Dune 2 - I'm speechless, what have they done

[MBTC]

Do you have a midi file you're using to play them? On my i7-870 using the Spire demo, BA Octava on Cubase I'm only able to insert 25 instances before the output is no longer sent to the mixer (I'm guessing that's a Cubase thing or maybe demo limit), and of course so many of them sounds horrible but I guess subjectively I could say it's usable (peaking out on the Cubase CPU meter sometimes but no crackling or anything that would prevent use).

But that's just dinking around playing notes by hand so I thought a MIDI file might be a better point of reference if you have it to share.

Also with 25 instances generating the demo white noise swoosh it makes it hard to claim it sounds usable.

[Berni]

What is this NERD FEST? Couldn't make it to Comic-con? Make some music you sad git's

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Berni

What is this NERD FEST? Couldn't make it to Comic-con? Make some music you sad git's

@berni: Contributing something of value again I see, don't you have some self-promoting to do or something? Run along now and don't get under the grown ups feet while they're busy

@grs:
I'll give that a try a little later. I basically did the same thing by enabling monitor on all 25 instrument tracks (which plays them simultaneously, and then you can just hold a note down), so I think I will hit the wall at 25 again but will report back. Cubase CPU meter is a little different than Ableton et al in that you have peak load and average load (peak is like maximum which doesn't really tell you a whole lot other than you're hitting the ceiling occasionally, average is more like the meter in other DAWs that really impacts what you hear). I'm probably at about 60% average which is way higher than I would run in practice without freezing tracks, but then again a good fat unison poly lead with fx and a long release from some synths can eat up maybe 25-30% by itself at times.

Also meant to ask, are you comparing both PCs using the same external audio interface or do they have distinct sound cards?

[TweakHead]

Originally Posted by Berni

What is this NERD FEST? Couldn't make it to Comic-con? Make some music you sad git's

@MBTC this actually made me laugh!

On another note, you're right about most plug-ins not profiting much from new instructions on the CPUs, but that's not as linear as you say: for instance, Diva has multi-thread support now, but that doesn't mean that any CPU can handle it. Same thing for most host software (daw), they can increase their performance if some instructions are found, but will perform as good as it can without them.

I do agree, however, that we're not seeing major increases in performance for quite a while now. I feel a good way to get better performance (and less money XD) is to get something like UAD dsp cards and plug-ins. One can manage insanely huge track counts that way without much stress to the system. That and hardware synths (expert sleepers can deliver sample accurate timing for analogue synths), the Virus ti (working properly) also helps a lot to dispense with cpu-heavy plug-ins (isn't that why it costs so much?). All of this and an SSD disk can boost performance much more then with a CPU+motherboard/chip change I think.