acustica plugins. Even though my engine performance imrpoved with this, I'm still getting 13% engine load at a CPU/System load of 1%!!!!! I'd be super grateful!

[Mannymac]

27 minutes ago, DeeringAmps said:

FWIW, I had “issues” with AmpliTube3x64 and had/have to run the 32 bit version with JBridge, no latency issues that I remember. 
 

tom

Thanks Tom same experience here. Even when switiching performance mode on in jbridge the latency is lower compared to BitBridge!

[msmcleod]

36 minutes ago, Mannymac said:

Amazing! Will try that now!

 

Do you happen to know the extra latency introduced by Jbridge?

I'm not sure tbh - the reason I used it with JBridge was because I was getting clips & pops on even the highest buffer settings. 

Switching to JBridge allowed me to run at a buffer of 64 (and on small projects, 32). So latency was negligible. 

If JBridge introduced any further latency, it would be in the scale of microseconds rather than milliseconds.

[Mannymac]

1 minute ago, msmcleod said:

I'm not sure tbh - the reason I used it with JBridge was because I was getting clips & pops on even the highest buffer settings. 

Switching to JBridge allowed me to run at a buffer of 64 (and on small projects, 32). So latency was negligible. 

If JBridge introduced any further latency, it would be in the scale of microseconds rather than milliseconds.

Thanks so much for being here Mark, appreciate that! SInce you are here can I please ask you this from my post above:

I wrote:

"As an aside for the Cakewalk staff reading this: Can you please look into optimising potentally the performance of Acustica plugins. Even though my engine performance imrpoved with this, I'm still getting 13% engine load at a CPU/System load of 1%!!!!! I'd be super grateful! "

 

Do you have any idea why Cakewalk and Acustica have these load issues? meaning the discrepancy between engine load and CPU load in case i dont use jbridge was massive: 20% engine load at 1% CPU/system load.

 

For full disclosure I only have SSD's, have a new 3XS system by Scan and Peter Kaine from Scan and I looked into everything with latency mon and bios and drivers. Its all up to date

[msmcleod]

Just now, Mannymac said:

Thanks so much for being here Mark, appreciate that! SInce you are here can I please ask you this from my post above:

I wrote:

"As an aside for the Cakewalk staff reading this: Can you please look into optimising potentally the performance of Acustica plugins. Even though my engine performance imrpoved with this, I'm still getting 13% engine load at a CPU/System load of 1%!!!!! I'd be super grateful! "

 

Do you have any idea why Cakewalk and Acustica have these load issues? meaning the discrepancy between engine load and CPU load in case i dont use jbridge was massive: 20% engine load at 1% CPU/system load.

 

For full disclosure I only have SSD's, have a new 3XS system by Scan and Peter Kaine from Scan and I looked into everything with latency mon and bios and drivers. Its all up to date

Unfortunately I don't know the cause.  I did chat to @Noel Borthwick about it at one point, but we never got around to investigating it further.

As this only affects a handful of plugins, it's highly likely its something in the plugin itself - maybe it's doing something in its main processing loop it shouldn't be, or making a bad assumption about what threads are doing what.

This is the kind of thing that normally requires an in-depth debugging session with the plugin developer.

[Mannymac]

1 minute ago, msmcleod said:

Unfortunately I don't know the cause.  I did chat to @Noel Borthwick about it at one point, but we never got around to investigating it further.

As this only affects a handful of plugins, it's highly likely its something in the plugin itself - maybe it's doing something in its main processing loop it shouldn't be, or making a bad assumption about what threads are doing what.

This is the kind of thing that normally requires an in-depth debugging session with the plugin developer.

Thanks Mark,

 

I have attached a screenshot here showing my load at 96khz, 2048 bufferin Cakewalk running Ultramarine4 and Gold4 on a single track.

CPU load is 1%, Engine load about 30%. Something seems odd here. Will also send this to Acustica of course.