DP 9.0.1: erratic CPU/Processing behaviour

[Gerk]

Hi everyone. I did a bit of quick searching but didn't find anything useful about this. Since going to DP9 I've been having some very erratic behaviour with the CPU/Processing. I took a quick video of what is happening .. this happens on quite a few projects (all new ones made in DP9). From what I can tell I have no background tasks running or anything else. It's happened so far in various different projects, some 44.1khz, some 48khz and some 96khz. It is starting to cause me some issues as it overloads the engine sometimes (when not even doing anything complicated).

The hardware is a 5k iMac 32G of ram, OSX 10.10.5. It happened before I added the new Raven software for my MTi2 (so that's not the issue). Plugins are all UAD plugins (and I don't have all that many open on that project), using the latest UAD versions as well. Even with all of the plugins bypassed I get the same thing.

https://youtu.be/h0eKQRAvP94

Anyone have any ideas?

(and sorry for the cross post, admins please delete the one I posted in the wrong forum!)

[Basstrup]

Have you tried to look in the macintosh Activity Monitor - also check the Console app - found in the Utilities folder. That might give you some insight.

[Gerk]

I've looked at both and no help. DP seems to only be using up a small amount of CPU (35% or so) but the processing meter jumps around like a rabbit. Does anyone know if Digital Performer logs it's own output somewhere? There was nothing in the main system logs that gave any kind of clue as to what was going on ... maybe I need to take this up with MOTU support ...

[cuttime]

That 64 buffer is kind of low. What happens at higher settings?

[Gerk]

At higher buffer settings the usage drops some, but doesn't go away, it still jumps around. If I go to a 1024 or higher then it's usable (in terms that it doesn't overload during a mix), but that still doesn't resolve the issue that it's using up a whole bunch of processing while it's sitting doing nothing at all. DP8 and earlier never had this issue, when you were not using it things were stable. I was also able to run at 64 or even 32 with earlier versions without big hassles.

My setup is not complex at all, currently only a UAD Apollo Twin via Thunderbolt. The machine is a 1 year old 5k iMac that's pretty maxed out (32G ram, 512G SSD, 6TB thunderbolt RAID, 8G video card).

[Gerk]

No one else seeing this sort of stuff? Just for fun I opened the exact same project in DP8 and it uses like 1/4 of the processing or less than DP9, so there's definitely something funky going on. I could work with half the buffer with no issue. Closed it and went back to DP9 and had to double the buffer immediately to get back to responsiveness and working without crapping out ...

[HCMarkus]

Never had this problem, but check my signature…

Hope you can quickly sort it out. One thought: did you start your template in DP9 or back in 8? Try a fresh project, started in 9 from scratch… same problems?

[kwiz]

No one else seeing this sort of stuff? Just for fun I opened the exact same project in DP8 and it uses like 1/4 of the processing or less than DP9, so there's definitely something funky going on. I could work with half the buffer with no issue. Closed it and went back to DP9 and had to double the buffer immediately to get back to responsiveness and working without crapping out ...

I'm experiencing the same thing. I shot this video a week or so ago and am now on the road but when I get back, I want to further investigate this issue.

http://vid1175.photobucket.com/albums/r ... kdwvrm.mp4

[mwilloam]

I have greater than should be CPU usage in DP. A small, audio only project with an 828mkiii hybrid over usb will jump up and down even with a buffer of 256. That said it will run at 64 but the cpu meter is jumping all the way up and if I use any VI triggering it worsens. This is on a 2015 Macbook Pro Retina i7 2.5.

[Gerk]

Never had this problem, but check my signature…

Hope you can quickly sort it out. One thought: did you start your template in DP9 or back in 8? Try a fresh project, started in 9 from scratch… same problems?

Fresh projects started in DP9. I can reproduce this in all cases I've tried, pretty much anything I do in DP9 is using significantly more CPU than DP8 did, to the point where I have to bump the buffer up to double what I did in DP8 in some cases.

I have not yet had time to try the latest update that just came out to see if that resolves the issue or not, but hope to have time to test over the weekend.

[Gerk]

The problem still exists in 9.0.2. Consistently a lot more CPU usage than DP 8 or older on identical projects.

And as a matter of fact 9.0.2 has introduced a TON more issues for me. There were a good number of projects (started in 8 or older) that I could no longer even properly open, it was failing miserably loading my UAD plugins on the projects. Only started happening with 9.0.2. I tried all the usual stuff like repairing permissions, checking that there were no drive problems or errors, etc. UAD plugins worked fine in other DAWs (PT 12, Logic Pro X). Reinstalling DP and UAD didn't resolve the issues and it only seemed to be happening with existing projects, new projects worked fine.

I rolled back to my previous backup of 9.0.1 and everything is back to normal in terms of using UAD plugins on projects.

For the time being I'm just going to stop using DP9 I think. It's not worth my time chasing all this crazy stuff down. Sadly after being a dedicated DP user forever I think it might be time to transition to different software.