PHARLIGHT Asio/CPU discussion

The more cores at the fastest base clock you can get, the better. Threadripper doesn't yet have fast enough base clocks, once they get it well over 4 GHz across all cores at all times it will be something.

 

I appreciate your help. In your opinion, do you think this one is good?

AMD Ryzen™ 9 5950X
16 CPU Cores
32 Threads
Base Clock: 3.4GHz
Max Boost Clock: Up to 4.9GHz

Or is it better to stick with Intel?

 

I'm waiting to see benchmarks for audio applications on 5950X from ScanProAudio tbh. I think it's gonna be great but it's still a pretty low base clock. If it can run over 4 GHz across all cores at all times that'd be so much better...

 

Every GHz counts, of course. But also IPC plays role. And ZEN3 has considerably higher IPC than older ZEN2, so 3.4 Ghz of ZEN3 might translate almost to 4 GHz of ZEN2. (But of course it may be different for music specific load....). Better to wait a while, but it looks promissing. It should be stronger than ZEN2 Thredripper in one core load...

 

In your opinion, what's the best chip out there for midi/Kontakt heavy music production?

 

There will be "released" new AMD ZEN3 CPUs (row 5000), this week. Leaked benchmarks indicate, that they are very good. In all aspects. One core/all core power, energy consumption, price - comparing to Intel.

Let's wait for official benchmarks. And for those benchmarks focused on music.

I am going to buy ZEN3, but not sure if notebook with ZEN3 APU, or standalone PC. I would prefer NB, if it gives fairly enought power. Anyway, even new NB would bring me cca 5x more power than I have now. I have very old mobile i7 (4C/8T). And also memory. I upgraded to 16GB quite recently and thought, that it will do for some time. Until I have loaded Stradivari Violin to my already quite heavy project. So, 32 or 64GB of RAM seems to be needed....

 

I think it's time to send something to the SUPPORT team at NI. I am running an i9-7960-X@3.4Ghz, 64 GB of RAM, SLI nVidia GTX-1080's and 3 TB on 3 nVME Samsung Evo Pro 970 drives + a Scarlett 18i20 1st gen. When I run Pharlight (and any Cremona instruments, Straylight or basically anything "new" that requires Kontakt 6, I get audio dropouts like crazy in Cubase Pro 11 and/or Cakewalk. I can run Kontakt 6.2 standalone and it still shows it taking 50-75% CPU - but the Windows Task manager Performance tab shows two threads using 85% CPU - the other 30 threads are near idle. I have tried setting K6 to multicore (16 cores), etc.. and it doesn't matter - drop outs like crazy - even with the ASIO buffer set to 1024. It seems to have nothing to do with the DAW. There is something wrong - I think with Kontakt 6 and/or the implementation of these new Kontakt 6 instruments. I have no problems running ANYTHING else on this system (including 32 instances of EWQL Play). How much hardware does NI expect us to throw at something? After 35 years of developing C++ system apps myself, I'm not buying it. There is something sloppy going on here.

 

What patch runs like that? I may try it.
Pharlight/CremonaQ run OK on my very old systém. I have i7-3612QM (4C/8T) running 2.16 GHz, 16 GB RAM, only integrated videocard, ordinary 1TB SSD, and slow 750 GB HD. Ordinary integrated soundcard, or soundcard included in Mackie BigKnob Studio. Windows 7.

Concerning the threads. I do not know, but maybe it is not possible to use more threads, than one or two for one patch. You are the SW developer (So do I.). How would you suggest to spread the load to more threads? There might not be enought stuff that may be processed independently in parallel, if one thinks about it. I just guess, I am not sure....

But I do not say, there is not something wrong in Kontakt 6. I have not noticed anything wrong, myself

One thing came to my mind. There is a thread in the forum where a guy proclaims, there is something wrong in Kontakt 6 with oversampling or interpolation. Simply something "basic". He presented spektra showing, something wrong happens... So, maybe your crackling has something to do with this, and not the dropouts...... Just an idea.

 

Straylight/Pharlight and Cremona don't use any of the higher interpolation quality settings, so that issue is not relevant here.

 

This is not ok. I use to have 10+ instruments/plugins in my projects (like omnisphere, Keyscape, Output plugins, Heavyocity plugins and other NI plugins from the ultimate bundle etc.) and didnt reach 80% CPU even when i put OZONE on the master channel. But when i use pharlight (for example patch "The beauty in itself") and play 3-4notes i get almost 90% CPU load in FL studio. How can i work with this? A can only add 1 or 2 patches from omnisphere to it and thats it , i reach 100% CPU load. I have 8core pocessor that can easely handle every plugin i use except this one. That need to by solved.

 

There's no way to further optimize the granular engine that is done in KSP, as far as I can tell. The trick is, your CPU needs to have more GHz (above 4 ideally) rather than more cores.

You can freeze the track after composing the part that uses Pharlight.

 

Exactly, not only multicore performance counts, singlecore/singlethread may also be important in case of heavy load plugin.

Concerning Pharlight and given patch, I may run only one note on my 10 years old notebook (i7 3612QM 4C/8T 2,1 GHz). Current AMD Zen 3 APU provides aprox. 6 times more single core power, so one could play at least 5-6 notes at the same time, Probably more, as CPU load would not be double for two, triple for three, .... keys, but somewhat less.

 

Well, i have AMD Ryzen 7 1700 (3 GHz - turbo speed 3,7 GHz ) + 16GB Ram DDR4 and SSD samsung evo 970. So not a bad configuration. And as i told i can for example put 10+ patches from omnisphere (or other plugins ) and will hardly hit the CPU load that i have when i use the one pharlight patch that i mentioned.

 

Yeah that's still well below 4+ GHz that makes Straylight/Pharlight more usable.

 

Well i guess i have to replace my processor . Damn, another investment after updating my ultimate bundle

 

What would you say to this one? : https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+5600X&id=3859

Thanks

 

And what about to wait one year for ZEN 4 and the meantime somehow survive.... One may live without Pharlight for some time, or live with given limits...
ZEN 4 might be 25-30% "faster" to ZEN 3. Also probably more cores and so on.... But you would need a new motherboard.

EvilDragon suggested you to use Freeze as temporary solution. Also making audiobuffer bigger may help if you do not mind higher audio latency.

 

Thats a good point. I can live without it fore some time. Will see how much they´ll cost. I dont want to go over 350 usd

 

I am having the same issue with cpu (On Pharlight) crackling like an open fire....

Not being terribly technically minded. Should this system be ok. I have 64Gb of RAM

Someone suggested freezing the channel. I run Cubase Pro 11 and thought I had left this option with Cubase SX

I have used multiple Kontakt instruments along with whatever else I am running and have not had any issues.

Surely NI should take into account the typical system people use and what an absolute minimum system spec is required to run Pharlight. Otherwise what's the point in me spending my hard earned pennies on something that requires a super computer to run it.

Intel Core i7 7700
Cores 4
Threads 8
Name Intel Core i7 7700
Code Name Kaby Lake
Package Socket 1151 LGA
Technology 14nm
Specification Intel Core i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz
Family 6
Extended Family 6
Model E
Extended Model 9E
Stepping 9
Revision B0
Instructions MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, Intel 64, NX, VMX, AES, AVX, AVX2, FMA3
Virtualization Supported, Disabled
Hyperthreading Supported, Enabled
Fan Speed 479 RPM
Stock Core Speed 3600 MHz
Stock Bus Speed 100 MHz
Average Temperature 40 °C
Caches
L1 Data Cache Size 4 x 32 KBytes
L1 Instructions Cache Size 4 x 32 KBytes
L2 Unified Cache Size 4 x 256 KBytes
L3 Unified Cache Size 8192 KBytes
Cores
Core Speed Multiplier Bus Speed Temperature Threads
Core 0 4108.0 MHz x 41.0 100.2 MHz 42 °C APIC ID: 0, 1
Core 1 4108.0 MHz x 41.0 100.2 MHz 38 °C APIC ID: 2, 3
Core 2 4108.0 MHz x 41.0 100.2 MHz 39 °C APIC ID: 4, 5
Core 3 4108.0 MHz x 41.0 100.2 MHz 41 °C APIC ID: 6, 7

 

The only thing I could point out here is that your Library content could/should be on the SSD rather than on the SATA HDD. I think this would make a big difference. Plugins could just be on your C Drive.