wave arts tube saturator, is good for nothing

[janjaal]

i have an i7 3.40
32 gb of ddr3 ram..
solid state hard drive

and this plug takes my cpu up to 100 and makes the sound click and bring crackles in... that's when i use this plug ALONE, with nothing else loaded...

who actually uses this plugin? what the hell kind of a computer do i have to have to use this ?

[Whitecat]

It pretty much needs a supercomputer. I can only run a few instances on my dual 3.06 Macbook Pro, so if I really like what it's doing I print it and carry on. It does sound amazing, and Wave Arts themselves admit that they did not compromise at all for CPU useage or lack thereof - it was all about the sound, no matter what it took to get there.

Anyway, I can get two or three going on a system which on paper is much slower than yours, not just one, so something might be up that's worth asking Wave Arts about, but nonetheless your plug-in counts are probably not going to go up into double-digits!

[jeronimo]

What buffer size are you using and at what sample rate? Don't expect much if youre at 64 samples at 96K.

[janjaal]

that's ridiculous

[jeronimo]

Care to share the session info? SR and buffer size?

[janjaal]

buffer size is 2048
session is 88.2khz 24bit

[Meow]

I have an i7 960 and can run 6-7 copies of it @ 96hkz but it definitely takes way more than any of my other fx.

Plus I just have a regular harddrive and 12 gigs of ram

You should be able to run more than just one I bet. Something seems wrong there

[jeronimo]

Do they have a demo available? I'll see how many I can run here...

[rksguit]

Hmmm.........interesting

[janjaal]

could it be something wrong with my cpu??
or even my card's asio driver (mr816)?

[rhythmtech]

im on an overclocked i7 (3ghz) and @ 1024 i can only run about 11/12 before things start to get wobbly.

i usually apply the fx and then disable it.

[krushing]

Woah, that IS heavy. 3GHz quad Xeon Mac Pro here - 5 instances and it's crackle city.

[VenVile]

I can get about 3 to five instances safely and that's on an Athlon II x4 3.1ghz and 16 gb of ram. Check to see if your CPU is running at full speed. Sometimes in your BIOS settings, it may be limited. I had a similar problem where all my projects would crackle/skip and freeze up...when I checked, my CPU was running at about 1Ghz fixed. Right click on "My Computer" go to properties and look at your CPU speed there. CPU speed there isn't the speed of the processor, but the speed the processor is running at. So, if you have a 4Ghz processor by chance, and it's running at 3Ghz, the speed there will read 3Ghz.

[302efi]

Originally Posted by janjaal

i have an i7 3.40
32 gb of ddr3 ram..
solid state hard drive

and this plug takes my cpu up to 100 and makes the sound click and bring crackles in... that's when i use this plug ALONE, with nothing else loaded...

who actually uses this plugin? what the hell kind of a computer do i have to have to use this ?

Hmm.... guess you didn't read the description of the plug ?

"The circuit simulation technology is extremely CPU intensive, and hence we are only able to simulate very simple circuits at this time. A fast computer is highly recommended to run the plug-in."

Wave Arts | Plugins | Tube Saturator

No surprise here...

[dullfangs]

Originally Posted by 302efi

Hmm.... guess you didn't read the description of the plug ?

Wave Arts | Plugins | Tube Saturator

No surprise here...

302efi maybe next time you should read the thread before you post something so dismissive in nature. The TS has a screaming fast computer, something is definitely not functioning correctly on his setup if he can't run 1 instance of the plugin without trouble.

[jeronimo]

This kind of response is common here...
Like he said: "No surprise here..."

[Matti]

When I tried it it was with a Q6600 processor and it never got near 100%, I believe the project was 48kHz, some 45 tracks and 10 groups and some 30 plugins and the saturator in mixbus. I usually have buffer @1024 when mixing

Matti

[Squidy]

My friend had a similar issue, but it turns out he had some setting turned on in his bios about CPU power manager and video card manager blah blah and turned it off and his performance with that plugin improved massively... No idea why but I'm guessing the CPU undervolts itself and the plugin proceeds to kick the computers are.

[bishop blade]

Hey guys, I had the same problem!!!...I just mute each sound and adjust the tube sat to my likings and then exports all files to waves, then open a new project to put the waves in..Make sure you export with effects.

[Jerrick]

Windows XP 32bit, q6600(2.4ghz), 4gigs of ram.
@96k and I stop at 5 instances.
@44.1 and I can get 29.

If it was really worth it id use it on every track and export them then bring the effected wav files into a new project. I already do that with some other plugins and it really doesnt take too long to do and I like the "committing the sound to tape" aspect of it.

[nosleepPDX]

Same processor specs and I get the same outcome as Jerrick. If you are only able to run one instance something must be wrong.

The plug is CPU heavy, but the UI is simple and it sounds killlller.

Sent from my SGH-T959 using Gearslutz.com App

[Apollo Soul]

Best sounding one I've come across.

Total system killer for sure, though... definitely need to print and move on.

[jeronimo]

At 44.1 I already have 5 or 6 on an already filled mix...
Didn't mess a lot with it thou.
I'm on a i7 2600K hack with Reaper and RME interface... CPU is barely at 40%

[bishop blade]

Yup Jerrick thats how i use it..I mean, i look at the bright side of things and try to understand why this plugin is so CPU heavy. No one wants to use it cause of that but this is a top 5 plugin. Maybe the only way to get a real saturated crispy sound is to have a plugin of that magnitude...Maybe the new computers that upcoming can handle all of that...Prolly they just wanted to put out that we can get that sound in to box but we are just waiting on the computers to advance. They put it out to show results and forgot compatibilty. Hey, we found a way to work around it and now we will be ahead of the game!!!!!!

[taturana]

since i used to be a programmer, a long time ago, i really don't buy the idea that it couldn't be coded in a way to have better cpu performance without damaging the audio quality... most times that depends more on the way the algos works than everything else...these modern cpu's are quite impressive in power..

or else it's only valid as a lab experiment...

[miro]

Originally Posted by taturana

since i used to be a programmer, a long time ago, i really don't buy the idea that it couldn't be coded in a way to have better cpu performance without damaging the audio quality... most times that depends more on the way the algos works than everything else...these modern cpu's are quite impressive in power..

or else it's only valid as a lab experiment...

What speaks against your comment, is the fact that WA plugins are usually very, very easy on the CPU!

[taturana]

Originally Posted by miro

What speaks against your comment, is the fact that WA plugins are usually very, very easy on the CPU!

not speaking against wa at all... but against the whole idea tha cpu = quality as a rule, in that particular plugin. i don't see how anything i said goes against that .. sorry.

[Sounddesigner]

Originally Posted by taturana

not speaking against wa at all... but against the whole idea tha cpu = quality as a rule, in that particular plugin. i don't see how anything i said goes against that .. sorry.

What he's stating is that Wave Arts ARE VERY efficient developers, they know alot of tricks to get efficiency so with Tube Saturator they would've if they could've i'm sure. If the algorithms could've been done to be super efficient i'm sure the veteran coders Wave Arts would've done it, just like they did for their other plugins. The algorithm is just complex thus requiring more CPU cycles. This is'nt hard to understand. It's no strange coincidence that many of the high-end companies plugins are hungry. Wave Arts stated they did'nt expect many sells because of the hunger of Tube Saturator (i'm sure to get more sells they would've made it efficient if they could).

Look at what's considered by many the top compressor out here, the Algorithmix LP Split comp and that tells you the direction we're headed as plugins get better (it's very hungry). Algorithmix is considered by many a top quality company, their EQ's were hungry on older computers when they where first released cause Algorithmix tend to push computers to their limits to get the most quality they can. As for reverbs look at the Bricasti Reverb wich is considered the best by many, it uses ALOT of dsp power and the developer has stated it would have problems running on a Modern computer (possibly due to operating system as well). Look at the UAD Manely for EQ's also. All these developers are considered high-end developers and many people love their products. You may think they could've been coded more efficiently but the reality is they were'nt. The reality is these are the plugins we have so even if theoretically they could've been more efficiently coded the reality is they were'nt and these are the tools we have. So in many ways more quality does equal more cpu since that is the reality.

Truthfully there are some cases were the developer could've been more efficient but that developer may not have the know-how or time and we still have to accept what they can give us and be gratefull, and the reality still stands that more quality equals more cpu.

If you wish to run projects at higher samplerates for better soundquality it will cost you. If you wish to run at lower-latency it will cost you. When you upgrade to the Latest O/S it will cost you. Everything gets naturally hungrier over-time. Sure there are some plugins that are high-quality that are efficient but that does'nt invalidate the ones that are hungry especially when they're not apples to apples/exact same plugin.

EDITED

[taturana]

i am ok with that, but lately i've seen quite a few top plugins with amazing quality working with very little cpu, and i use a quad core.. with w7.. while i know saturation maybe a hard job, i always think that it could be coded better or offer the option of running redux... the way it runs is almost as important as it also affect the results and usability of the software...

it's like enabling the fat mode on a psp vintagewarmer 2... it just slows everything down...

i think wave arts is fine.. but the thing has to work...

a good example i would would be ssl x-verb, which is completely amazing and runs native with decent cpu use... pretty cool verb...

[janjaal]

well, i'm feeling that there is something wrong...
keep that in mind that i have mr816 as my soundcard, and even the cpu performance is at 5-6%, it trips sometimes so i have to restart the computer... that's steinberg's driver issue...

BUT

for those who say read the specs of the plug first... i would say read the specs of my pc first and try to help rather than trying to number up your posts...
anyways
i was mixing a song with 170 tracks in it, and i had around 20 reverb bus, and 15 delay bus, i had around 10 compressor bus, and loaded an eq on every channel with almost a compressor on each...

i see people with a 2.40 cpu and 4gb of ram running a few of these plugs?? that doesn't sound right to me when i can't even run one