Are Busses in DP 1/10th as efficient as tracks?

[toodamnhip]

I seem to recall reading something about busses in DP not being able to take advantage of memory saving options. Well, i did a test on a new Trash can 12 core. The results were as follows:
1) Aux bus with 1 stereo file running into it just to provide “activity” through the bus... After 5 heavy CPU plug ins such as Abbey Road Plates and others, trash can Mac maxes out at 128 buffer.
2) Put the same plug ins on tracks, 5 on each track, 10 tracks, you can get 50 of them, no problem.

Is Dp 1/10th as efficient using busses compared to tracks? Thats what this test shows. Sucks because I buss a lot.

OS High Sierra. 2013 Mac Pro, brand new

Sigh

[mesayre]

Were the tracks rec/input monitoring enabled? If not, then I suspect you are seeing the result of Pre-Gen, which only works for tracks, not for busses.

I hope that MOTU will make it work for busses that don't have upstream input-enabled VI's or audio tracks...someday

[OldTimey]

Perhaps MOTU could implement a digital "gate" on auxes, that shut off processing if no signal is present. Though, that would lead to a lot of cpu spikes. No real good answer I'm afraid.

Seems like the old maxim, "bus your tracks to the same aux to save on cpu" no longer applies! More of a convenience thing.

Pregen on auxes would be tricky from a programming perspective, but I suppose if only audio tracks are feeding it, the aux could "know" that and enable PreGen. But it could get messy fast, because you can feed a bus into an aux, that feeds another aux etc....

[JSmith1234567]

I have never understood this.

Everything works fine until I add busses, and then all of a sudden DP slows to unusable.

That has been consistent with every version of DP and Mac OS combo I have used, and on really fast Macs.

Printing multiple stereo and 5.1 stems all at once is impossible.

[JSmith1234567]

And to add, I wish DP would bring back the ability to globally turn off pre-gen.

It used to be an option, and everything worked great for me.

Pre-gen now is not an option, and it really does not work well, sorry MOTU.

Better than it used to, but still not as good as just turning it off.

[toodamnhip]

I will test this in DP10 soon, but if Busses are this inefficient, it will start changing how I work. Bussing is its own art, and its sad that DP’s cpu inefficiency with busses might make it necessary to NOT do what I want to do with busses.

[FMiguelez]

I don't know about DP 10 yet, but from DP4 to DP9.52, I've always used and abused buses and I've never seen any of the mentioned problems.

Especially since 9.52's feature of practically unlimited busing, I use dozens of simultaneous buses (to aux and audio tracks) regularly and everything has always been perfect in this aspect, always with perfect plug-in latency compensation down to the sample level, regardless of the complexity of the signal scheme.
I always keep unused tracks in the template turned off, BTW.

[toodamnhip]

I don't know about DP 10 yet, but from DP4 to DP9.52, I've always used and abused buses and I've never seen any of the mentioned problems.

Especially since 9.52's feature of practically unlimited busing, I use dozens of simultaneous buses (to aux and audio tracks) regularly and everything has always been perfect in this aspect, always with perfect plug-in latency compensation down to the sample level, regardless of the complexity of the signal scheme.
I always keep unused tracks in the template turned off, BTW.

You have to re read my test. It kind of proves there’s a problem. Try it yourself. Make a new file, fill it up with some heavy plug in on audio tracks and compare to the same plug in on aux busses.
On both, make sure you have some sort of stereo file to play with the output turned off so as not toil your speakers, but so as to provide audio for the system to process.

[Michael Canavan]

You have to re read my test. It kind of proves there’s a problem. Try it yourself. Make a new file, fill it up with some heavy plug in on audio tracks and compare to the same plug in on aux busses.
On both, make sure you have some sort of stereo file to play with the output turned off so as not toil your speakers, but so as to provide audio for the system to process.

This has been like this since NextGen PreGen. It's not that busses are less efficient, it's that DP is more efficient with tracks it can PreGen. Run the test with Effect Performance open and you'll see this clearly, tracks that can PreGen use hardly any CPU. PreGen means what you think it means, it basically makes an audio file of the track. Busses and the like have no current way to PreGen. So, the new paradigm, Loading Kontakt plug ins with multi audio outputs and multiple instruments in a single instance is less efficient than loading multiple Kontakt instruments on multiple tracks, and bussing costs a bit more than loading plug ins directly on a track.

Again, nothing changed or is broken in terms of bussing, DP just got a lot more efficient than before in terms of single audio or instrument tracks.

[toodamnhip]

You have to re read my test. It kind of proves there’s a problem. Try it yourself. Make a new file, fill it up with some heavy plug in on audio tracks and compare to the same plug in on aux busses.
On both, make sure you have some sort of stereo file to play with the output turned off so as not toil your speakers, but so as to provide audio for the system to process.

This has been like this since NextGen PreGen. It's not that busses are less efficient, it's that DP is more efficient with tracks it can PreGen. Run the test with Effect Performance open and you'll see this clearly, tracks that can PreGen use hardly any CPU. PreGen means what you think it means, it basically makes an audio file of the track. Busses and the like have no current way to PreGen. So, the new paradigm, Loading Kontakt plug ins with multi audio outputs and multiple instruments in a single instance is less efficient than loading multiple Kontakt instruments on multiple tracks, and bussing costs a bit more than loading plug ins directly on a track.

Again, nothing changed or is broken in terms of bussing, DP just got a lot more efficient than before in terms of single audio or instrument tracks.

Yeah, I pretty much agree that nothing is technically “broken”. But it does suck not to be able to put plugs on busses without killing CPU. Its ok, Im building a new super computer set this month so I’ll be fine, but in the past, now I know when I killed my comp so bad.

[JSmith1234567]

You have to re read my test. It kind of proves there’s a problem. Try it yourself. Make a new file, fill it up with some heavy plug in on audio tracks and compare to the same plug in on aux busses.
On both, make sure you have some sort of stereo file to play with the output turned off so as not toil your speakers, but so as to provide audio for the system to process.

This has been like this since NextGen PreGen. It's not that busses are less efficient, it's that DP is more efficient with tracks it can PreGen. Run the test with Effect Performance open and you'll see this clearly, tracks that can PreGen use hardly any CPU. PreGen means what you think it means, it basically makes an audio file of the track. Busses and the like have no current way to PreGen. So, the new paradigm, Loading Kontakt plug ins with multi audio outputs and multiple instruments in a single instance is less efficient than loading multiple Kontakt instruments on multiple tracks, and bussing costs a bit more than loading plug ins directly on a track.

Again, nothing changed or is broken in terms of bussing, DP just got a lot more efficient than before in terms of single audio or instrument tracks.

Yeah, I pretty much agree that nothing is technically “broken”. But it does suck not to be able to put plugs on busses without killing CPU. Its ok, Im building a new super computer set this month so I’ll be fine, but in the past, now I know when I killed my comp so bad.

Even on my new 12-core, I really can't use an aux-bussing scheme to print stems.

DP just cr___ps out.

[bayswater]

Even on my new 12-core, I really can't use an aux-bussing scheme to print stems.

DP just cr___ps out.

I was able to do aux bussing to stems on the 2009 iMac. Must be something not optimal in the setup. I did some playing around with the settings described in the Getting Started manual that helped a lot. Don't remember the details but there are only 2 or 3 parameters to look at.

[Gravity Jim]

I sincerely don't know what you're on about.

I run every audio track and every instrument track through an aux buss, and then route those auxs to Stereo Out. On my dusty old 12-core, it runs fine.

But then, I'm usually too busy making music in my room to spend any time proving inconclusively with my personal tests that everything is wrong with DP.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'm usually too busy making music in my room to spend any time proving inconclusively with my personal tests that everything is wrong with DP.

I feel your pain... or lack thereof! I always find it humorous when I test something for a member here and say it works on my system, only to have them respond with several more hoops to jump thru to recreate the behavior.

My solution is: don't jump thru so many hoops unless you want a gig as a "sea lion at the carnival" (to quote Ian Anderson).

[Michael Canavan]

Even on my new 12-core, I really can't use an aux-bussing scheme to print stems.

DP just cr___ps out.

There's something wrong with your system of working then.

The obvious answer is to freeze all your tracks, take the audio from those tracks and print stems from that.
Bussing those tracks is putting them in Real Time, the obvious way to prevent that is printing to audio, the current quickest solution to printing multiple tracks to separate audio tracks is freezing, and exporting that frozen audio file to a regular track.

This is one of the reasons why I wanted Bounce settings that printed audio to individual tracks, but in the mean time freezing the tracks works.