I’ve been toying with Arturia’s Augmented Strings for a few weeks now. I figured I have it, might as well play with it. I have found that you can get some interestingly realistic string ensembles out of it. But I have also noticed intermittent pops and clicks. I typically run my system at 44,100Hz with a buffer of 128, and I don’t have any issues.
Has any one else here played with this?
Thanks!
Rick
Rick - although a 128 buffer has been working for you with many of your other plugins, you have to realize that the buffer size is directly correlated to the demand on your CPU. The smaller the buffer size (and 128 is pretty small), the harder the CPU has to work to get ANYTHING done, because you are asking it to get everything done so incredibly fast in order to stay real-time.
Augmented Strings is quite CPU heavy in its demands. I suspect that you are not leaving it enough CPU resources by running at that low of a buffer setting. Try doubling it to 256, or even 512 (you can alway set it back when NOT running CPU heavy VSTs). That likely will be enough to eliminate the snap-crackle-pop in this case.
Terry
Terri,
Thanks for the reply. I was actually on Arturia’s forum this morning, and saw basically the same thing.
When I built my box, an ASRock DeskMini, I put an i7-8700 3.2 GHz processor in it, just for things like this. This is the first time I have seen this.
We can’t flip the buffer on the fly, and some of my other patches would feel very sluggish at 256, let alone 512.
So what I have done, is limit it to 4 voices or less, and (interestingly enough…) just making sure the Augmented Strings editor window isn’t open seems to add a little overhead. And the debris has seemed to stop.
Thanks again!
Rick
Open GUIs will always cause overhead, because they need to be updated. There is no need (that I am aware of) to have them open when you are playing.
Derek. I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, I run my “music box” headless. And there are times when I go back to my “development box” and realize that when I saved the rack, the GUI was open.
Just one more thing to remember, right?
Woo hoo!
Rick
Sadly, I have experienced this with IK Multimedia B-3X. Although the Nvidia Quadro video interface, closing the GUI saves about 12% of Time Load. Not bad. Arturia plugs are terrible, also.
With buffer set to 256, I found my balance.
I know when it first came out the UI had animation, and turning animation off helped a lot. Not sure if it still has it since I don’t use it.
I have augmented strings, best thing you can do is turn off the reverb.
Its convoluted reverb and it’s a resource hog.
I often use something called “old school verb” for most time i need reverb, this one is very light
on the CPU in comparison.
Laura,
I didn’t think of this! Thanks. Yeah, I have a couple of reverb plugins that sound great on a small footprint.
Thanks!
Rick
I’d like to offer a suggestion, although it comes at a price.
€ 195 but, for some, it’s a crucial component in networked setups.
Vienna Ensemble Pro allows you to farm out plugins from Cantabile, or any DAW, to a separate host which can run on the same computer or on any of several networked computers. One of it’s features is that it can run at up to 4x the buffer of the host, Cantabile in this case, while leaving other instances, or the host, at low buffer settings.
You could leave Cantabile at 128 and set the VEP to give you the option to add up 128x4.
That means 1 buffer has you running that instance at 256. 4 buffers will be 640.
It allows you to target resources efficiently while keeping your base system snappy -all within the same computer.
I’m using this approach to make hogs like Cherry’s Sines playable on a circa 2012 Lenovo thinkpad which is running at 128.
It recalls and saves as part of the Cantabile Song, if you want it to. More often, orchestral composers are using it to lock massive templates into several computers without the need to reload during project changes.
Just some food for thought… along with stimulating a discussion to see whether a similar functionality could be built into Cantabile @brad
This is the link to it if your interested, very light on the CPU.
Ade,
I play in a cover band. As a IT person, I’m going to read up on this because, well… this is interesting. I don’t see a practical approach in my situation though. I’d rather use another patch if I need to go that far.
But… I am going to read up on it.
Laura,
I actually have this already. I don’t think I’m using it, so plopping it into my rack for this VST is a possibility.
Thanks to both of you!
Rick
Adding another suggestion - unfortunately not free, but one of the most CPU-efficient reverbs out there - it sounds fantastic and is really versatile:
My staple reverb in my live setups - I usually de-activate all instrument-specific reverbs (and delays) and use a couple of reverb and delay racks configured as “sends”.
Cheers,
Torsten
I know it looks that way at first glance, but you can pretty much set it and forget it. Cantabile handles all the setups and VEP just chugs away in the background. I can tell its piqued your interest… this biproduct can allow even really heavy items, say convolution reverbs, to be hosted in a way that lowers the CPU hit dramatically - and a little predelay of, say, 14 msecs on a heavy duty reverb at X4 buffer (including the host) is so insignificant as to be as good as irrelevant.
I agree that a lower footprint verb is probably your best bet, but in situations where some plugins are stressing the system, and you don’t want to sacrifice the responsiveness of your whole setup, this can yield a very effective solution.
There is a demo version. No save and load.
Another way I have lightened the load on the cpu (if people have the gear) as far as reverbs go (or any effects) is use an external fx processor;
if you have multiple audio outs on your interface/soundcard, send the vsts to
that use the reverbs to its own output which can go to an external FX send
via a mixer.
Just gave it a whirl on my live rig - and boy, what a CPU hog this plugin is - even with its reverb switched off. Definitely not getting a place in my live setup.
BTW: same with augmented voices - and Pigments as well. Looks like Arturia’s newer architecture is more focused on sonic flexibility than on CPU efficiency…
This is why I stopped using them. (except for noodle sessions of sampling and mangling them in my FZ-1).
Certainly a legitimate way to off-load CPU-intensive processes. But in my case, this would go completely against the idea of simplifying my rig down to everything in-the-box. I used to shlep around a full 19’’ rack of MIDI and audio gear - now that’s all in software on a single laptop or SFF-PC - and at far better quality!
Definitely not going back to the old days - with Moore’s law giving us more powerful CPUs pretty much every year, I’ll just pick the best balance of VST plugs that my live PC will run nicely without hiccups and build my live setup from there.
Of course the production setup is a different story - there you can go wild with heavy-duty instruments and sample libraries - and freeze it all down to audio when you need to…
I have a i3 powered Dell 2 in 1 11" touchscreen that I folder over backward and mount so the screen is just above the keys on my Xboard 49. Its touch screen works really well with B-3X’s “Controls” drawbars. I get an occasional noise that doesn’t happen if the GUI is closed. Luckily it almost sounds like the mechanical noise some B3 emulations have when you flip the Leslie switch.
To get the above to work I had to remove all telematics using Win10 Privacy and install Project Lasso and put it on highest performance. Also, WiFi must be disabled.
I like the setup - I’m thinking about sourcing a more powerful 2 in 1 on the used market.
UVI’s SparkVerb is the lowest cpu for reverb I’ve seen. A full order of magnitude less than the next most efficient I’ve seen. Of course at some point 10 times less than “hardly any” isn’t going to buy you anything unless a pile of instances are used for some reason. Plus it isn’t free.