I’m hoping for some help with persistently high CPU usage from the VST Audio Engine. I’ve looked through the forum, but haven’t quite found an answer to the problem.
Implementation of @Ulf 's suggestion in another thread to increase the buffer size brought CPU usage down by about about 15 percent, which is significant. Even with the buffer size set to 2048 though, CPU usage still seems high: between 25% and 30% at rest, and between 35% to 50% during playback (with occasional spikes to 85%). Is this normal?
I’m also curious if it makes a difference where sound libraries are stored. Right now, I have some libraries stored on an external hard drive and the rest stored on my machine itself. I’m not sure if having things stored in different locations would create strain.
If anyone has any insights about what might be causing the issue and tips on steps towards a solution, I’d be most grateful.
Hi @Joshua_Stamper,
do you see that high cpu load on every project you load, even if it is just e.g. a solo piano project? When you have the high load, could you please open Activity Monitor app and there take a spin dump? At the top of the Activity Monitor window is a little icon with 3 dots inside, click there to access the spin dump option. Zip up the output file and upload here please. Thanks
While that may seem high compared to other activity, don’t forget that the CPU% reported for each process in Activity Monitor is per core – so 25% of 1 core is 1/32nd of your total 8 cores. (1/64th, if they do multithreading, which they probably do!)
My VST Audio Engine is currently running at around 45% while idling.
Thank you, @Ulf. With a so piano piece, the VST Audio Engine is definitely taking up less, generally between 9% and 13% CPU, but sometimes edges up to 21%.
I’m trying to attached the spin dump but it’s not cooperating.
The CPU usage won’t necessarily be spread evenly across all your cores, and some will be running harder than others. It has to be said that those i9s are ovens.
As to why your fans are running high – do they run high when you do any other significant work in other apps? E.g. bouncing audio in Logic, exporting video in iMovie, etc?
I appreciate the extra info. Some apps do get the fans going more than others. Firefox is particularly prone to get them running high. I’ll have to check Logic and other programs…
As to your question about 13.6.7 - I’m waiting for all of my applications to be compatible with it. I wish there was an an application that could just run OS compatibility checks on all of your applications at once!
I’d be very surprised if apps ran fine on 13.4.1 but not on 13.6.7.
For starters, this is last year’s OS; so developers have had well over a year to iron out any problems; and the delta between .4 and .6 is usually only bugfixes, not radical changes that might break something. Usually, if it runs on 13.something, it’ll run on 13.something.else.
Yes, but how would you know if that app was up-to-date…?
Hi @Joshua_Stamper , thank you for the spin dump.
Looking at it, I see quite a bit of 3rd party plug-ins that are causing some CPU load. By that I mean NotePerformer as well as your Native Instrument stuff like BSample and so on. So I’d like you to apply to the same project the standard HALion playback template and then compare the CPU usage.
Interesting is also to see that you have instances of Kontakt 5 as well as Kontakt 7 loaded at the same time. That is not a problem as such, but I would try to avoid it.
Thank you to everyone for for the generous responses and please excuse the delay in response. I was out of town for several days, and only now back at my desk.
@benwiggy : I misunderstood and thought you were asking about why I hadn’t upgraded to Sonoma (I didn’t realize we were already at OS 14.5). Are there significant advantages to 13.6.7 over 13.4.1?
Ha - indeed. What app checks the app-checker?
@VV1 : Typically a combination of Native Instruments’s Komplete 10 libraries with Kotakt 5, NotePerformer, and Halion. What is an “instant count”?
In terms of effects, I think most of them are just using a basic reverb, and for Native Instruments I’ll use the round robin feature, which randomizes velocities.
@Ulf : Thanks so much for looking into that. I’m suprised to see all that stuff in there. When I look at the VSTs listed in the Dorico file, the only things are NI Kontakt libraries, with the Kontakt 5 libraries. Where can I find the other plugins and clean things up?
The upgrades within each OS version are usually just bugfixes, so staying up to date may bring a fix to problems discovered in earlier builds.
Well, there is that, too. Again, given the lateness of the periodic OS cycle, I’d expect every developer who is actively developing their product to have released a “Sonoma-compatible” version by now; (assuming that anything needed to be fixed).
