Performance issues with Core Graphics

[Arne_Scheffler]

Hi Joscha,
please move your Meter View into a CLayeredViewContainer and see if it fixes the issue.

Cheers,
Arne

[bx_joscha]

Hey Reimund,

@ray

1. Do you have the UI Size set to “Normal (100%)”? Otherwise, this is a known issue mentioned under Fuse Audio Labs | Audio Plugins and Mobile Audio Apps which affects non-highDPI displays on mac os and which will be fixed in one of the next builds.

Yes, 100 % it is.

@ray

2. Does the plugin run in 32 bits (check e.g. the “About…” info in the plugin menu)? 32Bits VST2 is Carbon on Mac (unless you support REAPER’s cockos extensions, which I don’t). If so, does the UI look better in VST3 or 64 bits?

It is 64 bits in Cubase 9.5 VST2. Switching to VST3 does not resolve the issue. VST3 is also affected.

Regards,

Joscha

[ray3]

@bx_joscha

Hey Reimund,

@ray

1. Do you have the UI Size set to “Normal (100%)”? Otherwise, this is a known issue mentioned under Fuse Audio Labs | Audio Plugins and Mobile Audio Apps which affects non-highDPI displays on mac os and which will be fixed in one of the next builds.

Yes, 100 % it is.

@ray

2. Does the plugin run in 32 bits (check e.g. the “About…” info in the plugin menu)? 32Bits VST2 is Carbon on Mac (unless you support REAPER’s cockos extensions, which I don’t). If so, does the UI look better in VST3 or 64 bits?

It is 64 bits in Cubase 9.5 VST2. Switching to VST3 does not resolve the issue. VST3 is also affected.

Regards,

Joscha

Thanks for the info, Joscha!

[bx_joscha]

@Arne Scheffler

Hi Joscha,
please move your Meter View into a CLayeredViewContainer and see if it fixes the issue.

Cheers,
Arne

Hi Arne,

Thanks for the hint. But we also encounter CPU spikes when adjusting a knob in case of explicitly using CALayers. So, not only our meters are affected. But with meters, it is constantly bad. So, basically every kind of animation is a potential problem. But we will try wrapping control bundles into Layered View Containers.

Thanks again to Arne and Ray for the input. We will investigate soon and consider your suggestions.


Regards,

Joscha

[bx_joscha]

Hi Arne and all others,

I have good news. We have managed to fix the sluggishness in our UI implementation. Now, we can revert the setWantsLayer patch. So, we do not comment it out anymore. We can see that the performance is inherently optimized when using the setWantsLayer in the NSViewFrame constructor.


Thanks for all the help,

Joscha

[Arne_Scheffler]

Hi Joscha,
that’s nice to hear. So what was the reason ?

Cheers,
Arne

[bx_joscha]

@Arne Scheffler

Hi Joscha,
that’s nice to hear. So what was the reason ?

Cheers,
Arne

The sluggishness was caused by an obsolete setDirty() for a UI control that was continuously called and caused redundant redrawing. In a former version of VSTGUI without the setWantsLayer patch, we did not notice, but with setWantsLayer the effect was very dramatic.

Regards,

Joscha