TC Powercore and Wavelab 8

In Wavelab 6, TC Powercore DSP would always be the total DSP of Powercore plugins in a Montage, which is fine (and that’s just the way it is with Powercore I guess).

When you render in Wavelab 6 though, it doubles the DSP of Powercore, because I guess Wavelab 6 was always making new instances of the plugins for the render (?). The way not to overload (and therefore not have the Powercore plugs disabled during the render) was to close the montage on any tab except the Effects tab. Then reopen the Montage, and because it’s not opening to the Effects tab, it doesn’t load DSP of the Powercore. Then you can render without overload (and without the plugins being disabled).

In Wavelab 8, TC Powercore DSP is also total DSP of TC plugins in the Montage. But Wavelab 8 always loads all the Powercore DSP no matter whether the Effects tab is open or not, so you can’t close and open a Montage to get around it. If you are using more than 50% Powercore DSP in a Montage, when you render in Wavelab 8, that DSP is doubled to over 100% (by the Wavelab 8 new instances I guess), and the Powercore plugs are disabled for the render, and in Win 7, the Windows Event Viewer pops up with a TC error. But the render continues. No settings in Wavelab (“reset plugins” etc.) or Powercore seems to change the doubled DSP.

I’m not asking that anything necessarily be changed about this, because Powercore is discontinued, but it would be better if Wavelab didn’t do this, because as it is you can’t use more than 50% TC DSP with Wavelab 8 and I have legacy projects that used more than 50% that may need to be pulled back. I hate to bring up Reaper again, but Reaper doesn’t double the TC DSP during a TC render, so it can’t make a render with the plugins disabled like Wavelab can.

There are probably still a few Powercore users with Wavelab, and they probably already know this, or never go over 50%, but it’s something to consider.

For whatever reason, UAD DSP doesn’t get doubled for a render. Not sure why TC does.

PG, do you know why Powercore instances double during render in Wavelab? That doesn’t happen with UAD plugins in Wavelab.

And Powercore instances don’t double during render in other programs.

Also the inability to reset to avoid doubling in Wavelab 8 (vs in Wavelab 6), does make it impractical to use the plugins in Wavelab 8. Is this something that could possibly be changed?

I know I said I don’t necessarily expect a change, but I only recently found it doesn’t happen in other programs, and it would be so much better if they could be used, and recalled from old sessions without unmanageable problem.

As you know, when WaveLab renders, it uses a copy of the montage (imagine a bach processor with parallel tasks, obviously there needs to be as many copies as tasks).
Hence the number of plugins is doubled. However, UAD make it smart because, while the plugins are instantiated, if they are not active (no streaming), then they don’t eat CPU. Apparently, this is not the case with TC, and as soon as a plugin is created, the DSP power is eaten.
I have no expertise with the TC stuff, but this is my conclusion with what you describe me.
It this is a must have, the only solution is to “record what is played back”, because in that case, there is a sole montage copy.

Thanks for the answer PG. You’re correct, the TC DSP power is eaten as soon as the plugin is created.
But “Record what is played back” is not really going to be practical here.

I wish there was a way to open a montage in Wavelab 8 that doesn’t immediately load all the clip plugins on montage open. In Wavelab 6 that could be done by closing the montage on any Tab except the Effects tab. Then on montage Open the plugins would not immediately load and the TC DSP would start at 0%. So you could then start a render starting at TC DSP 0%, which would then use, say 70% total TC DSP once you start the render. I did this many times, and it worked fine.

You can’t do that in Wavelab 8. No matter how you close and open the montage, the clip plugins always load on montage open, so the TC DSP is always initially eaten (to say 70%), which is then doubled (to 140% - not legal) for the render. In the case of 140%, excess plugins are disabled for the render, and on Win 7 the Windows Event Monitor pops up with a Powercore error, but the Wavelab render continues and finishes (with the incorrect non-application of the disabled plugins.)