Plug-Ins causing crackling and audio to stop
I have a vst instrument plug-in running in my patch being sequenced by an audio rate sequencer (phaser~, rate~). The plug-in is UVI falcon. The CPU inside the plug-ins is not high, maybe 5% and the CPU for max patch is 30% ish. When the plug-in is in edit mode there is quite a lot of crackling and sometimes the audio completely disappears. I have multiple cc's going into the plug-in. The crackling and audio dissapearance sometimes happens when I am not in edit mode. DSP is still active but no sound. It does not crash, so can't do a report.
Is there a limit for plug-in use? Or is there something I can do to improve the load?
Running on 2 year old iMac 32GB memory.
Not an expert but I can provide my experiences. UVI Falcon is super awesome but does consume a lot of CPU. CPU consumption is per-voice, so the more voices actively running, the more CPU usage will go up. Layering sounds is a big part of Falcon, so voice count can go up quickly.
Another thing to check, are the knobs you're trying to turn also being driven by a signal? Maybe there's contention.
You can also try increasing the buffer size in your audio settings, although this will increase latency.
Check if seeing debug patch cords and similar settings are not enabled, that will slow down edit mode.
Ah, probably because I have 2 layers of sample oscillators running with up to 16 voice poly each. But apparently the CPU use within Falcon is very low. I'll also look as the buffer size too, but as you say, latency is not really wanted. I'll see if I can find a balance.
Thanks.
From my experience Max ist not fond of hosting many and/or big plugins. Falcon is a challenge. CPU impact can hardly be guessed, it depends on the usage. Due to beautiful modern technology the hierarchy Max>VST~>AU>Falcon more or less means running in a wrapper in a wrapper in a wrapper ;-)
If you don’t find an acceptable performance balance, maybe the Falcon standalone app may be an option. Workflow gets a little cumbersome but Falcon runs on it's own. You can control it from Max by a virtual MIDI port. In case you need audio returned to Max, you need virtual audio ports also, with Blackhole for example. Should not add much latency.
Thanks Peter. I was layering up too many sounds with high polyphony. I decided to only use Falcon for the necessary work and everything else build in Max.
I was just hoping to use Falcon for everything, if only for simplicity. Most of the stuff like simple drum sampling is easy to do with max, but just takes a little longer to build.
Oh, Thanks for pointing me to Blackhole. May be useful in the future.