I don't understand performance

[arthie]

I'm not sure if it's a coincidence (or even my imagination!) but recent reports of poor performance often seem to mention the i7 cpu. I haven't noticed if they also involve Win11.

@arthie - I know it's a bit of a faff - but if you're seeing poor performance even without 3rd party plugins, it'd be helpful to know what happens if you install Jack (i.e. do you still see poor figures and poor performance or does Jack improve things? )

I will try that and report. And I‘ll probably also try a different software to make sure there is nothing with the new laptop hardwarewise…

[arthie]

So had not much time today fiddling with the settings, but changes in used CPU settings do (and yes I restarted after changing), nothing at all, blank session without anything is at around 40-50% DSP at 256 buffersize. I tried connecting the audient to a USB A Port instead of Thunderbold/USB-C (which did not change anything, even connecting it to my Docking station does same performance).
Interestingly my CPU usage never went over 5%, only DSP in Mixbus, so my concern is that there is something wrong with the CPU usage of Mixbus. I'll try that Jack thing next time and I will try how Reaper performs.

[johne53]

Jack uses a different algorithm to calculate the DSP reading and in the past, there was often a big difference between Jack's calculation and Mixbus's (though mostly for AMD cpu's...) It'll be interesting to know what you find though.

[arthie]

Did a quick test with Reaper now and there it is even when I add a tonn of additional Plugins to my chain my CPU load in Reaper is around 0-1% at the same buffer setting I want to use in mixbus, so it seams to be amixbus thing and not a windows thing. As soon as I found out how that Jack thing works (which I actually do not know by now (probably have to install anything therefore which I don't know where to find. I can do that test.

[johne53]

Look back to post #9 where I added a link to the Jack downloads page...

[arthie]

Ai thanks I totally overread the link. I am planning to do the test tomorrow, I am curious how it performs.

[arthie]

So first of all thanks for everyone helping me. I did further tests and tweeks. The overall system tweaks are already done by Digital Audio Networx where I got the Notebook from. While DSP in Mixbus is at 80-90% with standard asio drivers my System is chilling at about 4% CPU usage. Jack performs a bit better, here DSP is at about 40-60% (still to much, but better). While adding more plugins does not make a difference with Jack driver it makes a hughe difference with standard asio drivers. I actually think that there is a problem between Mixbus and my CPU as it does not make a difference how many cores I activate in Mixbus. I checked with LatencyMon as Dingo suggested and there were no issues found, no driver issue and so on.
My next step will be trying if Ardour works, perhaps we can lower the possibilities where this performance issue comes from.

interestingly changing font size does increase DSP usage of mixbus with jack to about 92%

[arthie]

and here comes the result for ardour. So in standard asio mode it is not much, but little better than mixbus (about 40% DSP with one track and an amp) and and with jack it is much better than mixbus (about 14-15% at the alltime same 256 samples for comparison). So it seams Ardour with Jack is at least usable, while mixbus is not, unfortunately. I really like mixbus and it makes me sad, that I can't use it properly. last try I could do is installing my old mixbus V6 instead of 32cV8 and check what that does.
unfortunately it increases a lot if you add another plugin.. So it semas to be a real issue with this whole thing. Do I really have to learn how to make my music with Reaper instead of my beloved mixbus?

[johne53]

A particular problem (in Windows) is that Mixbus's DSP reading can be affected by unrelated programs. Jack filters this out so it tends to show you the DSP that's being used just by Mixbus. Having said that... your readings do seem excessive for a session with just one track and one plugin 

I haven't used Win11 but previous versions of Windows offered an app called Task Manager. Try launching it and ask it to show you the CPU usage, arranged by process name. Maybe there'll be some unrelated process with a high CPU usage?? (or one that keeps going intermittently high)

[arthie]

yes I have my taskmanager with resource monitor active while working on mixbus and my Windows measures 5% of CPU load, while DSP in Miuxbus is even hiting 90% and above and crackles, clicks and pops. I even tried standard mixbus v7 which performes much better on my old i5 gen 3 and it is about the same load as 32cV8. It is also not possible to neither with mixbus nor with ardour set it to background optimized mode, because this option is not given at the Apps window of windows system settings.
Atm there seams to be a major issue between mixbus/ardour and win11. I think they should point that out on the website. I will now write an email to harrison support as it semas to be a mixbus thing and not a system thing. But I even wrote to the builder of my notebook if they have any ideas. If I get any solution I will report it here, perhaps anyone else encounters similar problems.