Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin
Wouldnt really get us that much.. seems that just refreshing ANYTHING chews cpu on it.. looking at ways to optimize that tho.. Unless we made it so low resolution that they didnt update very often, but I dont think that'd be very useful...
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Thank you, I'm glad to hear you are looking into it. Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that there are two things that effect how often the meters have to be "redrawn" -- the update rate and the meter resolution (the number of bar segments).
Having a preference for the update rate is good. Changing it from 30Hz to 15Hz did reduce the CPU load, but lowering it too much results in undesirably jerky meters.
By reducing the number of bar segments, small changes in signal amplitude would be ignored, which would significantly reduce the number of redraws. Looking at the meters on some the gear around me, I see a mixer with 12 LED's, and an audio interface with 10 LED's. My Lexicon PCM-80's only have five LED's. There is no practical reason for the massive number of bar segments that Reaper currently uses. It doesn't tell me any sort of useful information. Like I said, 8-12 segments is fine.
While I'm sure some people are impressed by the gee whiz factor, if they gave it some thought they would likely prefer being able to run more tracks and plug-ins. Meters can only tell you three things: 1) a signal is too hot, 2) a signal is too low, and 3) a visual reminder of which channel is which.
While I admit I know very little about application programming, the the meters in other multi-track software I use (eg. Logic, Numerology, MIO Console) do not seem to chew as much CPU as Reaper. The way it is now, I can't play the demo track with the mixer panel open.
As always, your consideration is appreciated.