04-07-2020, 11:13 AM | #1 |
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Plugin CPU use - Solus Fortitude
Testing out Reaper in Linux. Running very smooth and very interesting to see Alsa pulling off nearly half the latency compared to Windows.
I have no reference to other distros. I'm wondering if it's normal for you guys to see much higher CPU use by plugins than in Windows. Examples: Windows ReaEQ: 0.0 - 0.1 Linux: 0.2 Windows JS Midi Eater: 0.0 Linux: 0.1 Overall the system seems to be using less though. My fan hasn't kicked on unless I ask a lot of Google chrome. It goes all the time in Windows... it's one of the main reasons I've been looking into Linux for recording mainly, as I have a small room and would love to take the fan out of the background noises I have to deal with. p.s. could anyone eli5 getting ReaPack to show up? I've placed the .so in /usr/me/.config/REAPER/UserPlugins. |
04-07-2020, 01:26 PM | #2 |
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I see no higher CPU use for the Cockos plugins or JS plugins when I compare Reaper for Linux and Reaper for Windows. The same goes for some other VST plugins that I've compared under those same conditions. I think Airwindows Linux versions of the plugins might take slightly more CPU though, and possibly others but if the numbers weren't significantly higher I would've forgotten.
To get accurate CPU % readings in Linux you'll need to set your CPU frequency governor to "performance", to match the Windows power setting of "high performance" (of the CPU). This sets the CPU frequency to its maximum. The CPU % reading of Reaper will only show a % of the CPU's current ability/speed. So if the CPU throttles down--which it will by default unless you change the CPU frequency governor setting--you'll see higher CPU usage in Reaper. But then once you load the project down with a lot of plugins and the CPU throttles up, it'll probably seem to use less CPU than Windows did (since I noticed I could push my system significantly harder using Linux than I could when using Windows, and maintain stable low latency performance). I use indicator-cpufreq as a plugin for the panel, so I can change the governor when I want. Reapack has some dependencies and your distro might not be meeting them (GCC in particular might be outdated). I'm using the most current Xubuntu but previously I had that problem. |
04-07-2020, 04:42 PM | #3 |
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You can copy and paste the .so (plugins) into your new project if that helps.
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04-07-2020, 07:33 PM | #4 |
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I see pretty equal performance and CPU use between Windows and Linux.
I did do the following in Linux though, and in my case it made the difference between being able to run at 64 samples latency without a struggle and being forced to use 128 barely able to keep up. 1. Install a lowlatency kernel, should be in your repos. 2. Make sure that you reconfigure the system so that you get the ability to run realtime threads and lock memory. Normally accomplished by editing a file called limits.conf in /etc/security (the details might wary slightly depending on your distro). add the following and login again: your-username - rtprio 98 your-username - memlock unlimited 3. Verify that the above worked by running the command ulimit -a Some audio apps you install will make those priority and memlock mods for you so you may already have permissions to run apps with a realtime priority of 98 and with unlimited memory locking, but it would be worth checking. |
04-09-2020, 04:38 PM | #5 | |||
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04-09-2020, 05:36 PM | #6 |
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After editing the .conf, running ulimit -a shows memory lock is unlimited but real time priority says 99 not 98. Not sure how much this matters or what it was before.
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04-09-2020, 09:14 PM | #7 |
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Might have been pre-tweaked somewhere in your distro, should be cool.
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04-10-2020, 02:55 PM | #8 |
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@James Peters mentioned maybe needing GCC update.
My distro software centre says it is up to date and it appears to be something only related to building programs. I am not compiling ReaPack myself, all I have is the .so that comes right from the website. Is that still relevant? |
04-10-2020, 05:42 PM | #9 |
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Yes. Reapack depends on a later GCC than many distros have.
What is your distro and what version? |
04-10-2020, 09:27 PM | #10 |
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04-10-2020, 11:58 PM | #11 |
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I had been instructed to do this to troubleshoot Reapack when I had my issue with it. Install GDB (GNU debugger), and enter this in terminal (in the folder with the Reaper executable):
Code:
gdb reaper -ex 'set pagination off' -ex run -ex bt -ex quit I had problems with ReaPack a couple times in the past (dependency issues) and this was how I figured them out. I checked my notes that I saved, and it had needed libcurl4. (For some reason I also thought it needed GCC 8.3 or higher, but that might have been for something else.) |
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