Renoise Gui Slows Down When Recording Lots Of Input Data, Notes

It seems that renoise has difficulties when recording a lot of notes , playing fast on the computer keyboard or external .
So it is not midi related , just take an instrument and play some notes , verry fast ( like c , d ,e f, ) on the keyboard ,( a few patterns long ) after a while windows task manager cpu goes trough the roof and renoise is starting to slow down ,and getting unresponsive , reulting in skipping notes , untill task manager cpu decreases theRenoise cpu meter stays verry low , because it doesn’t show the graphics intensive tasks , ( all the note data that is being recorded ) …
So the intense amount of data that is displayed ( the notes ) on the pattern is causing a significant cpu overhead ( only shown in task manager ) , making renoise uncapable of recording fast played notes .
A simple solution would be that we are able to record when the focus is set to another window ( mixer ) so renoise doesn’t have to show all the intense data .
I tested this on a quadcore( fast cpu ) , and a single core computer .
This is a serious problem ,

Are you doing that with internal samples or with VST plugins?
Do you use VST effects with that as well?
The more VST plugins you use, the more CPU you consume.

Renoise should not top the roof with internal samples when receiving a lot of note data.
The same can’t be guaranteed with VST or other plugins as they consume an amount of CPU time beyond Renoise its control.

this even happens with just one instrument /one channel .doesn’t matter if its a vst or an xrni , it even happens when I am recording a slow bassline from the keyboard for several patterns long .
At first I tought it was midi related because I noticed the problem when recording from an external midi keyboard , but since it also happens when using the pc keyboard …I knowfor sure it is renoise related / the display of recorded note data while recording , slows down renoise

Just do the test , activate windows task manger to keep an eyeon general cpu load ,create an instrument , set track note delay on , set lpb to 8 , create some empty patterns and start recording some verry fast notes ( you need some flexible fingers for this ) , , after recording a few patterns you’ll notice that the task manager cpu meter increases significantly because of all the displayed data ( notes ) renoise cpu meter stays low because it only shows audio dsp load , when taskmanager cpu load rises , renoise gui becomes slow , loses/skips a lot of inputted recorded notes .
I think this is a serious problem for all those who are able to play keyboard and and want to record several longer patterns on the fly
Just do the test

There’s definitely something fishy going on. I just did the test with a blank song, no samples - just entering notes very quickly into a dozen blank patterns.
Seems that the CPU load is building after about 30 seconds or so, and eventually results in skipped notes.

I can confirm.

  1. New song, LPB 8, Quantize 1, some instrument selected
  2. Make 40 unique patterns
  3. Go to top of song, pattern follow on, start recording with pattern follow on.
  4. Type: “poiuytre” over and over, really fast, 50 times

Renoise CPU: 2%
Activity Monitor: +60%
Renoise lags behind, keeps recording notes even when I let go.

Strange.

Confirmation here also, the playback gets very jerky, very apparent from the scrollbar, lags couple of lines behind.

Definitely very odd…

Could not reproduce with given parameters. CPU usage in Task Manager stays low on all cores. Even more odd, therefore.

does anyone have acces to older versions of renoise to see if the problem was allready there ?
Really hoping for a fix soon , could the lua integration be the cause of all this ???

Note to self :’ keep old renoise installs on hard disk

Everybody does via Backstage ;)

The overhead comes from the merging of undo steps for recorded events, which got added with Renoise 2.7.

-> When recording lots of notes in series, Renoise will undo all of them in one batch, in one take, instead of undo/redoing single notes. Aka, you can undo/redo whole recording takes now in one batch.

This will at some point create a noticeable overhead while recording, but should only happen when bombing Renoise with events for a really long time, which we thought is not going to be a real problem.

So is this really a real-life problem or more an “observation”? I have to bomb Renoise for !minutes! with notes here, in order to create a noticeable lag.

Same here. Good finger workout tho. :P

maybe if we stopwatch our results, post cpu hit and computer specs we’ll have a new good benchmark test ;)

can’t you make this new feature optional ?
Renoise starts to lag after a few patterns of live recording notes , not necesarally bombing it with events , even a simple bassline live recording for several pattersn makes renoise lag , this makes it totally unusefull for me , and at the moment I can’t afford to upgrade to a faster computer

testing on a single core 2.6 ghz cpu , 1 gb ram windows xp …bpm 120 lpb 8 , lagging after 4 patterns ( 64 lines ) inputed notes , a sequence of 5 repeated notes ,no quanti
tested on a dual core 2.1 ghz , 2 gb ram , lagging also happens , depending of nr of inputed notes .
I don’t want to sound crude here , but I am a fairly decent keyboard player( as in an actual keyboard ) and I am sure a lot of people who want to record live and don’t have accces to a high spec .machine will be put off when they notice that renoise can’t keep up with their keyboard ninja skills .
High priority alarm fix please

Did you test with an older version from the Backstage? Can you confirm it works better in 2.6? Or did you just start playing keyboards into Renoise, like, this week?

It would be helpful to do so.

I noticed the problem 2 weeks ago , I was visiting a friend in berlin installed renoise 2.7 on her computer dual Corelaptop ( deinstalled it afterwards ), installed my edirola ua 25 drivers and started playing from midi keyboard .
Renoise was playing back 15 audio tracks , 2 vst’s ( sq 8 -l and tyrell )
i recorded a verry simple bassline for several patterns ( to keep the human feel ) , renoise started lagging after a few patters ,not verry cpu intensive , at that moment I thought it was midi related ( I posted this on the forum ) , now it seems that the problem is also present when recorded from computer keyboard .
The problem could easily be fixed if we could make this new feature optional ( one step record undo ),
https://forum.renoise.com/t/slow-down-gui-response-when-receiving-lots-of-midi-data/32472

Just for the record:What kind of computer are you using?
Sorry missed the new replies.

Well, if there are many having these kind of problems, perhaps it could be optional, but i don’t know if that is much work.
Single core isn’t really top notch nowadays and dual core are starting to become netbook stuff.

I am using an old single core 2.6 ghz sony vaio ,
I have acces to my brothers computer, quad core @ 2.1 ghz , and a dual core laptop @ 2.6 ghz . from a friend , …which I am testing
the issue on right now .
Of course I will reinstall renoise afterwards

Firstly, we haven’t identified if undo is the actual problem.

At the time of this writing, it is theoretically the problem.

If you test with 2.6, and get the same results, then the problem is not undo.

We need that report. Either from you, or other users.

If it is the problem, then I propose we copy the Sample Editor:

Attachment 2096 not found.

@ taktik , would it be much work to adress this issue and make the ’ one step undo record ’ feature optional ?