From looking at your post, I can tell you that you probably didnt find this in the program





Hyperthreading looks to be enabled on your system.

Patrick Koller wrote: Hi,
I think Studio One doesn't support my CPU the right way...
Are there any CPU-settings in S1 i missed?

Can someone explain me why this happens?

From looking at your CPU plugin list, a few observations can be made.
Not sure of all the plugins you have active, but a good way to identify what plugins are the most CPU intensive is to sort the list by "CPU". This way, the highest or most demanding will clearly be at the top. Also, in your example you are showing eleven plus plugins (viewable), and judging by the scroll bar at right, you have quite literally 10 times that amount of plugins perhaps not all running, but are called up in your song. .

So, yeah, I can guess that the number of plugs you are using is a tad high in quantity. Decide if what you are using is absolutely necessary. Also, if some tracks share some of the same plugins like reverb, or similar EQ dynamics such as bass, and kick drum for example, let them share channels by creating a bus. Then run the plugin where possible as an effects send. It not only tailors some of the load by minimizing over use of some of the same effects dynamics, but can add more realism to the mix, and better control to what you're trying to do overall.

Even the best productions and mix engineers stay economical with system resources, and the mix can actually benefit by such practices.

If you're using for example, a compressor, EQ, and limiter, on a single channel, think about using instead, a single channel strip for possibly the same result.

Ask yourself "Do I need over 110 plugins (or even over 40) for this song? Can the channels be better grouped, and effects be placed as sends? Are the largest CPU hogs really necessary, and if they are, can I render them as audio tracks, and back off the large amount of plugins no longer needing to even be running? Etc., etc.

Lastly, check your other system recourses outside Studio One in your OS, and how other things running may possibly be loading up the CPU. Check your task manager, or are other programs running in the background, wifi running unnecessarily? Do you really need that antivirus program running, or browser turned on in the background. The CPU meter in S1 is not the tell all about how much plugins are impacting the CPU.

These are just tips, so I'm not trying to give the definitive, yes that's why but rather suggest you analyze why, and how to better combat CPU overrun by following some clear ways to see if you can monitor this better yourself. Check CPU recourses periodically, and not just when the CPU is in the red. Then invasive items will be more revealing, for instance you have those EQ plugs (AmberEQ) showing 15%-17%. Not sure about that plug, but 15%-17% is ridiculously high for even my most demanding audio saturating devices like the Waves Kramer Tape. Hardly necessary for an EQ. Do you really need that limiter at the Master out, or can you find the limiting solution by simply backing off some gain/volume/or too loud midi or audio dynamics? If you feel you do need it, you also better ask why it's sucking up 11%, which is way high for a limiter. So yeah, there is some information you can certainly extract from the CPU list you provided.

Excellent, that you posted it, as it helps understand some things.

Let us know how you make out.

thanks for your replies!

ok the limiter was using so much cpu power because
i had 4xoversampling activated... (at 96khz) uuups!^^

hmmm, i already had multiprocessing on:

And yes, those aqua plugins use a hell lot of cpu power (but they sound so good...). i'll try using just one of them.

the whole thing was more of a test if my setup would work in 96khz instead of 44... because i noticed that almost all saturation plugins have some degree of aliasing going on that disappears with a higher sampling rate.

But the thing i don't understand is why studio one tells me that my cpu is 100% stressed, while only the first thread of CPU 1 is at 100% as you can see in the first picture i uploadet at the beginning of the post...

Youve got Fatfilters on snare, tom's, friggin fat filters everywhere. That's fine but at some point, you should mix down your drums to an isolated stereo mix. Then keep, but turn off unused plugins. Maybe just leave the snare out of the drum mix. You could still have complete control over your mix, but turn the individual drum channels off, but the idea is you have many plugins that don't need to be running (as I am looking from a distance). You've got to go on a diet me boy! You dont get points for having so many plugins running.

No more fat filters (soup) for you! Two days.

All the talk about resource hungry plugins is good education... but The OP is asking why the CPU cores are not being used evenly (slamming the first, barely touching some of the others).... not why he is using so much CPU.

patrick koller wroteBut the thing i don't understand is why studio one tells me that my cpu is 100% stressed, while only the first thread of CPU 1 is at 100% as you can see in the first picture i uploaded at the beginning of the post...

One thing I would look into is whether or not there is a misbehaving plugin that only see's and uses the first core.

1: Turn off all plugins and see how the CPU usage is distributed.
2: Turn on all instances of one plugin and check again. Is it causing issues?

If there is an offending plugin... kick it to the curb and find another to take it's place.

The other thing that catches my eye is the "HT" beside the core use... I have seen some posts where people have benefited by disabling hyper threading on their computer. Try a search of the forums for that. I don't know enough about this stuff to make a suggestion... hopefully someone else will have a better answer to this.

EDIT TO ADD:
This is an 8 page thread... but I am linking to a post by Lawrence on page 5 referring to a comment from Bub....
viewtopic.php?p=50101#p50101

About two posts down from there, Lawrence goes into some tests about disabling the virtual cores (HT) in more detail... something you may want to look into. The conversion between Bub and Lawrence continues in that thread - keep reading for more insight.

codamedia wroteAll the talk about resource hungry plugins is good education... but The OP is asking why the CPU cores are not being used evenly (slamming the first, barely touching the others).... not why he is using so much CPU.

Thanks that was the kind of answer i was looking for! i can't try this today but i will definitely experiment with that next week when i'm home again! I'll let you guys know if it worked!

Another thing: I spent the whole morning checking all my plugins for aliasing and switched between 44.1khz, 44.1khz with OS and 96khz. And my conclusion is, though few of my plugins had less aliasing artefacts in 96khz, the majority worked cleaner in 44.1khz or with it's own oversampling function. So I'm back at 44.1khz now and my CPU workload in Studio 1 is about 60%.
But the workload is still spread uneven! So the next thing i will definitively do are the tests codamedia told me...

So I'll be back next week! Meanwhile thanks for all your tips!

And as mentioned to the OP, see what the plugins show in CPU usage before things go into the red. Go ahead and add up the CPU. At some point (when the engine is boiling over) readings are not accurate. It's pretty clear that CPU cores are not going to fix the high usage of CPU overload. At least in many cases I've discussed CPU cores with others, there's little in settings within S1 that fixes such things. Though, not every system is the same, nor are plugin architecture that's used.

You may want to trim things before diagnosing them, such as comparing these plugs and/or core settings in another song.

There's more than one way to resolve an issue.

Cheers

Lokeyfly wrote... Though, not every system is the same, nor are plugin architecture that's used.

Exactly... Their seems to be an I7 / Windows 7 problem (for some) regarding HyperThreading which is why I pointed to the discussion between Lawrence and Bub. Lawrence seemed to have an "aha" moment regarding CPU usage in that thread. Who would have thought that disabling cores would actually decrease CPU usage? Some things are really hard to explain.

Lokeyfly: I completely agree with you regarding "trimming the fat"... Resource management is critical... In the old days there were only so many LA-2A or 1176 Compressors to use... now those (and EQ's) are unlimited - so the limits shifted now to the CPU. I was just trying to approach the possible solution for the OP a little differently

Hi,
sorry for the late reply!
After some experiments I think that this is either a problem in Studio One or all of my plugins (including the s1 stock plugins) don't support multicore processing...

I didn't notice any difference with different plugins so i took the stock reverb and but on some instances of it:

Here are some different settings with Hyperthreading in Bios on:

-||-

And this is with Hyper Processing in Studio One deactivated:


And this is with Hyper-Threading in Bios off:



So there is NO difference at all!
Does someone know a plugin (preferable a stock plugin) which does spread the CPU load evenly for sure, so I can compare it on my system?

1: The thread i pointed you toward did not suggest an "all or nothing" approach with multi-cores. Trying turning off the last half.... If there are 6 cores - turn off 3, 8 cores - turn off 4.

2: Keep in mind that you will never get completely "even processing" across all the cores.... core one is going to be the workhorse...

3: Are you suggesting that 1 instance of Room Reverb is taking up 50% of your computer power. If that is what is happening, then you have computer problems that need sorting out. An i7 shouldn't even notice one instance of room reverb.

4: By your screen shots it looks like you are using Studio one V2. That is what I still use, and I can assure you I do not get the results you do. I am on a very old Quad core system, before the i series was ever released. My song run 30+ tracks with plugins on all....

Here is another thing to check (in Windows)
Control Panel > Power Options > change plan settings (beside your plan) > advanced power settings > Processor Power Mangement....

Make sure both the MAX and MIN are set to 100%. Usually the MIN is set to 5%.

Good luck.

One thing about multicore processing is that it's not some magical switch the programmers just switch on, and bam, full multicore processing is enabled. It's hard work to make that happen - really hard work (although easier than what it used to be).

However, as this is a personal theory because my work with multithreaded programming is quite limited (but I do know some things), doing it inside a DAW is very tricky, especially compared to a 3D renderer for instance (which doesn't aim for realtime performance anyway).

The reason is that inside a DAW latency is extremely important and you want to keep that down of course, and doing things across cores comes with a bit of added latency (if I'm not mistaken).
Without going into terribly much detail the way your project is setup has a lot to say about how much can be spread out to different cores. It comes down to your routing of channels/busses and which plug-ins sit where (and how CPU hungry they are).

The main point is just to explain that multicore processing is terribly difficult to do and not everything can be evenly spread out on your system's cores - it's just not possible.
This doesn't exclude improvements being made down the road of course, but it's to paint a more nuanced image of what the deal with multicore support is.

I hope some of this sort of made sense.

codamedia wrote1: The thread i pointed you toward did not suggest an "all or nothing" approach with multi-cores. Trying turning off the last half.... If there are 6 cores - turn off 3, 8 cores - turn off 4.

Maybe you have overlooked this in my pictures, but I tried almost every possible combination of activated and deactivated cores.

codamedia wrote3: Are you suggesting that 1 instance of Room Reverb is taking up 50% of your computer power. If that is what is happening, then you have computer problems that need sorting out. An i7 shouldn't even notice one instance of room reverb.

In this test I used 17 instances of Room Reverb.

codamedia wroteHere is another thing to check (in Windows)
Control Panel > Power Options > change plan settings (beside your plan) > advanced power settings > Processor Power Mangement....

I have optimized everything in windows and in bios that is recommended by Presonus and Avid on their sites...

Photontic wroteOne thing about multicore processing is that it's not some magical switch the programmers just switch on, and bam, full multicore processing is enabled. It's hard work to make that happen - really hard work (although easier than what it used to be).

However, as this is a personal theory because my work with multithreaded programming is quite limited (but I do know some things), doing it inside a DAW is very tricky, especially compared to a 3D renderer for instance (which doesn't aim for realtime performance anyway).

The reason is that inside a DAW latency is extremely important and you want to keep that down of course, and doing things across cores comes with a bit of added latency (if I'm not mistaken).
Without going into terribly much detail the way your project is setup has a lot to say about how much can be spread out to different cores. It comes down to your routing of channels/busses and which plug-ins sit where (and how CPU hungry they are).

The main point is just to explain that multicore processing is terribly difficult to do and not everything can be evenly spread out on your system's cores - it's just not possible.
This doesn't exclude improvements being made down the road of course, but it's to paint a more nuanced image of what the deal with multicore support is.

I hope some of this sort of made sense.

Thanks! You are totally right about this! When i make 17 tracks with 1 instance of room reverb each, instead of putting 17 instances on one track the result is this:

patrick koller wrote

codamedia wrote1: The thread i pointed you toward did not suggest an "all or nothing" approach with multi-cores. Trying turning off the last half.... If there are 6 cores - turn off 3, 8 cores - turn off 4.

Maybe you have overlooked this in my pictures, but I tried almost every possible combination of activated and deactivated cores.

Yes I did.... sorry about that.

patrick koller wrote

codamedia wrote3: Are you suggesting that 1 instance of Room Reverb is taking up 50% of your computer power. If that is what is happening, then you have computer problems that need sorting out. An i7 shouldn't even notice one instance of room reverb.

In this test I used 17 instances of Room Reverb.

OK, I just thought I would ask because I thought the usage looked high.


I will say that even the latest screenshot you show with 17 tracks and one instance of room reverb looks like really high CPU usage... Something seems off to me.

codamedia wroteI will say that even the latest screenshot you show with 17 tracks and one instance of room reverb looks like really high CPU usage... Something seems off to me.

No, I meant 17 tracks with one instance of room reverb EACH! (= 17 instances of room reverb.)

I use a mac and my cpu goes crazy and i have 16gb of ram, the fans start going crazy. I had everything working correctly yesterday but now its just back at square one