Magic Dave, PLEASE explain the DP8 memory usage meter

[Dan Worley]

Based on this thread I just got the MenuMeter app, but I am curious how do you use it with DP? When I am in the finder, the meters show-up in the menu bar, but when I go into DP windows, they disappear! Are you able to keep the MenuMeter's meters visible when in DP? I am assuming so! If so, what is your secret?

Thank you,

~Shea

I don't remember if there's a preference to choose when you install but it's always visible on my Mac in the menu bar.

If I remember right, if you have MenuMeters set to show too much or too big it gets kicked off the menu bar when DP is loaded.

Go into System Preferences (the "Other" pane), open MenuMeters' control panel adjust what and how it displays.

[sayatnova]

Thanks, Dan, I will try that tomorrow. Need sleep now.

good night,

~Shea

[sayatnova]

Follow-up:

Well, tried making menumeter display the smallest graphic to take less space this morning and it still does not work: DP boots it out of the way. Too bad...

Posting if maybe this helps someone else.

Take care,

~Shea

[Shooshie]

Hello Shooshie (& Everyone),

Based on this thread I just got the MenuMeter app, but I am curious how do you use it with DP? When I am in the finder, the meters show-up in the menu bar, but when I go into DP windows, they disappear! Are you able to keep the MenuMeter's meters visible when in DP? I am assuming so! If so, what is your secret?

Thank you,

~Shea

I have no idea, honestly. I'm just a customer. I installed it, and it worked, upgrade after upgrade. Could it have anything to do with the width of your monitor? I'd go through the preferences with a fine-tooth comb and see if you unearth some setting you previously overlooked.

Shooshie

PS: I now have a 12 core machine which apparently produces 12 virtual cores as well. There are 24 CPU meters stretched across a few inches of my menubar at all times. It's kind of interesting to watch -- especially when, say, core 11 starts working hard, but none of the others are moving. What causes the CPU to make these decisions???

[labman]

Man SHoosie, (and Dan) Thanks so much for the menumeters reminder. I had meant to do it on one of our rigs to test years ago and forgot. The screen real estate that will save on our macpros is pretty significant with 12 cores etc!!!

So what do you usually like to show for CPU? (Thus far I 'think' I like % and thermometer.) And what intervals for readouts are you setting so it doesnt steal from DP too much? And favs for memory?

Thanks again!

[zed]

Well, tried making menumeter display the smallest graphic to take less space this morning and it still does not work: DP boots it out of the way. Too bad...

That should not be. I have had MenuMeters for years and they report for duty all day long.

You have "Display CPU Menu Meter" checked and they go away when you launch DP? That's really strange. Since you can make changes in real time, why not try fiddling with the different MM settings while DP is running and see if some combination of choices results in the MenuMeters reappearing where they are supposed to be?

It's kind of interesting to watch -- especially when, say, core 11 starts working hard, but none of the others are moving. What causes the CPU to make these decisions???

Sometimes the division of labour is really strange. And on occasion that one core that is doing all the work (on my 8 core machine) will suddenly crap out the system.

So let's review. 7 of the cores leave all the work to the 8th core, and the 8th core tries to manage everything until it succumbs to it's overtaxation. Weird. Or maybe at that point the other 7 cores have already succumb to some sort of paralysis.

I haven't got DP8 yet, but I am hoping to learn that it is better at dividing tasks equally between the cores.

[Shooshie]

Man SHoosie, (and Dan) Thanks so much for the menumeters reminder. I had meant to do it on one of our rigs to test years ago and forgot. The screen real estate that will save on our macpros is pretty significant with 12 cores etc!!!

So what do you usually like to show for CPU? (Thus far I 'think' I like % and thermometer.) And what intervals for readouts are you setting so it doesnt steal from DP too much? And favs for memory?

Thanks again!

When I had only a four core CPU, I used the "thermometer" gauge and percentage, but with 12 real and 12 virtual cores (yes, it shows all 24), I had to cut out the percentages and just show the thermometers. Even on a 27" Cinema Display, there wasn't room for the whole lot.

I also have it showing: Tx/Rx network activity (which I use way more often than I'd have ever guessed), hard drive activity and stats, and memory usage, which I have in pie-chart form.

Shoosh

[Steve Steele]

I'm sure everyone knows that the CPU meter is showing what percentage of the CPU OS X has allocated for DP to use. Keep in mind there are many other threads running and the CPU meter in DP is not an indication of your CPU's state - just DP's allocation of the CPU.

[dix]

Based on info in another thread (http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 26&t=59591) I just downloaded MenuMeter and I'm trying to understand it. MenuMeter doesn't seem to reflect what DP's Audio Performance meter says at all. I can have a sequence that's almost unplayable, that pegs DP's AP meter (Playback meter well in the green. Barely moving), but none of the threads, according to MenuMeter, are close to maxing out. If DP's meter is maxing out shouldn't MenuMeter reflect that in some way?

I'm looking into this because Shooshie mentions that if MenuMeter shows a core maxing out that you can redistribute the VIs to even out the load. I'd like to do that but none of the cores are maxed and I'm still bogging down. What's going on?

Thanks!

[Steve Steele]

Based on info in another thread (http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 26&t=59591) I just downloaded MenuMeter and I'm trying to understand it. MenuMeter doesn't seem to reflect what DP's Audio Performance meter says at all. I can have a sequence that's almost unplayable, that pegs DP's AP meter (Playback meter well in the green. Barely moving), but none of the threads, according to MenuMeter, are close to maxing out. If DP's meter is maxing out shouldn't MenuMeter reflect that in some way?

I'm looking into this because Shooshie mentions that if MenuMeter shows a core maxing out that you can redistribute the VIs to even out the load. I'd like to do that but none of the cores are maxed and I'm still bogging down. What's going on?

Thanks!

Keeo your Activity Monitor open in another desktop space, set it to show All Activity and show both the CPU History meters and the CPU Activity meters. When DP's meter is peaking switch to the desktop space with the Activity Monitor and look for anything that's taking up CPU threads, filling up RAM or working the hard drive.

If you have a SSD make sure not to fill it above 70% or so. If you're still using a HDD make sure Time Machine, Spotlight or some other service is not accessing your disk and CPU.

Make sure your buffer in DP is set to 1024 for playback. No need to set it any lower unless you're tracking. Also, check to make sure that you don't have a bunch of plugin windows open behind the Tracks window. When you have plugin windows open they automatically go into real time mode and start hogging the CPU. When closed they go back to Pre-gen mode (if that's how you have it set). Look in the prefs under Audio Plugins to find that setting.

It could be several things. Make sure Hardware Setup and Studio Setup are setup properly.

Also, I wouldn't use Menu Meters. Get used to looking at the Activity Monitor and buy a little menu utility called Boost&Memory. You'll install it but you won't actually use it for anything but a memory meter. To clear out RAM use the Terminal and type "sudo purge" then enter your password. Some people will say not to do this because OSX does compressed memory now, but don't listen to them. If your the kind of DP user that fills up your RAM a lot you need to purge it every once in a while. I've been doing it for years. Compressed memory is more for the average user. OSX is good at memory management but I like to have the final say how my memory is managed and my computer is a lot faster because of it.

[bayswater]

If DP's meter is maxing out shouldn't MenuMeter reflect that in some way?

I didn't really follow the explanation but I can say the DP meter can be sensitive to disk issues and timing errors while menu meters may not be. I'd second the suggestion to use activity monitor and look at all the indicators.

[Shooshie]

Based on info in another thread (http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 26&t=59591) I just downloaded MenuMeter and I'm trying to understand it. MenuMeter doesn't seem to reflect what DP's Audio Performance meter says at all. I can have a sequence that's almost unplayable, that pegs DP's AP meter (Playback meter well in the green. Barely moving), but none of the threads, according to MenuMeter, are close to maxing out. If DP's meter is maxing out shouldn't MenuMeter reflect that in some way?

I'm looking into this because Shooshie mentions that if MenuMeter shows a core maxing out that you can redistribute the VIs to even out the load. I'd like to do that but none of the cores are maxed and I'm still bogging down. What's going on?

Thanks!

The previous message by Nightwatch explains it pretty nicely:

I'm sure everyone knows that the CPU meter is showing what percentage of the CPU OS X has allocated for DP to use. Keep in mind there are many other threads running and the CPU meter in DP is not an indication of your CPU's state - just DP's allocation of the CPU.

OS X allocates memory and CPU time for DP; DP's meter shows what percentage of that space it's using. It's not that cores will always max out from DP, though sometimes they do. It's the relative activity that is telling. If your Audio Performance meter in DP shows it is red-lining, but you see only one core active, or primarily one core active — especially if it's jumping up and down — then you might see if breaking a large instance of a VI host like Kontakt could distribute the load.

Honestly, I haven't had to deal with memory and CPU issues in DP since going 64 bit, so maybe all this is just habit from an earlier era. Still, I catch things all the time from watching MenuMeters. For example, I had a bunch of tabs in Safari open last week, and the CPU activity just kept getting wilder and wilder, involving all 12 cores. I don't know what was on those websites that was causing those issues, but I started looking for things to close, and when I closed most of those tabs, the activity went away. I wasn't even using Safari. It was just open in the background. Had I run DP at that time, I would have wondered why it was performing poorly, but MenuMeters showed me a problem and caused me to search out and rectify the situation.

I'm not sure why Nightwatch says NOT to use MenuMeters, but I say to go ahead and use it. You can still do everything he suggested, plus have MenuMeters showing you the relative activity among your CPU cores at any given instant. When you see something interesting, that would be a good time to switch to Activity Monitor to see what is specifically causing that activity. I've certainly never had any trouble as a result of using MenuMeters, and they have been most helpful. In fact, I don't really like to use a Mac anymore without them. You do have to keep them up to date, but that's not difficult.

Shooshie

[monkey man]

I've seen many references here on the board to the apparent fact that DP's CPU meter provides an "inflated" reading when compared to that of Activity Monitor. This is nothing new, and I suspect the explanation has just been given.

Nevertheless, from the OS's perspective, IMHO it's useful to be able to reference MenuMeters' at-a-glance readout, if for no other reason than to confirm that system headroom is indeed there and therefore that one needn't panic in a particular instance based solely upon DP's meter. IOW, it's a handy reassurance when one might otherwise be inclined to panic; it's sayin', "hold your horses, bro'; just give it a minute", or even, "Hey, DP's just havin' trouble keeping up with the current combination of having to fill buffers, render, read disks and so on."

IMHO, until the warning dialogue starts to appear, you should have ample scope to continue to behave irrationally...

[billf]

you should have ample scope to continue to behave irrationally...

Definitely. You can always fix it in the mix.

[Babz]

I'm running DP8 in 32-bit mode (have to, cuz I still need to use UAD)

Sorry I don't have an answer on the memory meter, but why does one need 32-bit for UAD?

What am I missing here?

Babz