What is making my DP 9.52 so (swearword) slow ?

[JSmith1234567]

I'm on 5,1 Mac Pro, that is not the trashcan, that is the last cheesegrater.

Here are some results of tests I did this week. It started out as a test to compare VEP7 to VEP6, but ultimately turned into a test of LogicPro vs Cubase vs DP, both with and without VepPro7.

First, VEP7 performed worse then VEP6 on OSX Sierra. After a week of experiments from VSL, I updated my OSX to Mojave and VEP7 definitely runs faster then VEP6 on Mojave. I am attributing that to Metal support in Mojave and VEP7 must be taking advantage. The main performance issue I was having with VEP7 on OSX Sierra was related to the GUI... if the VEP7 GUI was showing, it would add 10% cpu and if hiDPI mode was on, it would be another 10% cpu above that! But with VEP7 on Mojave it performs better then VEP6 ever did, including with the GUI showing, HiDPi and all the rest.

Also, I did a GeekBench test on Sierra just before the upgrade and afterwards under Mojave and it scored multicore score 20% higher on Mojave (~25,000).

So I'm quite pleased with Mojave...and VEP7 also on top of Mojave, but not on top of Sierra.

Now back to the question about DP performance.. The above testing led me to test out LPX, Cubase10 and DP9/10 using exact same project tracks and plugins, both with and without VePro7 to see how they fare.



Full spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

You can read more details about the testing that was done, how it was done and summary:

https://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/view ... 80#p737261

but suffice it to say, DP10 did not perform as well as DP9. DP9 alone was slightly better performance then DP9+VEP7. Not enough difference to matter I would say. Use VEP7 if it adds convenience for workflow improvements, it will not make much difference in terms of track count and things like that, in my opinion. I did not try DP10 without VEP7, its a lot of work to setup the test project and I ended up removing DP10 before I did that test with DP9, and I don't plan to try again, but you can always check back to the above image link on google sheets to see if I do later.

In the above test I also had to bump the audio buffer up to 2048 for the DP alone test to get the performance I got. LPX won't go up past 1024, so I couldn't do a true comparison, but truthfully when using VEP+DP or VEP+LPX, the latency gets increased by VEP to something more like 2048, so I wanted to set it there for comparison. The performance in DP alone with audio buffer at 1024 was slightly worse then shown above, something even closer to the same performance as when using DP+VEP7.

Hey thank you SO much!

That is really incredibly helpful.

I have been stuck in Sierra after a disastrous attempt at upgrading to High Sierra awhile back.

I did upgrade to VE Pro 7 without really thinking about it and whether there would be a performance issue.

Your info gives me the confidence to go Mojave / Dp 9.52 (I'll have to regress from 9.54) / VE Pro 7.

I'm on a "trashcan" Mac Pro, but I'm guessing that might take advantage even more of Mojave.

Well enough about me...let's talk about me.

No seriously, I appreciate your reply and the time you took to put it into a straight ahead explanation for us.

Thanks again!

[dewdman42]

where did you get 9.54?

[JSmith1234567]

where did you get 9.54?

Whoops 9.52!

Sorry!

At least now I know I don't need to "regress".

[dewdman42]

I have been stuck in Sierra after a disastrous attempt at upgrading to High Sierra awhile back.

I put it off for a long time, but my experience with VEP7 on sierra was not very good to be honest. I think VEP7 is making use of Metal stuff in Mojave and runs much better on Mojave, but as of right now, its a bit sluggish on Sierra and probably HS too. I went back and forth with VSL about this most of last week and did extensive testing. The engineer I interacted with is also of the opinion that VEP7 is making good use of Metal but probably that is having a negative impact on older OSX. They are using a third party GUI library and its somewhat out of their hands.

Anyway, I can say that Mojave is running very well for me on my cheesegrater.

I did upgrade to VE Pro 7 without really thinking about it and whether there would be a performance issue.

Same here, but i noticed problems when the VEP gui is open vs minimized, and even more so if I have my display in Retina/HiDPI mode. Otherwise, seemed smooth enough. But through methodical testing I found it was performing worse then VEP6 in those ways, but after Mojave its better then VEP6.

Your info gives me the confidence to go Mojave / Dp 9.52 (I'll have to regress from 9.54) / VE Pro 7.

I'm on a "trashcan" Mac Pro, but I'm guessing that might take advantage even more of Mojave.

I would definitely recommend. I'm not sure if the trashcan has a metal capable video card in it? I presume so, but I don't really know, you will need to investigate that to make sure before moving too Mojave.

On the cheesegrater I had to buy a new video card, the RX580 to get metal.

[JSmith1234567]

I have been stuck in Sierra after a disastrous attempt at upgrading to High Sierra awhile back.

I put it off for a long time, but my experience with VEP7 on sierra was not very good to be honest. I think VEP7 is making use of Metal stuff in Mojave and runs much better on Mojave, but as of right now, its a bit sluggish on Sierra and probably HS too. I went back and forth with VSL about this most of last week and did extensive testing. The engineer I interacted with is also of the opinion that VEP7 is making good use of Metal but probably that is having a negative impact on older OSX. They are using a third party GUI library and its somewhat out of their hands.

Anyway, I can say that Mojave is running very well for me on my cheesegrater.

I did upgrade to VE Pro 7 without really thinking about it and whether there would be a performance issue.

Same here, but i noticed problems when the VEP gui is open vs minimized, and even more so if I have my display in Retina/HiDPI mode. Otherwise, seemed smooth enough. But through methodical testing I found it was performing worse then VEP6 in those ways, but after Mojave its better then VEP6.

Your info gives me the confidence to go Mojave / Dp 9.52 (I'll have to regress from 9.54) / VE Pro 7.

I'm on a "trashcan" Mac Pro, but I'm guessing that might take advantage even more of Mojave.

I would definitely recommend. I'm not sure if the trashcan has a metal capable video card in it? I presume so, but I don't really know, you will need to investigate that to make sure before moving too Mojave.

On the cheesegrater I had to buy a new video card, the RX580 to get metal.

Hey thanks again man!

This is SO totally helpful!

One last question if you don't mind?

Did you do anything about this "APFS" thing, either on your main drive or externals?

Thanks again!

[dewdman42]

Mojave will update your boot drive to APFS . This is good if its an SSD, supposedly not so good if its an HDD. It will not convert any other drives automatically, you can do it manually later if you want. I have embraced APFS and I like it. The snapshot feature could come in handy. Also, the ability to create a new volume without having to create a dedicate partition means I can quickly create a volume to install a small simple clean Mojave on for testing purposes that will only take up maybe 20GB of space and easily remove it later. APFS definitely has some nice advantages and supposedly SSD performance is better on it.

[JSmith1234567]

Mojave will update your boot drive to APFS . This is good if its an SSD, supposedly not so good if its an HDD. It will not convert any other drives automatically, you can do it manually later if you want. I have embraced APFS and I like it. The snapshot feature could come in handy. Also, the ability to create a new volume without having to create a dedicate partition means I can quickly create a volume to install a small simple clean Mojave on for testing purposes that will only take up maybe 20GB of space and easily remove it later. APFS definitely has some nice advantages and supposedly SSD performance is better on it.

Thanks!

I think I'll also update my external SSDs, except for the backup and time-machine drives.

Thanks again for all of this knowledge and experience you are sharing!

[jb]

I have the same problem once in a while and I'm not sure
exactly why but one weird thing has worked to fix it,
it seems to be related to the display settings in the sys. preferences,
I have 2 monitors and if I re-set the configuration or switch to
"mirror displays, this whole super slow behavior goes away,
a few times it was really bad and that solved it, it got back to "snappy"...
Not sure what to make of it, most of the time DP behaves and then for a few projects it gets draggy and that seems to resolve it so far...
my 4 cents...

[JSmith1234567]

What is your latency set to?

I find with larger projects, I start getting spinning-ball-lags until I raise the latency.

Weirdly enough, it isn't consistent. Some days I can work on large projects @ 256. Other days I have to go to 512 or 1024 on the same project.

It's like what mood is my Mac in that day?

The one thing I have started doing is if I'm going to do live-tracking or overdubs, I print a submix to a stereo track and then use a separate chunk that just has the basics; tracks for the live instruments, one reverb, one piano (in case I need to play somebody something), and the headphone mix. Then I can go down to like 64 or 128 no problem, track, and then paste the new tracks back into my large template and continuing working (after raising the latency).

On a different note, my experience is still the more chunks, the slower the saves, and the slower the response, but I'm glad other people are not having that problem.

[terrybritton]

The one thing I have started doing is if I'm going to do live-tracking or overdubs, I print a submix to a stereo track and then use a separate chunk that just has the basics; tracks for the live instruments, one reverb, one piano (in case I need to play somebody something), and the headphone mix. Then I can go down to like 64 or 128 no problem, track, and then paste the new tracks back into my large template and continuing working (after raising the latency).

That is the standard practice here for doing live tracking on top of existing material and overdubs as well. It takes all the load off the machine so it can concentrate on doing one thing really well.

Terry

[cuttime]

I have the same problem once in a while and I'm not sure
exactly why but one weird thing has worked to fix it,
it seems to be related to the display settings in the sys. preferences,
I have 2 monitors and if I re-set the configuration or switch to
"mirror displays, this whole super slow behavior goes away,
a few times it was really bad and that solved it, it got back to "snappy"...
Not sure what to make of it, most of the time DP behaves and then for a few projects it gets draggy and that seems to resolve it so far...
my 4 cents...

Could it be related to this?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=66416

[towerproductions]

What is your latency set to?

I find with larger projects, I start getting spinning-ball-lags until I raise the latency.

Weirdly enough, it isn't consistent. Some days I can work on large projects @ 256. Other days I have to go to 512 or 1024 on the same project.

It's like what mood is my Mac in that day?

The one thing I have started doing is if I'm going to do live-tracking or overdubs, I print a submix to a stereo track and then use a separate chunk that just has the basics; tracks for the live instruments, one reverb, one piano (in case I need to play somebody something), and the headphone mix. Then I can go down to like 64 or 128 no problem, track, and then paste the new tracks back into my large template and continuing working (after raising the latency).

On a different note, my experience is still the more chunks, the slower the saves, and the slower the response, but I'm glad other people are not having that problem.

Interesting , as I have a similar machine and have had some days with similar issues to yours with beachballs and sometimes playing fine at 256 other times at 1024 depending on it's mood . Drives me crazy . I usually have several chunks loaded in a file as well . Saves can also take a long time with beachballs as welI I do have 3 monitors and had to get an adapter to usb power one of them to get all 3 to work properly with the original video card on my 2012 Mac Pro 12 core 5.1 64GB ram on Sierra 12.6 . I'm not familiar with the benefits of metal in Mojave so I'm glad I haven't upgraded with the old video card still installed .

I also automatically upgraded to VEP7 when it was on sale and to get the new syncron vienna files but that was also a little flakey and slow so have not tried testing or using it as of late.

I haven't installed DP10 yet on my studio machine but have it on mt laptop .
Does anyone know undo history in DP9 still has an effect on slow performance ?

Craig

[HCMarkus]

I always monitor live musicians tracking thru my interface's hardware mixer, so buffer setting/latency doesn't impact the session. With the MOTU AVB mixer, fine tuning individual cue mixes is handled by the musicians themselves with their tablet or phone. That said, if there is extensive keyboard or drum programming work to do, and the sounds in my S90ES don't get me close enough for tracking, I'll use the stereo submix approach as noted by y'all.

[jb]

I have the same problem once in a while and I'm not sure
exactly why but one weird thing has worked to fix it,
it seems to be related to the display settings in the sys. preferences,
I have 2 monitors and if I re-set the configuration or switch to
"mirror displays, this whole super slow behavior goes away,
a few times it was really bad and that solved it, it got back to "snappy"...
Not sure what to make of it, most of the time DP behaves and then for a few projects it gets draggy and that seems to resolve it so far...
my 4 cents...

Could it be related to this?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=66416

Cool, that's very interesting, Thanks!

[JohnG]

One odd change significantly improved performance, especially when Quickscribe is open.

1. Open Chunks window (shift_C on Mac)
2. In the mini menu (little triangle, upper right) pull down to select, "Auto/manual end time" -- this behaves like a toggle.
3. Once the end time is in bold type next to your chunk's name, reduce it as low as possible to cover the entire sequence. Mine was mistakenly at 469, instead of approximately bar 150.
4. Type in an accurate bar number under ENDTIME.

This vastly reduced beach balls and lag with Quickscribe open -- I use Quickscribe constantly.

Kind regards,

John