Wavelab 11 Montage Pegging CPU at 96/24

Hello All,

I am experiencing CPU overloads and crashes in the Montage when set to 96/24, and using a “pitch and catch” hardware loop. I’m using an Avid HDX driver with a Lynx Aurora(n) and a Grimm UC1 via AES. I have set the Buffer to 1024 (max) and it does nothing to help.

This happens with no plugins active at all, no other WL processes running, and when I quit most other programs in the background.

Could you please let me know if there’s a solution here?

Thank you!
MG

Mac or PC?

Hi!

What is this
““pitch and catch” hardware loop”
So you are recording from WaveLab or other source ?
Try with other sample rate and buffert settings maybe !

regards S-EH

How are you creating the loop? The External FX plugin? Or are you playing from a Reference Track and recording back in to a normal montage track?

What is your CPU?

Thanks all!

I’m on Mac OS 11.6.4
2019 MacBook Pro
Processor is 2.4GHz 8 core Intel i9
Ram 32Gb
Drives are SSD

I am routing out of a Reference Track and into an adjacent Montage Record Track by way of a DAC to hardware to ADC loop.

I’ve tried other buffers to no avail.

Any insights would be super appreciated as this isn’t workable.

Thanks!
Mark

Other sample rates like 24-48 have worked in the past. However, I’m an ME - I want and need to use 24-96.

Cheers,
Mark

Interesting. I wonder if the Avid HDX driver is somehow an issue. I have an RME AES card and there is no issue at 96k at all.

Is it maxing out the internal CPU meter inside WaveLab? Or do you have some other CPU meter outside of WaveLab?

Do you have a way to at least test with another interface to see if that works at 96k?

Thanks, Justin. It is maxing out the internal meter, correct. It is not maxing out the CPU Usage Meters in Activity Monitor.

I’ll see if I can use my Grimm UC1 via USB as an aggregate device. I’ve not tried it but I’m fairly certain it should be possible.

Has there been thorough testing/reporting of Avid’s HDX Drivers with WL11?

Thanks much,
Mark

Looks like I solved the issue, and perhaps this is known, but it doesn’t make any sense to me - see below…

I had a default mastering plugin chain loaded up on the Montage Audio Track, all plugins individually bypassed, as well as the entire plugin chain globally bypassed, and it was still completely loading the CPU.

Is this purposeful behavior? Could it be disabled, etc.? I was assuming a plugin which was bypassed completely would not be taxing the computer’s processing.

Thanks all,
MG

I have been asking for a way to make plugins “OFFLINE” for awhile now for reasons like this. I think in most DAWs, bypass doesn’t disable the CPU power needed, it just bypasses the audio processing. This makes for more seamless A/B comparisons between on and off.

Bypassing isn’t really enough in most cases, you need to fully remove plugins or in the case of REAPER, you can put plugins “OFFLINE” which hides the GUI and basically removes the plugin, but if you put it back ONLINE, all settings are retained.

It’s not as smooth of an A/B but it does offload the CPU tax.

No, a bypasses plugin is not a OFF plugin. Processing continues (“invisibly”) to be able to perform a quick and smooth transition with the processed audio, when switching off the Bypass.

Yes, I had the same problems and had to simplify my default plugin chain. It’s very annoying.

Ability to make plugins fully offline and entire tracks would be huge.

Also, RX9 recently went M1 native and the increased processing speed is incredible. I’m curious to see how much better WaveLab can get. It’s always felt a little less CPU efficient than REAPER and Pro Tools when it comes to plugin chains but I don’t know enough about how things work as to say why.

Totally agree. I coincidentally only just encountered this, upgrading directly from 9.5 to 11 (having skipped Wavelab 10) and was horribly surprised. It wasn’t like this in Wavelab 9.5 and earlier. (On Windows anyway. Haven’t tried Mac yet). Bypassed clip plugins did not add to render time or to playback dropouts or skipping like they do in Wavelab 11.

9.5 montages opened in Wavelab 11 are unworkable in many cases if you have a lot of plug-ins in the chains and had been selectively bypassing them with 9.5 and earlier. In Wavelab 11 you have to delete all of the bypassed plugins in the imported 9.5 and earlier montage to “fix” the problem. We really should not have to do this, because the chains worked fine before.

And we should still be able to use our original default plug-in chains with selective bypass as they were used in 9.5 and earlier.

You can test whats happening in 9.5 and 11 by putting just one relatively heavy load plug-in (like any of the engineer signature factory presets in Master Rig) on a 96k clip and rendering with and without plugin bypass. The bypassed plug-in renders will be quite quick in 9.5. but they will be as slow as non-bypassed plugin renders in wavelab 11. And all of these bypassed plug-ins can really add up, sometimes adding a tremendous amount to render times in 11.

I don’t understand what of great significance was gained in making this change after all this time. I only see the huge downsides: render times taking far too long to complete with no warning that bypassed plugins will unnecessarily be adding greatly to these render times.

Can this please be changed back so plug-in chains work as they did before, and so we can use our old and new plug-in chains with “bypass” as we intended again. with released processing.

Thank you.

ps. Wavelab 9.5 and earlier were effectively disabling plugins with the bypass selection, not bypassing in the words of Cubase (and Nuendo? and other programs?), which apparently have both “bypass” and “disable”. This is the only post I could find about that

https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-to-disable-and-not-bypass-plug-ins/6267

If standard “bypass” is really needed, which I still don’t see the great need for, can it be made so that 9.5 montages open in WaveLab Pro 11 with the 9.5 “bypass” status converted to “disable” status. That’s where the great need is in my opinion so things operate as they did before, and processing is released when it should be released.

This will be fixed in WaveLab 11.1, ie. bypassed plugin will not consume CPU during rendering.

Moreover, a new On/Off option will be added to WaveLab 11.1 (like already available for Master Section plugins). When a plugin is Off, it won’t consume CPUs.

Sorry, no.

Philippe

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Wow thank you. Never using Master Section plug-ins I didn’t know they were capable of that.

So now plug-ins in any position (clip, track, montage master?) would have two controls - “bypass/normal” and “active/inactive”, like the master section plugins do? (and other programs do?)

That would be fantastic, and should cover everyone’s requests (I think).

Yes, this is so.

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Thank you very much for the excellent customer service, Philippe! This will be a very welcomed addition.

Best,
MG