Hello All, I am busy with the new Cantai plug inn. And it brings really something new to the table. But I am experiencing performance problems, especially when I am changing my score and work on the composition.
I have a M1 Mac Studio (M1 max processor) newest software (MacOS, Dorico and Cantai) and a Antelope Zentour (the older model)
Rendering takes quite a long time and the tax on the system is big. I only can have one flow open at a time. When composing to much the system starts freezing. In the end there is no more audio at all and I have to shut down the audio interface and Dorico and start it all up.
You might like to upload your Diagnostics file to @Ulf to analyze. Help > Create Diagnostic Report and send to u dot stoermer at steinberg dot de or attach it to this thread for him.
Cantai can take a while to render if you have a lot of lyrics in a long composition. You might like to give us details of your composition, how long is it, the number of singers etc.
Also, the Cantai team might like to have details. Reporting details at the bottom of this page.
What @arco said! Also a little more detail about your system — besides being an M1 Studio, how much memory, available storage space, etc. (If RAM has to swap out frequently with limited storage space, it will certainly bog down – if not fail altogether!)
I too experience performance issues. My MacBook Air which is known to not have a fan/cooling system is overheating when using Cantai – even after the rendering is complete.
I use it with NotePerformer which never had heating issues.
A long time Macbook user here with currently a MBP M1 and using Cantai on that system causes fans to run constantly. Since I do most of my main work on my Mac Studio M2Max, it’s not an issue for me as the Studio runs normally but it has a few more processing cores and 16G more RAM.
I suspect the reason for the overheat is that, if I recall correctly, Cantai uses primarily your GPU (graphics processor) for its work. And, if you just happen to be using the majority of your RAM, the GPU may have to be running more just to keep what you see and hear as near to real time as possible. I could be wrong…so please validate with someone else.
I can’t speak of MacOS since the plugin may work differently there, but on my Windows system there is basically no GPU usage as Cantai is rendering, so it seems to be using the CPU. It could well do something different on Mac because there are fewer hardware permutations to worry about.
I have a dedicated GPU, but I can tell you with certainty that Cantai isn’t using it. The GPU utilization is much too low when Cantai is rendering (around 1% or less), and the CPU utilization much too high.
I have run some local AI models that use GPU rendering and the usage pattern is completely different.
Furthermore, at least on Windows, the required DLL files for GPU rendering seem to be missing from the bundled ONNX runtime, which would force it to use the CPU.
We haven’t had time to get GPU and cloud use working yet for Dorico. It’s very much on our TODO list, however, once the dust from the Sibelius launch settles next month.
That’s what I figured. It makes sense to not include GPU rendering at first to put users on a consistent (albeit slightly slower) playing field with CPU rendering, which lets you focus your troubleshooting efforts on more global issues with the plugin (like the widely reported activation issues) instead of dealing early on with issues with specific GPU configurations or models.
Thanks for your comments. I will run a test on my machine using the standard audio interface of the MacStudio and besides the audio interface of my ZenTour. Keep you informed and make a log file. Grtn Jan
I can not get the render engine to start. The VST loads but doesn’t seem to start. I have loaded on my old WIN 10 machine and it works perfectly. I have hard time explaining so here is screen shot. Maybe some can tell what is not happening? Win11, 96GB RAM, Dorico preference set to allow connection.
I did import the playback template, went precisely through every step in the readme pdf, and waited many, many minutes. Still the vocal part does not play anything.
The disc space used in the Cantai popup window remains at 0 Bytes so I guess it does not render at all.
Track inspector shows correct connections, Cantai is the top VST (Noteperformer 2nd).
All other parts are played correctly via noteperformer although for some reason most level meters in the mixer show nothing.
I run WIN 11 Home on an Intel Core i5-8500 CPU at 2.80GHz, 8 GB RAM and 31 GB free disc space. The score is just a simple sketch of 90 bars and 14 staves, one of wich is an alto solo singer.
It works fine with a fresh score of solo singer + piano as long as it’s only a few bars. 10+ bars and it’t over.
I still have the same issue with all existing projects I’ve tried. Rendering only takes place when I create a new project from scratch. Curiously if I copy/paste the contents of an old file into a new project, it sometimes renders OK, sometimes partially, and sometimes not at all. What is perhaps most interesting is that with the original beta, nearly all projects rendered correctly.
I must say my interest in this is beginning to wane – perhaps I’ll come back in a few months when things should have moved on a bit. In the meantime, I’ll continue to use SynthV for my vocal projects.
