Has anyone experienced, that the audio chokes and plays unevenly?

My Mac is an i7 2.2 Ghz 16 GB RAM SSD 1TB - the model is late 2011 running latest version of OSX and BIAB.

During play back the activity monitor shows, that BIAB uses between 105% of CPU running 14 threads. For comparison, when I run Logic Pro X (latest version) using 28 tracks (a mixture of WAV and MIDI + various iZotope plugins) it never exceed 65% of CPU load, which in theory should be more digestive than a 5 track RealTRACK Amen Rock playing at 125 BPM or 120 BPM.

Any suggestions?

That is very interesting because i do not have that problem .

I am running macOS Sierra 10.13.3 on my iMac 2009 edition ( 12 GB RAM ) from an external FireWire drive. The Band is installed/running on a 2 TB USB drive purchased from PG.

Just tried _COOLOFF Demo - Cool Off Jazz Funk w Nylon Guitar ( refer to screen shots ). Activity monitor settled down to about 46 % . FireFox, Thunderbird, Typeit4Me, Launch Bar, CopyPaste Pro running in the background.

I'll try Logic Pro X later on for curiosity although never had chocking issues even playing their demo's e.g. " numbers " .


Having said all that hope i fully understood your problem.

Would be interested to hear your findings after you try the Band's demo Cooloff...

Hi Peter,

That really shouldn't be happening with a 2.2 GHz i7, the Mac Mini I use for testing has a 1.4 Ghz i5 and the CPU usage for Band-in-a-Box usually hovers around 50%, and never spikes past 89%. I'm testing it right now with a 96 measure song and 6 RealTracks.

Does the CPU usage spike to 105% near the beginning of playback (when the song would still be generating), then settle to a more reasonable number, or does it stay at 105% for the whole song?

Band-in-a-Box is regenerating all the tracks every time we hit Generate and Play, so that could account for the increased CPU usage when compared to Logic, but it really shouldn't be as bad as you've described.

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Hi Kent

Well investigation just makes me even more confused. Without reboot or similar the very same song pitched at 92,6% CPU load today, but during the 2:53 song the load continued to drop until it reached 36,7% at the end. It looks like once BIAB has generated the song, it takes some time before the CPU resources used/reserved are freed up for other applications to use.

Compared to the last test - the load stayed below 100% CPU load for the whole song, which was the opposite at the time I reported my issue.

As I use a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 USB as primary audio device - I've tried to play the song with and without the Focusrite connected, but it didn't make any changes in the CPU load.

I also quit all other applications than BIAB, but the CPU load pattern stays the same.

My song is 95 bar - 5 bars contains various hold chords with 5 Real Tracks.

683 Bass
1263 Piano
1272 Guitar (tone 2)
645 Guitar (tone -1)
Real Drums = PraiseWorshipShine01

Reverb =0 for all instruments and no embellishment.

BPM 120-130 tried change up or down in BPM but still no change to the CPU load.

BIAB Memory use around 600 MB.

BIAB runs 32-bit (I just upgraded in a straight line since my first version 2015) - could that be a clue?

I don't have that style or song

Hi Peter,

Band-in-a-Box has always been 32-bit, that's normal and not connected to the issue. 32-bit applications just can't access as much memory as 64-bit ones, but your memory usage isn't even coming close to the 32-bit memory limit.

The reason the CPU usage takes a while to drop down to a normal amount is that Band-in-a-Box starts playback while the song is still generating. That's why we don't have to wait 2-3 minutes for generation to begin before the song starts playing, like in earlier versions of BIAB.

If the CPU usage is only getting up to 92%, that's a lot closer to what I'm getting with my i5, but my i5 is a lot newer than your i7 so their performance might be pretty similar.

It seems like something else was hogging CPU resources or affecting performance some other way when it went to 105%, but I'm not sure what it would have been. Are you testing it with the same song file now as when you had the problem?

Thanks
Kent
PG Music

Hi Kent,

just some feed back, from testing over a couple of weeks - the problem still exists. I've tried to test in various ways, both with a freshly rebooted machine, where all browsers and similar doesn't open any old windows or tabs. Even on a clean boot, the problem exists, hence it is not consistant, which freaks me out, because I would very much like to isolate the problem.

I must say, that it never occurred before upgrading to High Sierra, so for some reason, there must be ways in the Mac OSX, where the way either resources are handled or the way programs are executed has changed. Are you sure, that you at PG Music understand sufficiently the difference High Sierra made to especially older Mac Books?

Are you in any way utilizing the GPU/CPU differently on the MacBook, because I have noticed that the fan has a tendency to go wild, when using BIAB and far more than what I experience when "beefing Logic Pro X" to the max. But if you want to retrieve any log files - please let me know......right now my main suspect is High Sierra has introduced changes, that has a negative impact on the performance of my MacBook, when it runs BIAB or iZotope plugins (not at the same time).

Brgds
Peter

^



Indeed High Sierra has introduced many changes.


Rebuilding the entire hard drives directory would resolve many of those issues.

Especially after every Mac OS system update i use Micromat's TechTool Pro ( version 9 at this time ) and also Alsoft's DiskWarrior 5.

Of course you can also use Apple's Disk Utility although it is a very basic rebuild and no where near the ability of a commercial programme specifically designed for these types of rebuilds and repairs.

Another old trick is to do a safe boot restart. You restart the computer and hold down the shift key. Apple has a good explanation of this procedure.

There is also the RAM factor. With each Mac OS upgrade you require more and more and more RAM not only to have the system work but also to be able run the other programmes. At this time i have no idea how many other programmes Peters had running in the back ground.

oppps/sorry just re-read the comments : I also quit all other applications than BIAB, but the CPU load pattern stays the same.

Therefore Rebuilding the entire hard drives directory in my opinion is a must .

I'll have a go at rebuilding the HDD - remind you it's SSD 1TB and fairly new, so I would be surprised to see any effect at all, but i'll update the forum, after further testing.

Running quite smoothly on 10.13.4 High Sierra for me.

Are you running BIAB on your boot drive and is it reformatted APFS? The answer to both questions needs to be Yes. Your libraries can be on a remote drive. I have the Audiophile version and that's how mine is set up.

You can safely ignore any references to rebuilding the drive, DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro or Onyx etc. None of that applies to APFS. In fact, if you are running any so-called disk maintenance utilities, stop immediately. It is likely that you are causing your own problem. At least TTP will not run maintenance on an SSD.

Are you rebooting daily? Running any other apps simultaneously including browsers?



MacBook Pro?

Are you rebooting daily?
No

Running any other apps simultaneously including browsers?
Not when testing

Are you running BIAB on your boot drive and is it reformatted APFS?
Yes - and I realized that optimizing apps wasn't recommended, so I didn't go that way.

Yes it is a MacBook Pro

Memory leaks are a fact of life. To minimize their effect, reboot daily.

A 1T SSD is not supplied by Apple. Have you enabled TRIM? If not do so by running the following in Terminal sudo trimforce enable and entering your admin password when asked (get through all the doom & gloom CYA messages from Apple). TRIM is part of the OS but Apple's default is to disable it when the OS detects a 3rd party SSD.

Have you disabled App Nap? Run Get Info on BIAB and check the box.

A bit of a Hail Mary but ... There's always the possibility of a corrupt path. Do a Safe Boot by holding the Shift key on start up. Log into your Users account when prompted. If you have any alias icons, you will watch them being rebuilt. When done, reboot normally. Practically nothing runs in Safe Mode anymore so don't bother—the point is to restore your caches to default and rebuild any corrupt paths. Longtime Mac users will recognize this as rebuilding the desktop and, yes, it still does that, too. I've done over 30 installs of High Sierra and every one showed a few generic alias icons when I was done—this fixes those.