Decided to ditch modern Ryzen and go back to server classics of the past.
Think that i’ll keep that Xeon. Neat performance due to hi-core count and large cache.
Windows 7 x64 SP2+ ESU Intel Xeon E5-2696v4 22c/44t/64Gb RAM 2400/NVMe 980 Pro ESI Maya 44 eX PCIe
Renoise 3.4.2 Reg
ASIO/48Khz/~5ms
CPU overload protection: 98%
1CPU reached:
track:48
fx: 288
Cracks appeared at track 44
2CPU reached:
track:94
fx: >552
Cracks appeared at track 80
32CPU reached:
track:257 and without any problems reached [Ta! Amiga Rulez!!!]
fx: >~1500
No cracks at all
Max Load: 32%
44CPU reached:
track:257 and without any problems reached [Ta! Amiga Rulez!!!]
fx: >~1500
No cracks at all
Max Load: 28%
Nice, maybe also try to disable the recent microcode for the cpu without spectre fixes and so on. I don’t know how old your cpu is, but this can heavily increase the performance of older Intel cpus.
CPU: _____________ Intel i5-13600K | 6 P core, 8 E Core, 20 Threads OS: ______________ Pop_OS Linux Interface: _______ Jack Latency: _________ Not sure, probably 10ms or so
01 CPU: 121 RPTS 02 CPU: 237 RPTS 20 CPU: All Pass w/ 40% peak CPU load
IDK about bench… but Renoise on my laptop is able to handle almost twice less vsti plugins than Reaper. Same plugin, same preset, same notes, same tempo. Always been like that since 10 years ago.
96k, Focusrite 2i2, 1024 buffer, win10, i7 3630qm
For example the easiest test: Odin2 VST3 with a heavy preset (also tested many many other vsti’s with more or less the same results):
latest Renoise - 4 tracks (a bit crackling. 5 is just unplayable)
latest Reaper - 7 tracks (just fine with no problems. 8 cause pereodic overruns)
I did another test with samples and effects. In this case Renoise is just a little behind Reaper. Like 8 tracks vs 9, so for sampling and fx processing Renoise is great. But not for VSTi’s (yeah, u can render instruments, but this workflow is not always suitable for every situation and changes sound a lot)
Yeah I agree, have gotten similar results from comparisons as well. Tested Newfangled Generate in Renoise, Bitwig and Ableton Live a while ago. Ableton Live was able to play back the most parallel instances in my Ryzen 2700X (8 cores, 16 threads) until buffer underruns started to occur, managing to get up to about 27 instances, while Renoise only managed 18-19. Bitwig was almost as good as Live, managing something like 25 instances.
It seems like other DAWs have a more granular distribution of the workload between threads, being able to share the load more evenly, while Renoise seems to tend to assign tracks to specific threads more exclusively, resulting in less optimal resource usage. Would hope for some more improvements in this regard, since other DAWs already demonstrate that a more efficient implementation is possible.
Mac mini 2020 M1
MacOS 13.2.1 Ventura
16 GB RAM
renoise 3.4
dither off 90% warning
M-Audio air soundcard
rebench 256
some limited amount of background processes
latency 10 1cpu core= 95
latency 10 4 cpu core = PASS ALL 256 max 66%
latency 10 8 cpu core = PASS ALL 256 max 66%
Thanks for sharing this. We have the same processor and that’s pretty much how it performs for me.
I’ve noticed the 3600 works better at 6 CPU instead of 12 in the majority of my projects. Increasing to anything above 6 doesn’t make much of a difference except when track/group count is high.
I’ve been trying really hard to optimize Renoise for modern plugins: keeping the track count low, disabling oversampling where I can, closing all background applications, etc.
I have a few habits taken from other DAWs, such as Reaper, like making a lot of busses and using parallel processing through sends, but it seems like Renoise can’t handle this approach very well in bigger projects. My projects were hitting 99% CPU and simply crumbling… unplayable. Just for comparison, I can run about 5x more plugins in Reaper without any crackling and I’m not even exaggerating. For this reason, I’m switching to Redux soon to fully enjoy Reaper’s unmatched optimization.
On the other hand, these performance issues are making me rely more and more on Renoise sampling capabilities. For example: Instead of having 4 Arturia synth instances such as Acid V, Jupiter, etc (which EASILY eat up 70% CPU in the 3600), I’m now using the ‘Render plugin to instrument’ option 90% of the time. It forces me into a more “destructive” approach to making music (which has its ups and downs). The only thing I still haven’t been able to optimise on my side is the FX processing such as compression (specially sidechain), clippers, reverbs, delays, etc… since I prefer using 3rd party instead of native (don’t get me wrong but I don’t like how the native ones sound).
