mikehalloran wrote: ↑Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:04 pm
Michael Canavan wrote: ↑Tue Sep 28, 2021 4:19 pm
You have a Quad Core i7, Activity Monitor will add all of them for a total of 400% if you're overloading the system. I have a 12 core so it can show up to 1200%. DP shows the combined CPU usage, for DP.
Activity monitor is also showing the full system CPU hit, not just DPs, so it's possible you might want to close out a few things if you're getting around half your CPU being used at 150-230% as opposed to 100 out of 400% in DP.
To that point, DP is showing 103% with 90 threads in my Activity Monitor but I have an 18 Core iMac Pro. Dp 11.01, Big Sur while my current project is playing. That ain't the real picture, however. For that, we need to look down.
Total System Activity (the bottom screen) same project playing:
System: 1.20%
User: 4.41%
Idle: 94.88%
Plugins and VIs can increase the load big time. Creating a separate VI player instance will let the OS spread the load among the cores. Multiple VIs in a single instance use only one core. This is true for Mac and Windows.
What's your playback buffer?
My playback buffer is 128. BTW, I can go to 64 or even 32 on many projects. 16 is doable but chokes the machine except on stereo audio tracks. No audible latency at 128 through a
Fast USB 2 interface on this bad boy so I leave it alone.
That all makes sense though since an 18 core as far as the way Activity monitor reads CPU could theoretically reach near 1800%, since Activity Monitor just reads each individual CPU at 100%, so about 5% of the overall CPU 100/18=5.5 or around 100% on an 18 core.
They really could do to give people both readouts. Logic shows each core being used and DP adds them together, but also includes other system taxing things, whilst Mac OS gives you 1,800%. No wonder people get lost..
Oh, and plug ins mostly use one core on one track, so a single track can overload a single core with no activity at all on other tracks. Yet Diva and a few other plug ins can outside of the DAW, access more cores than one (Multi Core button on Diva).
Plus RAM is another story, Kontakt instances of the same library do not access more RAM, so loading two multi key switch libraries into a single instance of Konakt is a good idea, for having more than one articulation playing at the same time, or keeping one on legato etc. without adding CPU or RAM. But, if you load two different libraries you are using resources on one CPU core, and it's smart to balance cores by splitting libraries among Kontakt instances.
To OPs question though, no worries until you near 400% in Activity Monitor, that's the "issue", AM reads all four of your cores as a possible 400% not 100%.
M2 Studio Ultra, RME Babyface FS, Slate Raven Mti2, NI SL88 MKII, Linnstrument, MPC Live II, Launchpad MK3. Hundreds of plug ins.
