Voxengo GlissEQ DAW Benchmark Test

[kasprouch]

Whoever feels like doing the following can maybe help figure out a little dilemma ive been sacked with.

Set your DAW to 44.1 / 24bit with a buffer of 512 and open an empty project. Download a demo or use an existing copy of Gliss EQ and pop it on a stereo audio track with a track of your choice.

On the EQ choose the preset ''Massive Warmer'' and change the oversampling to 8x (default is 2x). Now keep duplicating the EQ on the same track and see how many you can open up until the audio breaks because of lack of resources, ASIO overload or you hit a warning as in Logic. Once you've hit your limit, check out your RAM and CPU use and report back the figures along with which build you tried the test.

i chose GlissEQ because its an extremely hungry plug especially with that preset and the 8x settings (and if you havent yet seen it, its a fantastic plugin to boot). if after all this somebody can explain to me why the results are what they are, i can finally stop tripping and get back to making music.

to whoever obliges, thanks in advance, as the results will be quite a chore for many of us to get our head around....

[kasprouch]

i'll bite - on a Nehalem mac pro quad/6 gb's ram i can open 4. yep, just 4 before it turns into mayhem in C5, L9, and Reaper on 10.6.2. HT off.

[Matti]

6 OK, barely 7 ( Nuendo, win XP pro, Q6600 without overclocking )

Matti

[everythinglouder]

21 tracks.

2008 Mac Pro - 8 cores, 3.2 GHz. 16 GB RAM.

Logic 9.1 (32-bit) on SL 10.6.2

[DivineMusic]

lol i had the gliss 2.9 on my machine and loaded over 200 but then i saw there was new dynamic gliss eq (which i dont care too much) but hold on i'll test

[DivineMusic]

Tested on 2 different machines:

1: I7 960, 6gigs of ram(ddr3) Nuendo 4.2.2 on Win7
got 8, 9 overloaded like crazy

2: MacPro Nehalem 2.66 8 core, 8 gigs of ram, Nuendo 4.2.2, SL 10.6.2
15 at 8x oversampling
17 with the same machine running win7

3: MacPro Nehalem 2.66 8 core, 8 gigs of ram, Logic 9.1, SL 10.6.2
13 at 8x

Originally Posted by everythinglouder

21 tracks.
2008 Mac Pro - 8 cores, 3.2 GHz. 16 GB RAM.
Logic 9.1 (32-bit) on SL 10.6.2

I find that to be flat out crazy... 21 doesnt even seem correct.
i have an alike system but with the nehalem 2.66 cpus which is MUCH more powerful than my old 2008 model 2.8.. not i understand you have a 3.2 model but from what i understand the old 3.2 is just about equal to a new 2.66 but the nehalem uses ram much better not to mention its ddr3 and much faster...

things that make you go MMMMM LOL
now at 2x i just loaded 64 before i started to get pops and crackles

[everythinglouder]

Originally Posted by DivineMusic

I find that to be flat out crazy... 21 doesnt even seem correct.
i have an alike system but with the nehalem 2.66 cpus which is MUCH more powerful than my old 2008 model 2.8.. not i understand you have a 3.2 model but from what i understand the old 3.2 is just about equal to a new 2.66 but the nehalem uses ram much better not to mention its ddr3 and much faster...

things that make you go MMMMM LOL
now at 2x i just loaded 64 before i started to get pops and crackles

Hey, the results are accurate. I ran the test twice.

I think the difference between your machine and mine is that you most likely have hyperthreading turned on. HT is on by default on the Nehalems, and isn't even an option on the Harpertowns (my model).

Other benchmarks have shown that HT can severely reduce track/plugin counts, at least in Logic. I'm not sure how to turn it off. I know it's something that's gotta be done *each* time you reboot your Nehalem. Try finding out how to turn it off and then retest. Cheers.

[kasprouch]

whats seriously screwing with me here is that i can load the 4 instances before it goes beserk, but its only using 300mb's of ram and about 25 to 30% of CPU...

if it isnt cpu or ram thats maxing out, whats causing it? are the meters completely off?

nb: for the metering, activity monitor and reapers monitors showed the same figures.

[LQM]

anything with 8x oversampling is going to chew CPU resources for breakfast.

Try Voxengo's Elephant 3 Limiter at 8x oversampling for a similar result.

You don't NEED 8x oversampling, and if you do want it just turn it on when you render your audio at mixdown time - when tracking, etc run it at no more than 2x oversampling.

[kasprouch]

Originally Posted by LQM

You don't NEED 8x oversampling, and if you do want it just turn it on when you render your audio at mixdown time - when tracking, etc run it at no more than 2x oversampling.

ok, but your missing the point here - its intentionally on 8x oversampling to overload the CPU faster. hence why its a benchmark!

the main deal for me is to find out why the DAW's audio performance becomes crippled even though the CPU nor RAM have been maxed out. try it out and post some figures...

[kasprouch]

just installed bootcamp with XP Pro 32, and got 4 again on C5, with CPU use at 10% with only 400mb's of RAM used by the whole system.... just doesnt make any sense to me how the ASIO gets screwed so fast with all that power still available.

[DivineMusic]

damn this is crazy. installed XCode turned HT off and ran nuendo 4.3 update..
havent tried logic but with nuendo 4.3 i can run 37 of them with an rme card at 512.. but with a steinberg MR816CSX i got 52 before i got clicks land pops like crazy...

i'll test logic once i get my son to sleep

[kasprouch]

Originally Posted by DivineMusic

damn this is crazy. installed XCode turned HT off and ran nuendo 4.3 update..
havent tried logic but with nuendo 4.3 i can run 37 of them with an rme card at 512.. but with a steinberg MR816CSX i got 52 before i got clicks land pops like crazy...

i'll test logic once i get my son to sleep

now were talking . that power is enormous!

does mean your 8 core system can handle 10 times as many as mine. something pretty fishy about my setup here, as the difference seems unreasonable.... sold my MH 2882 a few days ago and waiting on my 816x - will report back with new figures in a few days.

[diogo_c]

Reporting:

6 instances @ 8x oversampling and boom, cpu at max (both at cubase and windows task manager).

RAM is not a problem, as Cubase wasn't even using 200mb under this situation. The problem is really CPU, and yes, that plug is VERY hungry when running at 8x.

Setup:
Cubase 5
Win XP SP3/32bit
Core2Duo E8400 @ 3ghz
Corsair DDR2 2x2Gbs @ 1066Mhz