DP 9's CPU meter is in Red with 93% idle activity

[Terry50]

Hello Bayswater,
Spikes are not my problem. I am planning a mega project with mega plugins. I was considering a Universal UAD-2 Accelerator; but then I noticed that DP was only using 4.8% of my CPU.
Why should I have to spend a thousand dollars for an accelerator when my computer is 93% idle?

I have a project which has one stereo track with a 3 minute song on it. And I put 8 Freiruam EQ's on the track. With the song playing the Audio Performance meter is a steady 50% capacity. The Activity Monitor reads 93.6% idle. This is with no VI. Just one stereo wave file playing.

During my testing I did have the window "Performance Overload" one time.
Thanks for your support.
If anybody else has this problem.... Just write in a reply "I agree" in the messages here.
Terry

[Terry50]

Hi,
Here is the latest.
I tested Studio One Pro 2 by PreSonus; and that was showing a high idleness rate on the activity monitor also.

I called Sweetwater Sound tech; and the guy did a remote. He didn't make any changes and the computer started working right.
It was like bringing your car in to get fixed and then the bad noise disappears. ha ha
The idleness went down to 58% with the performance meter reading in the 50% range.
So I'm hopeful.
Terry

[bayswater]

I had that car. I also had the experience with Mach Five -- one minute it doesn't work, the next minute is does. I still think the best strategy is to ignore the meter in DP and carry on.

[James Steele]

This is probably a stupid suggestion, but sometimes those are actually useful... I have gotten lucky on occasion. I'm assuming you found the DP9 app in the Finder, did a Get Info and checked the "Prevent app nap" box?

[Terry50]

Thank you, James.
I did the app nap box for a different app; but I never did it for DP.
I just did it for DP.
We'll se if it makes a difference...

Cheers,
Terry

[James Steele]

It most likely won't, but it's still good to turn that off if you're not using a laptop running on battery.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That does seem like a high CPU impact. I have a similar trashcan with a 3.7 quad core processor, 32GB or RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

At idle DP runs between 10-20% and in a moderately small project with 8 MIDI tracks and 4 audio tracks the hit is between 25-30, according to Activity Monitor.

Sometimes when drive access becomes "problematic" a machine can bog down, so I'd definitely look into the health in, and available space of, your hard drives.

You also don't mention (unless I missed it) what version of the Apple operating system you are using. If pre-El Cap, repairing permissions in CRITICAL in some MOTU updates, not just software, but also DRIVER updates.

I see playback spikes in the DP spike indicator (red light) all the time. I always have. Hitting the space bar, even in a new project, will light the spike indicator. That same "spike," however, does not show up in the Activity Monitor. This might be significant in that DP may not be reporting precise CPU usage to the system, which leads me to my question:

Does this impact your working in DP? DP has long had an issue with reporting spikes and stopping playback. If you simply uncheck that option in the preferences (I think it's under audio somewhere) the messages stop and DP hums along with less spikes than a unicorn...

[Terry50]

Hello MIDI Life Crisis,
I like your name...
I run Yosemite 10.10.5

I recently (last month) erased my whole computer; so the hard drives are clean. Plus I got MacKeeper which cleans old caches.

Does it effect my workflow?
I am planning a huge project with maybe up to 250 plugins. I might get a waves accelerator and a UAD-2 accelerator. But last week my machine was spiking and I had a 93% idleness in my activity monitor. So I wanted to increase the usage of the computer I already have.

I am not sure about driver updates. I thought the new OS pretty much outdated most of them. I do have an Motu 8m which has software download. I am presently not using my Motu Micro Lite.

I think that is a good idea to try - about turning off that warning window (performance).

Thanks for your help,
Terry

[bayswater]

Plus I got MacKeeper.

Bingo !

[Terry50]

Hi Bayswater,
By Bingo! I take it that you mean - that's the culprit.
I'll take MacKeeper off see what happens.

Thanks.
Terry

[mikehalloran]

I got MacKeeper which cleans old caches

If that's all you are using it for, unlikely to screw things up. A Safe Boot by holding the Shift key down when starting accomplishes the same thing.

There are lots of other functions in Mackeeper that will screw up your system. Turn it off.
http://www.imore.com/avoid-mackeeper

It is important to run Repair Permissions and if you are running Yosemite after driver and DP installs. Any tool is an api for Disk Utility.

Are you running any de-frag utilities? If so, stop. Never, ever, ever de-frag an SSD. It has a severe impact on the ability of your drive to write data and interferes with garbage collection and T.R.I.M. The better tools such as TechTool Pro will not run when seeing a solid state drive. Crapware such as iDefrag will do it anyway.

[mikehalloran]

Hi Bayswater,
By Bingo! I take it that you mean - that's the culprit.
I'll take MacKeeper off see what happens.

Thanks.
Terry

Type Mackeeper into a Google search. You will see page after page of problems, security breaches and related issues, lawsuits and how to get refunds from the settlements.

Look at the sites that give detailed instructions for removing it. Apparently turning it off isn't enough.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-so ... d-3612033/

[bayswater]

By Bingo! I take it that you mean - that's the culprit.

I think Mike covered it.

[Terry50]

Thank you, Mike

Yea, I had fresh reinstalls of DP and the Motu 8m driver.
I had 29 disk permissions that needed fixing. Many of them were "Library/Audio/Plugins"

I uninstalled Mac Keeper.

I never ran a defray app once. What I do is copy data to a blank drive on a external drive (or maybe another file folder or another partition). Then I erase the original and put back the data.

I also like the safe boot idea. That's a gem.

May you and all the guys that helped me become famous composers and engineers.

Terry

[mikehalloran]

. . . I never ran a defray app once. What I do is copy data to a blank drive on a external drive (or maybe another file folder or another partition). Then I erase the original and put back the data

OK. This kind of manual de-frag is not something you should do on a regular basis. Again, this is counter to the way that SSDs work when erasing and making space available. OTOH, if you are doing a clean install or file clean up, I can see why you would want to do that once.

When you delete a file on an FD, you are telling the directory that it's ok to rewrite data to those sectors, SSDs don't work that way.

Constant read and erase wears out the data cells. TRIM spreads the data over the entire drive to even out the wear. When you delete, it tells the garbage collection utility it can now make the cells ready for new data but this is a separate process that occurs afterward — it also spreads the wear. Think of the old data going into a compost heap if that helps. You can test this by deleting a file and trying to recover—go ahead and use any utility—it is highly unlikely that you will recover much of the data even if it's only one minute later. Those cop shows where the lab can recover deleted files are not working on SSDs (whether the writers know this or not).

When you erase an SSD, do not write to zeros. It's not necessary and does more harm than good. How can a cell be empty if you wrote a zero? If, however, you did write to zeros, immediately erase the drive again without doing so. This tells the OS that the empty space is really empty and TRIM can now make the cells available for new data. You can also use Erase Empty Space in in Disk Utility.

In the Energy Saver panel, uncheck Put hard disks to sleep when possible. It saves little to no energy. TRIM works most efficiently during idle time. This panel will save battery life on portables with mechanical hard drives so it is a good thing.