Massive optimization needed!

Hi,

I like the concept of Massive very much. I like much about this synthesizer. But there are problems. I already have a thread which collects 5 of the most serious bugs I discovered using the synth. I hope that they will be solved in the next update, they are really important problems. In addition to this I would like to point your attention to the following:

Try the following: select "New Sound" from Massive's File menu, switch off all modules (including all oscillators) and hit a key. On my computer the CPU usage goes from 1% to 5%. On the same computer FM8 uses typically only 2-3% (for very complex voices). And this is what Massive needs for no sound produced! Are all the modulators running? What is consuming 4%? If yes why are they active if there is no modulation assignment selected.

This is only an example. It is hard to believe that Massive needs 10-20 times CPU power compared to FM8 to create a voice. (I know they are not the same type of fruits, and FM synthesis is much cheaper, however seeing the example above it is easy to imagine that there are areas left for optimizations).

If it would be possible, I would bet (with large amounts of money) that it is possible to get a >2x factor speed improvement relatively easily and that would make a huge difference for the user (e.g. multitimbral compositions). It is impossible that one year old hardware has to be thrown away in order to get Massive properly running or the users should wait another year for the next generation of CPUs?

Best regards

 

These CPU complaints seem to crop up everywhere and I still do not understand... Should NI have waited with Massive's release until you could play 16 voices with 10% of your CPU? I think CPU - and other - resources are and always will be scarce as new software will exploit them. Whenever I try out the latest videogame I do curse my graphics card for being out of date but that's progress for you. However if I play Quake 3 now IT ROCKS!

I also see CPU usage go from 1% to 5% when all modules are off. However in FM8 with all operators off it is already at 3% without even hitting any key. And in FM8 this increases by about 1.5% per extra key while in Massive it stays the same for the first 4, an improvement over FM8. Personally I am not too fussed about this even though everything is "off"; consider that inserting decisions throughout the signal chain about whether a signal is actually routed anywhere could likewise increase CPU processing. But who knows, perhaps someone will optimize Massive in this case

In this light at least one nifty feature to point out is the quality setting. While it does actually make a difference, perhaps more people would be happy if it had more choices on the lower end (like poor, tone-deaf or awful) ?

 

And I don't understand your satisfaction. It is ridiculous that Massive uses 5% for nothing (=all modules switched off) while FM8 consumes 1-3% for very complex FM7 sounds.

I think everybody can see the unexplainable CPU usage of Massive (typically 10 times of FM8).

 

I could just as easily ask why I can run a thousand instances of Windows Notepad but not a thousand instances of FM8, but I would not ask such a silly question because they are doing completely different things.

FM8 and Massive both output audio but that is where the similarity ends.

 

If you think that the NotePad analogy is relevant, then I have nothing to say.

 

I know full well that it is irrelevant. That was the point of my post.

It does not make any sense to compare the CPU usage of a 4x oversampled synth that includes many CPU-heavy features to a non-oversampled synth that uses one of the most CPU efficient forms of synthesis available.

One of them is always going to use significantly more CPU and as you have so astutely observed, it is not the FM synth.

 

"One of them is always going to use significantly more CPU and as you have so astutely observed, it is not the FM synth."
Hahahaha

Try to think man! You are saying that outputting NO SOUND requires 4x oversampling (with 5% CPU load on an Athlon 64 3000+ system)...

(And what are those CPU heavy features mentioned by you when ALL modules (oscillators, modulators, filters, effects) are switched off?)

 

It is still doing some processing when there is silence. It cannot just stop processing when there are no active voices because of reverb, etc, which continue to generate sound even when all voices are inactive.

It could be fixed but it wouldn't make any difference as to the CPU usage when the instrument is in use. Frankly I couldn't care any less about how much CPU it uses when idle, I am only worried about how much it uses when it is playing voices. So I don't care if they change this or not.

I think you are way too worried about how much CPU massive uses in irrelevant situations that will never occur in actual use (eg all modules off). I would have slightly more sympathy if you were complaining about how much CPU it uses while playing notes. It doesn't really matter if it uses 0% or 5% when idle when it is going to be at 20% as soon as you hit a note in either case.

 

of course I am interested in the total CPU usage when actually working, but the problem is that this is added to the iddle usage, you know. And the iddle usage example was only an example to demonstrate the problem.

you wrote: "It is still doing some processing when there is silence. It cannot just stop processing when there are no active voices because of reverb, etc, which continue to generate sound even when all voices are inactive." <- In the situation I mentioned I said that ALL MODULES (oscillators, filters, modulators, effects) are off, you are talking about an active reverb... And as I wrote, the CPU load jumps from 1 to 5 % when a key is hit. this can't be explained with effects (which are by the way switched off), an effect would work all the time.

Maybe the eight modulators are running all the time even if there are no destinations set for them?

 

My point was that there is no reason for them to optimize the CPU usage in a situation which will never actually occur (all modules off) when this will do nothing to help the CPU usage in a realistic situation.

Massive runs at or near 192KHz sampling rate internally when you are running it in Ultra mode. It has to get this down to the actual samplerate that it needs to output regardless of what it is outputting, even if it is just silence.

Probably this is responsible for most or all of the idle CPU usage. If you want to get rid of it, switch to the lowest quality mode (which seems to have no oversampling and uses almost no CPU at idle).

It is not impossible to make it stop when it detects a lot of silence, but there is no point in doing so. So your cpu usage can go from 5 at idle to 20 with a note, instead of 0 at idle to 20 with a note? It doesn't really matter.

As for pressing a key and the CPU usage going up with everything off, I think it is a bit strange. I would guess that that is when the modulators turn on? Maybe there is some hidden per-voice processing that gets activated? I don't know.

 

Ok, thank you for your response.

 

A power amp with no signal passing through it will still consume power - those huge toroidal transformers are shoring it all up - more than is probably necessary. Why? So that when the time comes, that power is there and availble. I like to think of Massive's CPU overhead in broadly the same terms.

 

Sorry but...

to the readers of this thread: I hope you don't believe in the relevancy of these "brilliant" analogies (like the tale of the power amp) brought to explain Massive's nonsense CPU usage. All this has nothing to do with what I am saying.

The correct analogy would have been:
If you have a power amp and you switch it off, then it will consume NO power.

Because in my example an oscillator is switched off, it has NEVER the chance to be switched back when you are playing that synth patch, so there is no need for the "power to be there" as you said. And the same applies to any modulator that has no assigned destination: no need to run it, because it will NEVER be used later when playing that synth patch. It's that easy.

 

Learn to bounce to audio! all this having 16 synths running side by side in real time makes no sense. its uninspiring to keep running out of CPU or always choose the cheapest solution or plug in. i never use more the 1 Max 2 instances of massive at the same time.. and when im don with them i export to audio tracks and remove the synths.. so when im at a 100 tracks im using like 38% CPU.. still plenty of room for ideas! and evil quality reverb.

 

Well why would you even have a Massive doing nothing loaded ?
no idea in being able to load 80 massive's doing nothing with low CPU..

Sorry couldn't help it..

As for the FM8, Its an FMsynth and fm is an extremely cheep synth technology. about 25x faster then subtractive synth tech. so you cant compare them.