Bitwig

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:01 am

Just doing NOTHING (empty project) uses 10% of my CPU... that's crazy.

Message to devs: bridging EACH AND EVERY PLUGIN in a separate process might be good for stability, but it is NOT good for CPU usage... Dom&co. I thought you were way smarter than that... you are developers, you should know that IPC is not CPU efficient at all! So why force it on users without any option to turn it off? This is beyond belief.

Plugin firewalling is nice, and Reaper was able to do it years ago so it's nothing special, but at least THERE IS AN OPTION TO TURN IT OFF there, and run plugins only natively, or bridging only when necessary.

Advice: run things natively when you can. Bridge only when necessary. Give users some options regarding this, because Bitwig's CPU usage is not good at all compared to Reaper (in most cases I see double CPU usage or even more here, crazy!)

Cheers.

Fjorko · Post by **Fjorko** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:14 am

This is with two instrument tracks running ( Polysynth and Stutter Edit )

EvilDragon wrote:Just doing NOTHING (empty project) uses 10% of my CPU... that's crazy.

Message to devs: bridging EACH AND EVERY PLUGIN in a separate process might be good for stability, but it is NOT good for CPU usage... Dom&co. I thought you were way smarter than that... you are developers, you should know that IPC is not CPU efficient at all! So why force it on users without any option to turn it off? This is beyond belief.

Plugin firewalling is nice, and Reaper was able to do it years ago so it's nothing special, but at least THERE IS AN OPTION TO TURN IT OFF there, and run plugins only natively, or bridging only when necessary.

Advice: run things natively when you can. Bridge only when necessary. Give users some options regarding this, because Bitwig's CPU usage is not good at all compared to Reaper (in most cases I see double CPU usage or even more here, crazy!)

Cheers.

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:20 am

Did you check preferences? On the Plug-in management page, set to Global processing, and then choose which plugins should have their own process space ...

No idea how it affects CPU, though.

Peace,
Andy.

toby · Post by **toby** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:29 am

something strange must be happening - CPU usage has been quite good here...

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 11:15 am

This is the normal state after the background scanning of VSTs and Audio files has finished and with no background downloading in an empty project.

Of course it is higher if plugins are loaded, since those are always active in BWS, since it's targeted at live use where everything needs to be able to be activated on cue at all times.

Not sure what you are seeing there?

Cheers,

Tom

Fjorko · Post by **Fjorko** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 11:31 am

Here is mine with about 3 instances of Spire ( CPU-hog ), 1 x polysynth, 1 x Sylenth1, 1x Vstation, 1 x stutter edit and an audio loop..

Ameyah Audio · Post by **Ameyah Audio** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:08 pm

everything good here 4-5% in idle, sometimes almost 0% with one AAR and one sylenth1.
and that on an old notebook from 2008.

have you turned off the any windows services or antivirus software?
are you on WIN or MAC?

nexttrack30 · Post by **nexttrack30** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:23 pm

ZenPunkHippy wrote:Did you check preferences? On the Plug-in management page, set to Global processing, and then choose which plugins should have their own process space ...

No idea how it affects CPU, though.

Peace,
Andy.

could you please explain what's the difference between global processing and independant processing?
i read manual but i don't know which is good for what?
english not my native language doesn't help.

sonicpowa · Post by **sonicpowa** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:41 pm

ZenPunkHippy wrote:--set to Global processing, and then choose which plugins should have their own process space--

That is actually brilliant idea from Bitwig. Global processing + own space for crash prone plugins. (presuming global is a bit more CPU efficient)

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:10 pm

Trancestorm wrote:have you turned off the any windows services or antivirus software?
are you on WIN or MAC?

W7 x64, and no I'm not a newb, I know how to set up Windows for a DAW.

sonicpowa wrote:That is actually brilliant idea from Bitwig. Global processing + own space for crash prone plugins. (presuming global is a bit more CPU efficient)

Except that's not their idea, Reaper had it ages ago.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:45 pm

OK seems after restarting CPU usage is better. Still not better than Reaper.

8 Divas at Divine setting running the same one-bar loop with chords going all the time:

Bitwig - 50-60% CPU
Reaper - 35-45% CPU

At least it's 0% running idle now. i5-2380p at 3.4 GHz, 16 GB RAM.

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:49 pm

nexttrack30 wrote:could you please explain what's the difference between global processing and independant processing?
i read manual but i don't know which is good for what?
english not my native language doesn't help.

I will try, but it's quite technical.

In a host like Logic, Live or Cubase the application (host) and all plugins run in the same "space". If one of the plugins in this space crashes, everything crashes including your host.

What Bitwig does is give a new "space" to each plugin. If one plugin crashes, only that plugin will crash. It will not cause Bitwig itself to crash.

Peace,
Andy.

echosystm · Post by **echosystm** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:00 pm

fjorko wrote:Here is mine with about 3 instances of Spire ( CPU-hog ), 1 x polysynth, 1 x Sylenth1, 1x Vstation, 1 x stutter edit and an audio loop..

I don't know if it's different on Windows, but on Mac I see three separate processes; the UI, the "audio engine" and the plugin container. It seems to me like your screenshot is only showing the UI process, which shouldn't use much CPU at all. You need to show all three processes and add up the total CPU usage of each one.

From my own testing, CPU consumption is noticeably higher than a competing product, but the audio does not crap out as quickly despite the increased load. CPU is definitely quite a lot higher than my primary DAW though.

It's interesting to note how much more memory efficient Bitwig is on Windows though. On my Mac, the UI process idles at around 500 to 600mb, which is double what is shown in your screenshot. My guess is this is a result of Bitwig using the Java 6 runtime made by Apple (which is really bad and no longer actively maintained!) rather than the Java 7 runtime maintained by Oracle themselves.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:00 pm

echosystm wrote:I don't know if it's different on Windows, but on Mac I see three separate processes; the UI, the "audio engine" and the plugin container. It seems to me like your screenshot is only showing the UI process, which shouldn't use much CPU at all.

It's the same on Win.

Fjorko · Post by **Fjorko** » Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:13 pm

All 3 together at the moment it runs at about 28% - so yes a little higher....

Bitwig

KVR Audio

CPU usage is ridiculous