Just me or is DP truly worse on Windows than OSX?

[Obsestric]

Peformance meter spiking in DP is a chronic thing for me on windows 10 even though my actual CPU meter is usually less than 20%. When my main desktop PC was set up as a hackintosh, Digital Performer performance meter was way more efficient and stable. I just got a new top of the line Dell XPS laptop I7-10875 64 gigs ram, and DP is lousy on it. DP runs better on my wife's 2017 I5 mac book pro with 8 gigs ram.

Any advice for windows 10 optimization? I've followed most online Windows 10 DAW optimization tutorials with no luck. I'm pretty much convinced DP is just incredibly inefficient on Windows. I'm getting to know Reaper and it way more stable and efficient.

Is there anyone that can say they have equally great performance on OSX and Windows 10? Maybe I'm missing something.

[Michael Canavan]

terrybritton posts pretty regularly here and uses Windows and DP successfully. Maybe PM him to get his attention, and publicly post your findings.

[CharlzS]

Some performance related tips in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=67642
Also, uninstall everything extra that came with the laptop installed by Dell including third party virus detection and under Privacy Settings only allow what you need to run in Background Apps. Check your One Drive settings to see if you're syncing your sessions or other - does the One Drive cloud icon regularly show syncing in the task bar?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I’ve heard from a few converts that DP and Finale are fine on their PCs. They were long time Mac users. However, they do complain about PCs in general. As Elaine adroitly says in Seinfeld: I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things. Lol

[Obsestric]

Thanks for the links. To be clear I've been using Digital Performer on Windows 10 since August 2018. It's still usuable, but I thought the performance decrease when I switched to windows was just the fact that my 2014 I7-4770k desktop (former hackintosh) was getting old. When I got my new laptop in June I expected to see a performance boost in DP, and to my surprise there was no difference. DP in windows doesn't seem to like high audio track counts also aux tracks and record enabled tracks with plugins on them creates constant performance meter spikes, high buffer doesn't improve it much. Dp10 is better at utilizing it's pregen mode when plugins are inserted directly on audio tracks.

[Michael Canavan]

Thanks for the links. To be clear I've been using Digital Performer on Windows 10 since August 2018. It's still usuable, but I thought the performance decrease when I switched to windows was just the fact that my 2014 I7-4770k desktop (former hackintosh) was getting old. When I got my new laptop in June I expected to see a performance boost in DP, and to my surprise there was no difference. DP in windows doesn't seem to like high audio track counts also aux tracks and record enabled tracks with plugins on them creates constant performance meter spikes, high buffer doesn't improve it much. Dp10 is better at utilizing it's pregen mode when plugins are inserted directly on audio tracks.

Well, you're going from a desktop to a laptop. The only laptops that can compete at all with desktops are the most expensive ones, the Zenbook Duo with the 8 core 2.4ghz i9 and the newer AMD laptops. Even then, the system busses are going to be slower, the hard drive or SSDs can be slower, the RAM etc. Mobile CPUs are slower and more prone to spiking than desktop CPUs. Not saying don't use a laptop, just saying don't use a laptop expecting on par performance to a desktop. PreGen works on tracks that are not record enabled or input armed, it doesn't work on FX in Aux tracks, although it does work on FX for tracks feeding Aux tracks. It doesn't mean that Aux tracks can't have a return investment CPU wise, it depends on how many tracks are feeding into an Aux track with heavy FX on it etc. It's not a bad idea to sit down and spend some time figuring out the limits of these methods on your system.

The other elephant is spiking plug ins, and this isn't a DP only thing. I use Bitwig Studio a bit and it has the same issue with certain plug ins just acting up and spiking your CPU. In Bitwig there's a spectrogram type graph of the CPU and you can see certain plug ins just jump at intervals from 25% to 80% for no good reason. It doesn't directly correlate to typical CPU use either, so I can have 20 instances of Diva, but only three of Reaktor with Blocks in it etc.

[Obsestric]

Thanks Michael. I know certain plugins cause more cpu spikes than others. I'm constantly finding work arounds, but I'm feeling like DP is just not meant for windows. Do you have experience on both OS and can confirm given the same hardware specs that DP performs equal or close to equal between osx and windows 10? Motu told me it should.

My personal experience is that I'm getting probably about half the peformance on Windows. The same desktop that was a Hackintosh with Mavericks on it was way better than windows 10 with all of the same plugins. My wife's average spec 2017 I5 mackbook pro gives a more stable performance in DP than my new 2020 Dell XPS spec'd out laptop and my Windows desktop.

[bayswater]

I tried DP on Windows shortly for a few days after it came out on borrowed PC with specs similar to the iMac I was using at the time. Aside from the big ugly menu bar, once I got started I didn't really notice any difference. At the time, graphics in the windows version of DP seemed not so good but still usable.

If it's just the DP performance meters that are the issue, maybe ignore them. The one time I had to pay attention is when I noticed that Activity Monitor showed excessive disk activity when the DP performance meter spiked. That was because a VI was using too small a buffer to preload samples. Once that was fixed, the performance meter was safely ignored. I notice that both DP and Logic give warnings on performance when there seems to be no reason to do so.

[Obsestric]

Yeah it's the performance meter in DP spiking not my actual computer getting maxed out or anywhere even close to it. I could ignore it visually but hearing audio disruptions every time it spikes has grown old. We'll see if there are any improvements in version 10.13 just released. In the meantime I'm forcing myself to learn another windows DAW.

[bayswater]

Does Windows have some version of Activity Monitor that will tell you exactly what resources are being used by how much?

Do you have an optimum mix of VI instances versus channels per instance?

[Obsestric]

I can't find any correlation between DP's performance spikes and any monitors outside the program showing an issue on the PC usage.

I don't have any problems with VI's unless a MIDI track is record-enabled and then I can get spikes while performing MIDI live to thru a VI.

Basically anything that can take advantage of PreGen is fairly stable performance.

It's record enabled and aux tracks used for submixes, ambient effects etc. that can't be put in to pregen that seem to really cause the spikes.

[pencilina]

I'm running DP on both platforms on a new dual boot machine and I tend to hammer the CPU with a lot of plugins. I have a very fast box and can't notice a difference _now_ but getting optimized on windows for DP took some time for me and might not be worth it to you. I came up on the other side and am enjoying all the nice things windows has to offer. The only issue I noticed with DP is that its definitely more finicky then other SW when it comes to hosting waves plugins on windows (Bitwig to be specific). IMHO DP on 'doze is totally workable with the right amount of patience, love of DP and desire to separate oneself from Apple's trajectory. I documented all my problems and solutions in the thread Charlzs quoted above. There is a LOT of info in that thread as working with audio on windows can be problematic and doesn't seem DP specific to me. A lot seems to boil down to the drivers and what's running in the background. I've had excellent luck with RME HW on my desktop and mixed results with built in audio on my win laptop. Also, things like GPU specific settings for DP made a huge improvement in performance. Checking task manager and seeing what's eating CPU during spikes as Bayswater suggested might be a good starting point. Depending on your level of experience and fluidity with DP it might be worth it to figure out what's causing your spikes rather then jumping DAW ship unless you want to dive into something with a different feature set. Please let us know what you learn.

[Obsestric]

I'm running DP on both platforms on a new dual boot machine and I tend to hammer the CPU with a lot of plugins. I have a very fast box and can't notice a difference _now_ but getting optimized on windows for DP took some time for me and might not be worth it to you. I came up on the other side and am enjoying all the nice things windows has to offer. The only issue I noticed with DP is that its definitely more finicky then other SW when it comes to hosting waves plugins on windows (Bitwig to be specific). IMHO DP on 'doze is totally workable with the right amount of patience, love of DP and desire to separate oneself from Apple's trajectory. I documented all my problems and solutions in the thread Charlzs quoted above. There is a LOT of info in that thread as working with audio on windows can be problematic and doesn't seem DP specific to me. A lot seems to boil down to the drivers and what's running in the background. I've had excellent luck with RME HW on my desktop and mixed results with built in audio on my win laptop. Also, things like GPU specific settings for DP made a huge improvement in performance. Checking task manager and seeing what's eating CPU during spikes as Bayswater suggested might be a good starting point. Depending on your level of experience and fluidity with DP it might be worth it to figure out what's causing your spikes rather then jumping DAW ship unless you want to dive into something with a different feature set. Please let us know what you learn.

Thank you Pencilina. Yes I read your thread and their are a few things in there I have yet to try. Maybe GPU settings for DP I missed. Not sure. I've tried so many things it's hard to keep track. I consider myself an expert in DP at least on mac. I started with DP3, I think I was still on OS9 when I first started learning it. I prefer Windows 10 in general. On my desktop I still have and use my RME Fireface 800 and I have the new Motu M4 with my laptop. Audio Interfaces and Buffer size don't seem to make a difference with this issue. Thanks for the reply and I plan to spend more time reviewing the optimizations that you did.

[pencilina]

Cool. Also, for the sake of those trying to help, you putting your system/s specs and SW (VI's, plugins) you use in your user profile would be good. If you're using a Fireface on windows make sure you have a pci card with a TI chipset and the right drivers for the card (which might not be the default/recent ones). There's a lot of info on the RME forums. My experience has been that DP 10 works great with a fast processor on a new machine and not very well on older HW (regardless of platform). Good luck!

[Obsestric]

I've pretty much given up using DP on windows for new projects, but I still have a lot of old DP projects to open up from time to time.

Yesterday I decided to run LatencyMon while using DP. Strangely the processor spikes I have been complaining about barely happen if I run DP and Latencymon at the same time. Really strange to me. Anyone have an idea what the correlation is?

Running LatencyMon makes DP more stable. As soon as I stop latencymon Dp starts behaving erratic again with processor spikes and random audio disruptions.