Framerate drops with other progs using audio device [SOLVED]
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 11:14 pm
Hi there,
regarding the other thread "Aerodrums" hangs I have a similar experience and have quite a sepcific description (I hope ):
In standalone mode, I never have an issue with the framerate, it is 129/130 all the time.
As soon as I open another program which makes use of the audio interface (see below in the system specs), the framerate starts cycling through 9x/10x/11x/12x, where the 9x step does not occur very often. The cycling frequency is appr. 1Hz for all 4 steps, so the values are readable. The red warning appears that the drumming would be impacted by grahpics.
Well, it's not the graphics, because when I switch through all the options with CTRL-G, nothing changes, not even in the "headless" mode w/o the graphics (the FPS values are still shown in the window title though). After a while, it goes down to 9% and virtually hangs.
Of course I read the other thread "Areodrums hangs" and followed almost all the advice given there, including trying all combinations of USB ports for the audio device and the PS3 camera. As "competing" software far I have tried Maschine and Kontakt from Native Instruments as well as Reaper. I also tried all audio settings, from ASIO to WASAPI, from 44.1kHz to 48kHz.
When I pull the USB plug from the audio device; the framerate of aerodrum recovers. So it's clearly a "war" about the USB resources. CPU usage stays far from busy, see next paragraph "On the side".
Other than with Aerodrums, I haven't had any problems regarding audio or performance with that machine. I understand that the camera with the high framerate needs some bandwith. But I do not intend to use aerodrums in standalone very much, it's seems it is no use at this point for me since I'd like to use it mainly with NI Drumlab, but also with Kits like the free MT Powerdrum Kit.
On the side: during my two day long investigations and trials (*sigh*) I discovered this: on the splash/welcome screen and the home screen of Aerodrums, the CPU load is 24% and the frequency of the CPU is at the highest setting. after a minute or so the fans kick in, which they usually never do!
Anyway, so when I go to the drum screen the load drops to 6-11% and the frequency setting of the CPU cycles between 25% and 45% of the maximum freq. What is going on there? One would expect the opposite: nearly no CPU load and low CPU Freq on the Welcome and Home screens, and soem more usage and freq on the drum page. Or am I mistaken? Maybe you could actually improve the polling in drum mode?
Anyway, at the moment I'm quite frustrated with the whole thing. I bought areodrums for fun (no, for getting some beats into the DAW/host via MIDI, to be honest), but so far it has been lacking that for me... *sigh* (BTW, the MIDI prob with the hi hat sound after pedal down persists with other software as well, see the thread in general)
Any further hints or advice?
Thanks,
CaB
My system specs:
==================================
I own a self-built audio PC with Windows 8.1 64bit. It's driven by an i5 4590S on an ASUS H97M Plus mainboard with 16GB DDR3 RAM, all from Oct 2014
GFX are driven the integrated Intel HD 4600 GPU
The mainboard has at least 4 separate USB ports, one is USB 3 and the others are USB 2.
The Audio device is a Novation nio2|4 from 2008 with current drivers suitable for Win 8.1.
regarding the other thread "Aerodrums" hangs I have a similar experience and have quite a sepcific description (I hope ):
In standalone mode, I never have an issue with the framerate, it is 129/130 all the time.
As soon as I open another program which makes use of the audio interface (see below in the system specs), the framerate starts cycling through 9x/10x/11x/12x, where the 9x step does not occur very often. The cycling frequency is appr. 1Hz for all 4 steps, so the values are readable. The red warning appears that the drumming would be impacted by grahpics.
Well, it's not the graphics, because when I switch through all the options with CTRL-G, nothing changes, not even in the "headless" mode w/o the graphics (the FPS values are still shown in the window title though). After a while, it goes down to 9% and virtually hangs.
Of course I read the other thread "Areodrums hangs" and followed almost all the advice given there, including trying all combinations of USB ports for the audio device and the PS3 camera. As "competing" software far I have tried Maschine and Kontakt from Native Instruments as well as Reaper. I also tried all audio settings, from ASIO to WASAPI, from 44.1kHz to 48kHz.
When I pull the USB plug from the audio device; the framerate of aerodrum recovers. So it's clearly a "war" about the USB resources. CPU usage stays far from busy, see next paragraph "On the side".
Other than with Aerodrums, I haven't had any problems regarding audio or performance with that machine. I understand that the camera with the high framerate needs some bandwith. But I do not intend to use aerodrums in standalone very much, it's seems it is no use at this point for me since I'd like to use it mainly with NI Drumlab, but also with Kits like the free MT Powerdrum Kit.
On the side: during my two day long investigations and trials (*sigh*) I discovered this: on the splash/welcome screen and the home screen of Aerodrums, the CPU load is 24% and the frequency of the CPU is at the highest setting. after a minute or so the fans kick in, which they usually never do!
Anyway, so when I go to the drum screen the load drops to 6-11% and the frequency setting of the CPU cycles between 25% and 45% of the maximum freq. What is going on there? One would expect the opposite: nearly no CPU load and low CPU Freq on the Welcome and Home screens, and soem more usage and freq on the drum page. Or am I mistaken? Maybe you could actually improve the polling in drum mode?
Anyway, at the moment I'm quite frustrated with the whole thing. I bought areodrums for fun (no, for getting some beats into the DAW/host via MIDI, to be honest), but so far it has been lacking that for me... *sigh* (BTW, the MIDI prob with the hi hat sound after pedal down persists with other software as well, see the thread in general)
Any further hints or advice?
Thanks,
CaB
My system specs:
==================================
I own a self-built audio PC with Windows 8.1 64bit. It's driven by an i5 4590S on an ASUS H97M Plus mainboard with 16GB DDR3 RAM, all from Oct 2014
GFX are driven the integrated Intel HD 4600 GPU
The mainboard has at least 4 separate USB ports, one is USB 3 and the others are USB 2.
The Audio device is a Novation nio2|4 from 2008 with current drivers suitable for Win 8.1.