Performance problems, DP8 Win7x64

[organix]

Hello Motu community,

I'm currently testing the Demo of DP8 on my Windows-7 x64 system (QC 9400, 8GB, SSD, Focusrite Saffire Pro 24DSP).

My primary DAW is Presonus Studio One and sometimes I'm using Pro Tools, that was my choice until I've switched to Presonus.

I never had contact to DP before, because I'm not a big fan of the Mac OS. But now with the release of the Windows version, DP comes closer to my interest.

My musical work is orchestral composing for film and other media and it seems DP have some very nice features to work with in this area.

But my current problem with DP8 is the audio and vst performance. This seems very bad und makes DP8 nearly unusable to me.
CPU consuming is very high and I got many drops und 100% CPU peaks. It's about 3 times worse as in Presonus S1 or under Pro Tools 10.
For example, I've transfered my current work on a small project from Studio-One to DP8. A very small orchestral mockup with about 14 instrument tracks, most of them in NI Kontakt-5.
With a ASIO latency set to 256 sample buffers this plays in Studio-One with CPU utilization about 20-40%.
The same instruments, the same MIDI data and the same vst plugins in DP8 causes the CPU to work nearly 80-100% and often the processing meter goes to red that causes many drops, crackles and sound distortion.

I also tried only to play 20 audio tracks without any plugins and this utilized the cpu (DP process only) between 20-30% with peaks up to 80%, that also seems a little bit high to me.

Maybe DP8 has some strange problems with my audio interface (Focusrite Saffire Pro 24).

DP8 seems a very nice and highly featured DAW, but with such performance issues it makes no fun to work with.
I hope MOTU will address such issues in the future and work on a more stable and even faster windows version.
Maybe I think about to write MOTU support with that issue.

regards
Markus

[wylie1]

I don`t run DP on Windows but from your post running a single core processor with only 8gig your very close to minimum specs.
But I'm sure there are lots of optimization and variables I'm not aware of.

[organix]

I don`t run DP on Windows but from your post running a single core processor with only 8gig your very close to minimum specs.
But I'm sure there are lots of optimization and variables I'm not aware of.

QC = Quad Core not Single Core.
It's an Intel Q9400 processor.

And I know that 8 GB of RAM isn't very much, but more than every minimum specs of any DAW. Btw, I have two sample slave computers with additional 8 GB RAM on each and very fast SSD harddrives. The advantage of SSD drives is, that you can work with very small sample preloading buffers and this reduces the necessary ram amount.


-Markus

[James Steele]

Since it's the very first integration of DP on Windows, I'm sure it will get better.

[proto]

8 gigs is plenty of ram dude. listen --

1. fire up dp8

2. press play NO VSTI NO FX NOTHING - just an empty session

3.I'll bet your cpu performance meter spikes way up

you dont need 8 friggin gigs ram to run NO AUDIO TRACKS NO FX NO VSTI

[Crown123]

My musical work is orchestral composing for film and other media and it seems DP have some very nice features to work with in this area.

[proto]

My point is that dp8 with no fx right out of the gate is a cpu hog. I'm using asio4all with my ultralitemk3 and works much better than motu asio drivers.

[Orbit-50]

I'm having the same problem here. I actually bought it without thoroughly testing it. It's generally unusable for me. It keeps giving me those annoying CPU usage errors just from switching between tracks, soloing, etc.. I'm experiencing extremely sloppy MIDI performance and DP8 is crashing many of my instrument plugins that I have never had a problem with in any of my other hosts. I'm just so disappointed because I thought my dream came true to be able to use DP8 in Windows and now I can't. I've always loved MOTU and always will, and I do have some faith that all of this will be ironed out, but the question is when. I don't see these severe issues being fixed for a long time. - Stephen


.-.

[frankymax]

Wow- I'm having the opposite experience. I do a lot of big orchestral mock up work and with DP 8.05 I'm not even using VEP5 anymore. I have 16 instances of Kontakt 5 plus a couple of Omnisphere's, Stylus RMX, Absynth, Chromaphone and Battery loaded with a fair amount of audio plugs (see below) and a movie all loaded into DP and it's running at 40-50% CPU headroom. I guess I'm just lucky?! Are you guys trying to do this at a 128 buffer? I'm generally at 512 buffer for this setup.

[Orbit-50]

Let me start out by being a first grader and saying " I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!!!" I'm using 512. I'm trying to follow some troubleshooting tips from the guys at KVR audio and figure this out. It's not going so well. No matter what I do it still runs like garbage.

[frankymax]

I'm really sorry to hear it's not working for you. I would certainly call MOTU Tech Support as they have helped me out big time whenever I've had troubles. Good luck!

[Emid]

With a ASIO latency set to 256 sample buffers this plays in Studio-One with CPU utilization about 20-40%.
The same instruments, the same MIDI data and the same vst plugins in DP8 causes the CPU to work nearly 80-100% and often the processing meter goes to red that causes many drops, crackles and sound distortion.

I had exact same issue with other problems. MOTU is not a newborn company, but a benefit of doubt can be given as for windows support, it is still in gestational period

Good luck addressing the issue though.

[ssb]

I'm having similar troubles I think. I'm getting horrible CPU spikes that cause crackles and cause the program to hang for a few seconds, but ONLY when I press play, change which track is record enabled, change playback position while the song is playing, etc. Once the initial spike is gone it sounds beautiful and I have no issues, but changing around tracks and replaying is a huge pain because of this..

I am running a fairly large (~14 GB) template with a bunch of kontakt and play instances, but Studio One is able to handle a larger template without any hiccups at all...