MB 32C performance degrading over time

[Wood]

There are a few threads about general performance, but since the recent update particularly I'm seeing something different. If I boot the pc and open the mix where I left off (maybe ~30 audio tracks, automation, busses, and a fair amount of native and 3rd party VST) the meter sits around 45-50% and everything is smooth, with buffer at 1024 and 44.1/24bit. PC itself is a solid enough Quad i7, SSD drives and 32Gb ram.

However, if I play/stop and change a few things while mixing (not necessarily adding in any new automation) the system over time will get less and less responsive. I don't get audio glitches, but eventually key presses, fader movements and transport controls get so full of latency the only option is a full reboot.

Is this common? It feels like a memory leak somewhere. I have to confess I'm wondering if it might be Waves (especially the CLA 'combo' ones), but that might just be coincidence.

It's certainly the case though that the latest v5.x is worse than v4.x.

[Ben@Harrison]

Hmm, we haven't received any reports specifically like yours.

It sounds like it could be a "denormal" problem: Internal processing inside a plugin ( ours, or someone else's ) might be generating smaller and smaller numbers, which eventually cause the processor to go into high-precision mode.

Another possibility is that the "undo" stack for your session is very large, and additional edits are reaching the limit of the undo operations that can be stored in memory. In preferences->General->Session->Undo, did you increase the undo history to a very high value?

Here are some troubleshooting steps you might try:

1) create a NEW session, add some tracks.
2) add the plugins that you normally use. (but leave the plugin GUI's closed)
3) show the plugin GUIs
4) locate around on the timeline, and perform the edits that you normally do.

after each step, allow some time for the problem to appear.

Hopefully this will provide additional clues about the problem, and we can investigate further!

-Ben

[Wood]

Here are some troubleshooting steps you might try:

1) create a NEW session, add some tracks.
2) add the plugins that you normally use. (but leave the plugin GUI's closed)
3) show the plugin GUIs
4) locate around on the timeline, and perform the edits that you normally do.

after each step, allow some time for the problem to appear.

Hopefully this will provide additional clues about the problem, and we can investigate further!

-Ben

Cheers Ben. Good to hear in a way it's not a common issue. I'll try out the ideas you've suggested (I haven't changed the undo history from the default). It's a weird one though - I have one track running with just under a 100 tracks plus processing, and another with less than half that number, but they both exhibit the same slowdown. <EDIT> I get about an hour before it's unusable typically.

The other thing I'll do is remove any unused tracks - I'll often have the bus stems muted as I'll be using the individual tracks to mix, but these will be taking up resource as channels (does the system offload them if they are deactivated, but still in the Editor selection?)

[Ben@Harrison]

A "deactivated" track should use no DSP or disk resources. And if you "hide" it then it should incur no graphics load on the editor.

I look forward to your findings.

-Ben

[Wood]

A "deactivated" track should use no DSP or disk resources. And if you "hide" it then it should incur no graphics load on the editor.

I look forward to your findings.

-Ben

Great - will do. One other thing to mention, the load meter (the one at the top right of the screen - not sure if it's cpu or dsp) is still only sitting at maybe 55% when that glitchy slowdown happens. So whatever that is measuring isn't pinging anywhere near the max. During the session it will increase by about 10% from the initial load.

[Tassy]

My Waves plugins worked in V4 and work in V5. Never experienced any issue in their performance. (both win7 and 10)
Moving the open plug on the screen is another case, they can cause problems eve freeze if more are simultaneously open.

Regarding high DSP, I found that if a multi-input/output plugin is followed by a single or stereo in/out plug, the stereo plug adjusts its in/out instances to the previous plug and naturally the dsp goes to sky.
It can be checked easily in the plugin manager which plug has a lot in/out and use accordingly as in the video
I do not tell it is your problem but something that can be and sure increases DSP unnecessarily. It may help others, too

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfthy2e15l17wf...d.mp4?dl=0
Tassy

[Wood]

Regarding high DSP, I found that if a multi-input/output plugin is followed by a single or stereo in/out plug, the stereo plug adjusts its in/out instances to the previous plug and naturally the dsp goes to sky.

Thanks for that tip Tassy. I just got home from work so will work through the suggestions.

[Wood]

Short update:

I spent a couple of hours yesterday evening before being informed my time was up

However, in typical IT fashion, the problem wouldn't quite manifest except on one occasion. Before I launched however, I did also do a few OS tweaks (power settings, turned off system sounds, banned a few MS apps etc). DSP @ the usual 46% on startup with audio tracks and my usual array of VST plugs. Did a lot of transport moving about for about an hour and left the vst's alone, mainly tweaking fader balances and checking on mains, auratone, headphones etc. After an hour DSP was up to about 48%.

I then added Waves Tune to fix a vocal. DSP up to 51% while it went through the scan, but MB was quite happy and I could modify pitching without any problems. At one point during all this (I think the WavesTune UI was closed) I started getting the glitchiness - pulling a fader down using the mouse would get stuck for a few seconds and then lurch to the new setting. Clicking on a Buss routing button would have no effect for a couple seconds and then the light would come on. Likewise clicking a new location in the transport strip would lag. Normally that's the sign I get, but in this case after a few minutes it seemed to settle itself back again. DSP showed the same 50-ish.

By that time I was two hours in and the knock on the door came. It's possible that it was just starting to have the issues I've seen, and I bailed too early. Will do more testing this evening.

---

I noticed the same problem, after about an hour the project becomes tight and slow with the image hanging for a few seconds (10-30 seconds) every 3-5 minutes. Disable periodically backups of the session file. Eliminated these freezes.

Is that setting in the preferences? I went through all of those last night but don't remember seeing it.

[Yriisem]

Wood
parameters, general, session, session management

[Ben@Harrison]

Ah. Perhaps Waves Tune saves a lot of data in the session file.

This data would get larger as you played through the session, and would cause delay during auto-save if the file becomes large enough.

I suggest that you write our support email mixbus@harrisonconsoles.com so we can troubleshoot this issue with you.

-Ben