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#851659 05/11/25 09:51 AM
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Well I finally got rid of that crappy laptop I had for many years and upgraded to a Ryzen 9 3950x and a Asus ROG B550 mother board with 32gig of DD400 memory, all donated to me by my son as he upgraded to who knows what.

Sweet system for sure.

It got me thinking about BIAB 2025. I understand that it will utilize multiple cores now for doing all the work behind the scenes. If my CPU has 16 cores, will BIAB 2025 utilize all of them if necessary or is it limited to a certain number by software design. More of a curiosity question then anything else. I already know that programs I currently use do utilize all if them if necessary.


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I do not know what a limit might be, if any, but my PC has 8 cores and it clearly uses all eight.

- following


BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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From “crappy laptop” to a Ryzen 3950x beast… your BIAB tracks just went from tricycle to rocket ship

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I also don't know what the limit is but I have 10 cores and BiaB uses all of them.


Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!

64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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It's nothing you can control. When apps/instruments take advantage of multicore support, the OS distributes the load among the cores.

Kontakt can allow you to specify the number of cores but such apps are rare.


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Mr Marion.

your trycicle comment made my day.


to the op...

see my tips in pg tips forum re useing a new pc for music production as well as performance tests you can run on your new pc.
though your cpu is a tad older it was often called a 'beast'.
properly set up and optimised for music production it should eat up win boots and bb and rb. my lesser ry cpu boots into win from cold and bb and rb in a few secs.
and here bb track gens are nearly 'blink of an eye'.
i note your ry has a good single thread score from stats ive seen...
not the best but certainly way better than many people have.
this is important for music production.

om

Last edited by justanoldmuso; 05/12/25 05:02 AM.

my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..)
https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs
(90 songs created useing bb/rb)
(lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
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If you want to know how many cores BiaB will use get the free open hardware monitor:

https://openhardwaremonitor.org/

Start BiaB playing a looped song then start the open hardware monitor and it will show you how many cores are being used.


Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!

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I did a test with Open Hardware using a song I already had made up.

Song had 6 choruses, 54 bars long and had 5 Real Track instruments.

I first measured how many cores were used with the frozen track I had, then I changed it to 12 choruses and measured it generating the song. I finally changed it up to the maximum of 40 choruses and measured it generating the song. Even with the maximum generation going on, BIAB never used more then 5 cores to any degree.

See the attachments

Attached Files (Click to download or enlarge) (Only available when you are logged in)
6 Frozen.jpg (57.5 KB, 106 downloads)
12 Not Frozen.jpg (60.33 KB, 107 downloads)
40 - Not Frozen.jpg (53.25 KB, 107 downloads)

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Interesting. I noticed that you are using Win 10 pro while I am using Win 11 pro.
If you could upload that song that song in this thread or on the free Dropbox I while check it out, but as it has already been indicated there is nothing we can do about how many cores BiaB uses.


Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!

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Mario: Did you also notice that I am no longer on a crappy laptop? cool


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Originally Posted by Joseph Land
Mario: Did you also notice that I am no longer on a crappy laptop? cool

Yes I did! You got a fantastic deal!

Note that my by-line says Win 10. That is my main music computer. I did the tests on my Internet computer, which is Win 11.


Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!

64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Originally Posted by Joseph Land
Mario: Did you also notice that I am no longer on a crappy laptop? cool
Yes, I noticed it too, and congrats. I also checked the utility that Mario cited and rediscovered I actually have 10 cores in my i9. grin


BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Well I did have to lay out some $$$ for a good case and a water cooling system but it certainly was worth it.

45 minutes to separate a song into stems on the laptop and under 3 minutes on the new desktop. Can't argue with that.


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Originally Posted by MarioD
If you want to know how many cores BiaB will use get the free open hardware monitor:

https://openhardwaremonitor.org/

Start BiaB playing a looped song then start the open hardware monitor and it will show you how many cores are being used.
Hmmm ... my first thought was "I thought task manager already did that", but I couldn't find it ... maybe it's Linux only? Nope. Found it.

On task manager, click "Performance". then right-click on the CPU graph and select "Change graph to"->"Logical processors" and you'll get a use plot for each core.


Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
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Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
Hmmm ... my first thought was "I thought task manager already did that", but I couldn't find it ... maybe it's Linux only? Nope. Found it.

On task manager, click "Performance". then right-click on the CPU graph and select "Change graph to"->"Logical processors" and you'll get a use plot for each core.

Thanx Gordon. I didn't know about the right click on the graph. There is a lot more information there also.


Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!

64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
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Originally Posted by MarioD
Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
Hmmm ... my first thought was "I thought task manager already did that", but I couldn't find it ... maybe it's Linux only? Nope. Found it.

On task manager, click "Performance". then right-click on the CPU graph and select "Change graph to"->"Logical processors" and you'll get a use plot for each core.

Thanx Gordon. I didn't know about the right click on the graph. There is a lot more information there also.

BTW, I think this must be 'Threads' rather than 'Cores' as I have 12 graphs but only 6 cores. That terminology has always puzzled me because I think of 'threads' are different. I guess it just means each core has two sets of working registers. Or something.


Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
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Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
Originally Posted by MarioD
Originally Posted by Gordon Scott
Hmmm ... my first thought was "I thought task manager already did that", but I couldn't find it ... maybe it's Linux only? Nope. Found it.

On task manager, click "Performance". then right-click on the CPU graph and select "Change graph to"->"Logical processors" and you'll get a use plot for each core.

Thanx Gordon. I didn't know about the right click on the graph. There is a lot more information there also.

BTW, I think this must be 'Threads' rather than 'Cores' as I have 12 graphs but only 6 cores. That terminology has always puzzled me because I think of 'threads' are different. I guess it just means each core has two sets of working registers. Or something.

Yes I caught that also. But mine says 10 cores but only 16 graphs labeled Local Processors. It is very confusing for sure. Googling local processors wasn't much help either.


Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!

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Originally Posted by MarioD
BTW, I think this must be 'Threads' rather than 'Cores' as I have 12 graphs but only 6 cores. That terminology has always puzzled me because I think of 'threads' are different. I guess it just means each core has two sets of working registers. Or something.

Yes I caught that also. But mine says 10 cores but only 16 graphs labeled Local Processors. It is very confusing for sure. Googling local processors wasn't much help either. [/quote]
There often seems to be a few fewer threads than twice the number of cores ... I imagine they're related to the performance cores, not the efficiency cores. Not the kind of processors with which I'm most familiar, so I'm guessing a bit here.


Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
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These will help explain. Remember that Intel and AMD do the same thing in their own way but use different terms due to copyright.

https://umatechnology.org/what-are-cpu-cores-vs-threads/

https://shardeum.org/blog/cpu-cores-and-threads/

https://computermesh.com/cpu-cores-vs-threads/


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Originally Posted by Joseph Land
These will help explain. Remember that Intel and AMD do the same thing in their own way but use different terms due to copyright.

https://umatechnology.org/what-are-cpu-cores-vs-threads/

https://shardeum.org/blog/cpu-cores-and-threads/

https://computermesh.com/cpu-cores-vs-threads/
Unfortunately I think all of those articles are describing threads as I know them best, but in that context one can have many threads per core. All the processor specs I see list a fixed number of threads that is usually double or often a few fewer than double the number of cores.

I don't really know for sure what they're trying to tell us other than "mine's bigger than yours".

Some processors I've used in the past have multiple register sets that can be exchanged almost instantly, allowing a context switch in nearly zero time to a different set of data and probably code. I suspect what they're telling us is that some of the cores can do that because they have two sets of registers.

'Traditional' threads and/or processes would require most or all of the register content to be swapped in and out of those registers, costing time. Bu there's no inherent hardware constraint to that, so I think that's not what they mean.

I guess I could go and do some proper research on that, but I'm unlikely to much care now ... I no longer write operating systems.

Edit: if anyone cares, there's an explanation of Intel's 'hyper-threading' on Wikipedia, which says something akin to my "exchanged registers" above: Hyper-threading

Last edited by Gordon Scott; 05/14/25 09:51 AM.

Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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