I’ve been designing my new rig with Gig Performer at the centre of it. I’ve transferred my software to a laptop - a Windows 11 PC, Intel I5 with 16Gb Ram
I’m trying a very basic setup for a start then introduce other modules into my setup. But the first test has left me stumped.
I’m getting a signal dropout/crackle, I’ve managed to trace it to the Laptop and/or Gig Performer.
I’m running a SSL interface, but I’m lucky to have a RME interface that use for my studio. The problem is through both interfaces. Increasing the sample rate doesn’t seem to have much effect. The RME is bullet proof so I know it’s not that.
I’ve tried changing guitars, changing amps, changing USB cables etc. The only thing that I haven’t changed is the laptop and Gig Performer.
Increasing the sample rate can only make things worse. Maybe the choosing a larger block size will improve things.
But first things first: did you look at the optimization guide?
I would recommend to check that out and also read carefully about the Windows power profiles:
Another thing to look at is the cpu usage Gig Performer indicates at top on the right side. This indicator tells the usage of the audio thread. In GP there’s only one, so 100% is equal to 1 core fully deployed. (More or less).
I went through this with my studio pc so hopefully it will work. I had installed Windows with every automated process off, so I hoped there was enough capacity to run GP without optimising.
The processor is running at about 50%. No spikes. I only have a Neural DSP amp plug in running. Is 50% on an I5 normal, sounds very high to me for just one pluggin?
Is this the cpu indicator of GP or the Windows taskmanager? Neural amp is rather heavy. Taking 50% according to the GP indicator could be too high and an explanation. But when you’re running on a battery saver or balanced power profile, it could bring your cpu resources really down.
To go really back to basics: use a new gig without any plugins. Just connect the input block to the output block. I understand that’s hardly useful, but if you experience issues then also, it would be almost impossible that the cpu is overloaded.
Meanwhile more specs of your hardware could be helpful:
Brand and type of the laptop
Specific Cpu type. An i5 gen 4 differs a lot of an i5 gen 10. Although it cannot be that old, given you’re using Windows 11
Kind of used USB port
The used sample rate and block size
The specific type of interface used. (RME is not suspected to be a problem, but the number of inputs/outputs might be handy to know)
Edit: I mixed up Neural dsp amp plugins with another plugin. I know nothing about Neural dsp amp, not at first hand anyway.
Also wouldn’t kill you to upgrade that PC to 32gb. That’s the MINIMUM I would do on non-SOAC computer if I wanted to run GP. I’m running 16gb of memory on my M1 Mac, which is obviously Apple Silicon and I’m barely pushing past 30%, with VERY involved racks running.
I do know that amp modelers tend to be CPU hogs from my own mixing and mastering experience. Perhaps try a different one?
First thing I’d suspect on a Windows laptop is CPU throttling.
Definitely go through the optimization guide, but even after that, if you want a simple check when you hear crackling, hit Alt-Ctrl-Del and then click on Task Manager.
In the task manager click on the Performace tab on the left and you’ll get a window something like this:
Watch the Speed figure underneath the charts (4.10 GHz in the example above). If yours speeds up and slows down a lot then it’s a CPU throttling issue. Throttling really needs to be disabled, and sometimes laptops can be persistent in turning throttling back on after you’ve turned them off. If they start to get too hot some will override your orders and throttle anyway.
I’ve optimised the laptop and pretty much uninstalled and disabled everything I don’t need. Sorted the power settings, BIOS etc… basically I’ve done everything.
The laptop will now run one amp sim plugin with a CPU usage figure of 35% instead of 50%. The crackles etc seem to have stopped.
Flushed with this success I copied over a Rackspace that ran quite happily on my studio PC. It’s quite ‘busy’ with 3 amp sims in parallel and 3 or 4 effect plugins. Unfortunately that’s where the success ran out. The laptop couldn’t get close to running it. In fact it took a while to even load it.
Looks like I need a new laptop
The new laptop will be specifically for Gig Performer. From your advice it seems there’s nothing to gain by having a beast of a multicore processor as GP runs on one core anyway. Is there a recommended spec?
FWIW, I have been happy with my Lenovo Thinkpad P16s (Gen 2). I bought two near duplicates about a year apart from each other. That last one uses this chip: Gen 13 i7-13850HX (in both cases, integrated graphics), 64GB ram (the most recent is upgradeable to 192 GB ram).
But I often use large sample-based plugins. So, your use case is different. (If you mostly use it to process guitar, I would think you would not need that much ram).
That’s somewhat too much simplified, but basically you’re right. Depending on your setup you can use multiple instances of GP. These will have each their own audio thread. But maybe you don’t need all plugins at the same time: in that case, you should make a rackspace with plugins a, b, c and d, a second rackspace with its own copy of b, e and f, a third one with plugins a, e and f: just the chains you need. I myself use 6 rackspaces with each its own sound: clean bridge, clean neck, dirty with delay, deep distortion, solo and mild distortion. Doesn’t take too much cpu.
I would first try and see if using multiple rackspaces solves your problem. If not multiple instances could help.
If you’re laptop is very not-beefy, then perhaps you should invest in a better one, but that comes at a cost (of course )
What I really want to do is blend different amp sim plugins together. Is that possible using multiple rackspaces, or is only one rackspace selectable at one time?
Apart from the Global Rackspace, there’s always only 1 rackspace active: the point of this is that rackspaces are completely loaded into memory, but not processing (except for the active rackspace) and thus not using any cpu resources.
Switching between rackspaces is seamless: they crossfade. The time of this is adjustable. During this (short) time both rackspaces are active, so there’s a short cpu spike.
No, but you can run several GP instances at the same time, if each instance runs on a separate core you current laptop could be enough. It is worth the try.
I can still play on my Fujitsu laptop from 2009, it even has Windows 11 on it. But it is heavily optimized, with more things stripped down than those included in the guide.
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