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Subject:CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Posted by: DCools
Date:9/26/2003 1:40:35 PM

Hello,

I just start using Sound Forge 7.0 (Build 214) and I found out that the CPU usage is 100% and therefore I can't start other programs when playing. ;-( The other thing is when I push the "Play Plug-In Chainer", with no plug-ins attached, the CPU usage is nothing.

Example:

1. Start SF
2. Open a sound file (.Wav 00:05:05,289 in my case)
2. Click on the button "Open Plug-In Chainer ..." (Down left 5th button)
3. Click on "Play Normal" (Down left 4th button)

CPU is 100%

4. Click on button "Play Plug-In Chainer"

CPU is almost not used.

Is this by design or is this a bug? Just curious.

*** Edited the message again from here ***

I also just found out the following:

After you play a sound file with the "Play Plug-In Chainer" button, the "Play (Space)" button also almost don't uses the CPU.

Example:

1. Click Button "Play Plug-In Chainer", CPU = 2%
2. Click Button "Play Normal", CPU = 100%
3. Click Button "Play Plug-In Chainer", CPU 2%
4. Click Button "Play (Space)", CPU = 2%
5. Click Button "Play Normal", CPU = 100%
6. Click Button "Play (Space)", CPU = 100%
7. Click Button "Play Plug-In Chainer", CPU 2%
8. Click Button "Play (Space)", CPU = 2%

Windows XP Profession SP1
Pentium III 1Ghz 512 MB Intel

Regards,
Diederick F.M. Cools.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: MrMenace
Date:9/28/2003 11:01:22 AM

I was noticing the same behavior and commented about it elsewhere.
It appears that when SF is driving the waveform display and the VU meters or VU/PPM meters, it is CPU intensive.
Software rendering perhaps?
I think this is something they should be able to resolve and fix.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: JTelles
Date:9/28/2003 12:40:58 PM

Hey, I just noticed the same...
Just open any song in SF 6, press Ctrl+Alt+Del to reach the Windows Task Manager (WinXP) and select performance. As you press play, the cpu usage is VERY low in SF6. Now do the same with SF7. Close the song and SF6, open SF7 and the same song, press play and look at the CPU usage. The load is now A LOT higher.
Why is that?

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Sonic
Date:9/29/2003 9:33:08 AM

Do you have the time display open? You also might try unchecking the two update prefs in Options->Prefs->Perform, just to narrow down the problem.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: JTelles
Date:9/30/2003 11:03:28 AM

"Do you have the time display open?" - NO

"You also might try unchecking the two update prefs in Options->Prefs->Perform, just to narrow down the problem. " - I tried that, makes NO DIFFERENCE

In my case I noticed the CPU load is a lot higher than in SF6, but I just tried it in my old PIII 500MHz and though the CPU reaches 100% I DO NOT HAVE ANY NOTICEABLE problems like stuttering, clicks or pops. It plays, previewing effects like Izotope Ozone in full power WITHOUT problems (the cpu indicator in the effect screen stays at 70-80% in both (SF6 and SF7) and the CPU load of the Windows task manager gets ONLY slightly higher in SF7 than in SF6 (both get close to 85%). Now this in surprising, just playing without previewing effects brings the CPU of the task manager to 100%, but if you open a heavy plugin to preview it drops!!!???? Go figure...

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Sonic
Date:9/30/2003 11:29:51 AM

The old play engine sucks up CPU to update the UI as often as possible, though it will give it up when demanded elsewhere. Faster machines actually make it more obvious. The more modern chainer engine is smarter about that sort of thing.

Though it is odd that 7.0 is much higher than 6.0 on the same machine...

J.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: ATP
Date:9/30/2003 2:25:02 PM

Sonic posted:
The old play engine sucks up CPU to update the UI as often as possible, though it will give it up when demanded elsewhere. Faster machines actually make it more obvious. The more modern chainer engine is smarter about that sort of thing.
------------------

i have an amd xp 3000+ cpu with 1 gb of pc2700 ram. i also have an ATI 9800 Pro and an M-Audio Audiophile 2696 ... a system that should have no problems with playing a simple 24 bit stereo wave file.

using Sound Forge 6, cpu usage is average 5%, maxing out to 8% at intervals.
using Sound Forge 7, cpu usage jumps to 100% within a second and stays there the entire time.

that can't be because the old play engine is sucking up CPU. if it were, SF 6.0 would have jumped to 100% as well. however, in both cases i experience no stutters or glitches. i can add heavy duty plugins like normal without lag or problems. i'm left wondering what the hell the CPU is doing to get to 100%. inefficient video rendering perhaps?

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: ATP
Date:9/30/2003 2:27:29 PM

UPDATE:

SF7 : this time i previewed the same wave file from the Open menu, so without actually opening the wave file. now the CPU stays between 0 and 8%, as it should be.

so it definitely looks like a video rendering issue.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Sonic
Date:9/30/2003 4:24:00 PM

Does the CPU sucking affect actual performance in Sound Forge or anywhere else?

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Greg_M
Date:9/30/2003 4:41:38 PM

Looks to me like there is just an error in Windows CPU usage meter with SF7. I don't see any performance hit. I opened a bunch of other applications while the CPU meter was pegged and saw no perormance problems at all.

Just as a matter of information, Pro Tools has a very similar issue using WinXP. In Pro Tools, the Windows CPU usage meter stays pegged, but if you use the Pro Tools CPU usage meter it shows an accurate CPU usage. I know that in Pro Tools, this issue is related to the way that application reserves system resources - not that it is actually using them.

I agree that this issue should be fixed at some point, but it looks like a minor issue.

Greg

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Sonic
Date:9/30/2003 4:48:54 PM

I'll look into it. If it ain't happening in 6.0, we should know why it's happening in 7.0.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: JTelles
Date:9/30/2003 5:29:36 PM

" Does the CPU sucking affect actual performance in Sound Forge or anywhere else?"

It looks that it doesn't. I tested it in a Pentium IV 2.4GHz and in the Pentium IIII, both with WinXP Sp1. Given the proportions, the weird behaviour is the same: just playing a song gets a lot more CPU than SF6, previewing a heavy plug-in makes it drop (?) the CPU load. But no sines of ACTUAL performance suffering in either case in both PCs.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: MrMenace
Date:9/30/2003 7:48:09 PM

Here is what I am seeing. When I play a PCA file in SF6 with no additional processing, I see the CPU running at around 2 to 5 percent. The i/o reads are very low with the song at about 2 minutes into play time. I have the screen capture if you want me to email it. The SF7 paying the same file shows CPU running at 90 to 99% and at 30 seconds into the same song, the I/O reads are at over 22,000. I also have a screen capture of that. I am running a nForce2 ultra board with the Nvidia MCP-T onboard sound.
Is it affecting anything else I am running? I haven't tried to do much else when using SF7 since I tend to use it to digitize some of my LPs and am single threading while doing that.

edit: I guess the thing that I find most annoying about this issue is that after a while of working with SF7, the motherboard monitoring cranks the CPU and Power supply fans to help cool it down. After a while, it can get pretty loud. I have it set to run at about 3000rpm, but when it gets hot, it cranks up to over 5000 rpm and scares the racoons away fom the back of my house.

Edit2: I should also add that I have seen this behavior with MP3, WMV, and WAV.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: porkjelly
Date:10/1/2003 11:25:57 AM

I'm having the same problem with CPU usage. While playing a WAV file, everything else slows down to a crawl.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: DCools
Date:10/1/2003 1:09:19 PM

> Does the CPU sucking affect actual performance in Sound Forge
> or anywhere else?

Yes it does. A lot of times I play a wave file to listen to it, duhhh what else ;-), but then when I listen to it, I do other things on my workstation. Now with version 7 I can't do that anymore because it slows down everything on my machine.

The strange thing is the CPU is nothing when:

Load wave file,
Click Button "Play Plug-In Chainer", CPU 2%
Click Button "Play (Space)", CPU = 2%

But when I open a wave file and I don't use the Plug-In Chainer button first but the Play (space) button the CPU is 100% ;-(

Load wave file,
Click Button "Play (Space)", CPU = 100%

Regards,
Diederick F.M. Cools.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: strassburger
Date:10/1/2003 2:39:13 PM

I am running SF 7 also, and CPU usage reaches 100% when I click the play icon while using the plug-in chainer it is barely above the noise line of the CPU usage history...looks like a bug.

my hard:
P4 2.5 GHz
512 Mo RAM
Leadtek GeForce MX 440 64 Mo
MB is a P4S8X with a Midiman deltDIO 2495
under XP pro and Linux optionnally

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Nossis
Date:10/1/2003 4:22:03 PM

Well it does appear to affect SF7 operation... Tested using same .wav file in SF6 and SF7. Opened a file and played nothing else.
Found as we all know in SF6 CPU usage minimal.
When using SF7 try using your mouse to then stop playing the file.... I tired as it jumped across the screen as opposed to the usual smooth movement that a mouse should be. To me that is a problem of performance.
The other thing I noticed is that rendering of the wave form on screen is much smoother that of SF6... So it appears that the rendering in SF7 is responsible for this...
Well I will be sticking to SF6, I am happy with a slightly jumpy wav form on screen render as opposed to 100% CPU usage.
So the real test for Sony is how quick they respond to what I would consider a fundamental issue.

So Come on Sony... It was working fine before... What happened???? Just to have a smoother scrolling 2D yes... 2D not 3D (maybe it would run better 3D... lol) wav form render shouldn't be sucking that much juice.

System spec
2.2 Ghz
512 ram
80Gb IDE
128 M Geforce 4

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Erni
Date:10/1/2003 5:11:35 PM

It's funny:

Play alone: 100% CPU usage

Play with plugin (Waves L2): 6 to 9%

Erni.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: ponzan
Date:10/2/2003 11:42:02 AM

definitely there is something wrong and very weird here with SF7 and CPU utilization, and it does affect performance on every system. This is an issue that should de adressed and corrected by Sony Sonic Foundry developers, this is such a great program and the new stuff is great too, and so is the price for the update !!

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: philsayer
Date:10/2/2003 2:35:01 PM

Unless, of course, the CPU usage meter is inaccurate, for some reason. Experience of XP leads me to think that's a very real possibility!

I noticed the same thing RECORDING with SF6 - just the same in SF7.

Hard to believe it's REALLY running 100%, or the temperature rise would be scary. When recording, it DOES rise, but not as much as 100% might imply.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: Sonic
Date:10/3/2003 10:46:34 AM

The cause of the CPU pegging thing has been found and will be fixed in the first update. Thanks to all for their scrutiny.

J.

Subject:RE: CPU Usage SF7 when playing wav
Reply by: ATP
Date:10/3/2003 3:04:45 PM

great news!

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