Is GPU Acceleration Available for SpectraLayers on Mac?

SpectraLayers
1

Hi everyone,

I use SpectraLayers on both Mac and Windows. On Windows, with my NVIDIA graphics card, I can enable GPU acceleration using CUDA in the preferences, and the performance is amazing, much faster than without GPU support.

However, on my MacBook Pro, I don’t see an option in Preferences > System to use the GPU for processing. As a result, SpectraLayers feels slower on macOS, especially for tasks like stems separation, even though my Macbook pro m series and Windows machines are of similar age and specs.

Does SpectraLayers support GPU optimization on macOS? If not, is there a way to improve performance on Mac?

Thank you.

2

Unfortunately no GPU acceleration is not available on mac, this is part of an ongoing discussion I’m having with Apple… They make it hard to expose GPU acceleration to external developers. So for now the situation is as it is…

3

Thank you, Robin, for letting me know. It’s unfortunate because the difference in performance is significantly noticeable.

4

+1 for GPU acceleration on Macs. I was shocked to find out how slow unmix is in extreme mode.

5

Hi @Robin_Lobel,

Quick update on this thread: GPU acceleration for Unmix on Apple Silicon turns out to
be possible. I’m running SpectraLayers 13 (trial) as an ARA extension in Pro Tools on an
M1 Max, and I have it working:

  • 3:53 song, Unmix Song / Vocals / High quality: 5:01 on CPU, about 0:35 on GPU
  • Full 32-bit float precision
  • Null test against the CPU result in Pro Tools: master completely silent

I’d be happy to share the details and my measurement report with you directly. Is there a
way I can reach you, or an email address I can send it to?

Thanks!
Dave

6

You can send me PM here or email me at contact at divideframe dot com.

7

Hope this turns out to be something executable in the app!!!

8

Works in Pro Tools on a Mac but not standalone or in Cubase / Nuendo?

Something’s very wrong here.

9

@ltf3 @MattiasNYC Proper GPU acceleration on mac is on the roadmap now that ONNX Runtime is becoming mature enough on that front, but this is unrelated to this workaround (which would not be deployable as-is).

10

Ok. Would be interesting to understand how it can be made to work in PT ARA right now though.

Currently, it’s another reason to actually look at switching to PT which is sad.

11

“Out of the box” or did you have to do anything to get it to work (and if so; what?)?

12

It’s completely unrelated to Pro Tools, and rather a hack that involves modifying the software in a way that is unsupported. Details about this should not be shared.

13

Modding PT or Spectralayers?

14

SpectraLayers.

15

Ok. Fair enough. Just wondering what changed that made it possible to do this regardless of the official support.

It’s an odd turn of events is all.