win7 versus win10

[johne53]

Hi Guys, I finished my trip to win10.

[...]

My consequences:

win10/64 bit
FOR:
[...]
- open plugins could be moved displayed (show window content) while moving well seen

Hi Tassy - did that also apply to your Waves "H-" plugins (the ones we were testing a few months ago?) At the time, you couldn't even open two of them without your machine slowing to a crawl.!

I remember we eventually realised that the problem came down to OpenGL (and as such, it also affected Harrison's own plugins). I don't have any Waves licenses here but I just noticed this morning that Harrison's plugins do seem smoother under Win10.

(though having said that... my Win10 machine is much more powerful than my Win7 machine - so I guess that must be helping too...)

[Tassy]

On win10 from those waves H-guys still cannot be many open at the same time without moving one may cause issue, but sometimes after a while they can recover.
I mean their behavior when moving is a bit better in win10 than in win7. But cannot be said as good as in case of any other plugin.

What I asked and no answer yet, that the sluggish move happens within Mixbus itself when dragging to left right the mixer-pane side or the L,R mixer and track lists sides.

It is no 3rd party plugin to blame, it happens to some parts of Mixbus as well. Can be caused by the same reason or not, I do not know. But may point to some common thing to be fixed. Mixbus is great to handle Open GL? Can it be or has been tested in some exact proper way?

[johne53]

My memory might be playing tricks but I think Ben said he was hoping to remove Harrison's reliance on OpenGL at some point.

[Tassy]

Seems "some point" has not arrived yet

[Ben@Harrison]

@johne, @Tassy:
It's not really in the scope of this forum talk about the various drawing libraries, their benefits, and their drawbacks. That's more of a developer issue and it becomes very complicated. You can google for terms like gdi, opengl, d3d, and metal. Harrison doesn't "depend" on OpenGL, but neither are we in a rush to abandon it. It's just one of the tools we use in some of our products (and not others).

Regarding your specific report, it sounds like you are having a conflict with the windows compositing window manager. The compositor is a layer between the application and the actual graphical display window.

In other words: the program is in charge of drawing the window "contents" like meters and waveforms. But Windows itself has the job of moving and sizing the window once we've drawn into the window's visible area.

The newer compositors use hardware-accelerated features on the videocard (like opengl). How this will interact with the hardware acceleration features of {any application, daw or plugin} is unknown until you try it.

Some versions of Windows allow you to adjust your window manager settings by enabling/disabling effects like drop-shadows and animations. Or even disable it altogether by selecting "Windows Basic" theme or settings. That might have some effect (either good or bad).

-Ben

[Tassy]

Thanks Ben,
This visual effects and their choice makes sure a difference as you say. I think it is bugy in the Windows because the option "Enable Aero Peek" random appears or not after change and god knows how it can appear again to tick or untick. I remember in the early MB2 days you recommended this aero thing to get rid of the edit view rolling up/down and dragging a "series of track trails" developing behind them. It helped.
Tassy

[johne53]

Regarding your specific report, it sounds like you are having a conflict with the windows compositing window manager. The compositor is a layer between the application and the actual graphical display window.

Oooh... I think I've just had a light bulb moment...

win10/64 bit
FOR:
[...]
- open plugins could be moved displayed (show window content) while moving well seen

Hi Tassy - did that also apply to your Waves "H-" plugins (the ones we were testing a few months ago?) At the time, you couldn't even open two of them without your machine slowing to a crawl.!

On win10 from those waves H-guys still cannot be many open at the same time without moving one may cause issue

Back when I was testing the H-series plugins with you, I remember noticing that the Waves plugins link to OpenGL directly (rather than going through the compositing manager). I wonder if that explains the huge rise in CPU usage they cause (i.e. maybe they're running OpenGL on the computer's CPU, rather than its GPU?)

I realise this is off-topic for a Mixbus forum but maybe something for Tassy to discuss with his contact at Waves..?

[Dingo]

Some versions of Windows allow you to adjust your window manager settings by enabling/disabling effects like drop-shadows and animations. Or even disable it altogether by selecting "Windows Basic" theme or settings. That might have some effect (either good or bad).

-Ben

When I was running a post house using Pro Tools on Windows, the PT advisory was to disable drop shadows and animations.

[johne53]

Win10 would be good if it didn't try to be an all-encompassing user experience rather than just an operating system.

My sentiments exactly!! IMHO Windows 7 was definitely the pinnacle of Microsoft's OS's. It was simple to understand. It looked great and it "just worked". Maybe I'm just growing old but for me, Windows has gone steadily downhill in its more recent editions...

And now for the bad news. . . apparently, support for Windows 7 will be officially ending in January 2020.

[Tassy]

If win7 support ends it is a good news because we are safe from more downgrades on this OS