Synchron Bösendorfer Imperial and 280VC CPU spikes and peaks

[157284]

Hello Everyone,

This is my first time working with a VST. I have installed the full librairies of the Bösendorfer Imperial and the 280VC on my MacBook Pro 2018 (Catalina OSX). Here are my specs:

-2.9GHz 6-Core Intel i9

-32gb 2400 MHz DDR4 of RAM

-All Flash internal storage, on which I installed both the Bösendorfer Imperial and 280VC, full libraries in both cases.

When I play it from my Kawai K300-ATX2 piano, the CPU meter is around 20%, sometimes goes to around 40%  and peak is often at 100%, which  of course makes the sound crackle when I play big chords with the sustain pedal. I'm not even adding mics to the factory presets yet. I'm sure this question has been asked many times but:

What can I do to prevent this without compromising sound quality too much? I thought my setup was powerful enough to avoid all this. It's certainly the recommended hardware on VSL's website. 

That said, I don't mind it that much happening when I'm just live playing. My plan for this VST is to use it for demos of my piano compositions. Would this also happen with playback, for example through LogicPro?

Apologies, I don't know anything yet about Cpu and RAM. Thanks in advance for your help because the "manual" isn't very useful, at least from what I could find.

Frederic

[Paul]

Welcome Frederic,

First time VST, very cool!

A soundcard will definitely be better than the built-in soundcard - are you using one?

In any case: Which buffer settings are you using? => Did you try to increase this value?

And which Preload Size do you see when you open the Settings => Database? Higher settings might stabilize your performance.

You will also see that deactivating channels that you don't need for recording will help.

Best,
Paul

[157284]

Hello Paul,

Thank you for coming to the rescue! Indeed, VSTs are very cool. You guys are doing amazing work. The Bösendorfer Imperial is mind-blowing. Very sensitive and good separation of timbres. This is all new to me. I'm a professional opera singer so I'm used to acoustic instruments!

No, I'm not using an external soundcard. I don't know the first thing about it, sorry! Could you please recommend one or more for my specs and my needs? I'm not going to play VSTs in a live setting. I just want to make sure my piano demos don't have crackling in them. I'll use max 4-5 Synchron mics at a time but I do have full chords and use pedal sometimes for a couple of seconds.

If by buffer you mean the latency, I set it at 64 and cannot change it otherwise there's too much delay; I'm using a real piano with a silent system (Kawai K300-ATX2).

The sample rate is set at 44,100. 

I'm not recording yet so not using any channels. I've adjusted the preload size, thanks.

I don't want to waste your time with my newbie status but could you please tell me if this is fixable with my specs? I know that Macbook Pros (mine is the 2018 i9) have some thermal issues and there were some down-clocking but I never hear the fans in mine when playing live with Synchron. So when I get peaks in the CPU Meter at 100%, that's the CPU jumping all of a sudden from 30-40% to 100%??

I guess that my most important question is: if I get a proper external soundcard, will I be able to use Synchron in Logic Pro at a sample rate around 48,000 and latency 64 without any crackles, considering I might use maybe 4 mics in Synchron?

Thanks a lot.. Have a nice weekend

Frederic

[civilization 3]

Greetings, just another end user here...

You can in all probability get down to 64 samples if not 32 in your buffer with an audio interface (or the old-school word 'card') with more viable ASIO drivers. I'm not in the business of selling gear but you can google 'low latency audio drivers' and so on. The diff between 44.1 and 48 khz here is not real significant to your latency btw.

[157284]

Thank you. I thought having a 6-core i9 and 32gb ram were all I pretty much needed to play a single but dense piano VST. I need to figure out how all this works, what every piece of hardware does. The Bösendorfer Imperial is the one that I want but I'm not ready to buy a lot of extra gear. I'm a professional musician and all my income is out the window.  

Would this be the only extra gear that I need to be able to play (and record) sometimes big FFF chords with pedal and let's say 4 mics ?

Thanks

Frederic 

MacBook Pro 2018

2.9ghz 6-core i9

32gb Ram

2TB SSD

[civilization 3]

Yeah, unless you have to send a lot of outputs for surround you can get by with a pretty inexpensive interface, with just stereo outs. 2 + phones. But this is minimum, this part is unavoidable. The muscle of the machine isn't all there is to it, the drivers of a device are key.

[bgiles]

Firstly, thank you Frederic for opening this valuable topic.

 

I, like many others I’m sure, want to avoid having to purchase new hardware in order access this wonderful library, and whilst VSL do specify the minimum system requirements, I would like to establish how realistic this actually is, or if compromises have to be accepted when using the minimum.

 

I have a dedicated MacBook Pro that is only used for live playing, no DAW software, as I use an external Tascam Portastudio for any recordings.

This hardware happily runs VSL Special Edition Orchestra, but now want the lovely Synchron Bösendorfer 280VC, not running alongside the SE, just stand alone.

 

My hardware specification is;

Apple MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" Mid­-2012 Specs.

macOS 10.15 Catalina

16GB RAM

500GB SSD, SATA 6 GB/s, APFS 300GB free space

Vienna key (x2)

Behringer U-PHORIA UMC204HD Audio Interface (Audiophile 24-Bit/192 kHz resolution)

 

I plan to initially purchase the Standard Library, as I’m aware of the impact of adding too many microphones to the mix.

 

Any feedback from Paul at VSL, or users with similar hardware would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks, Brian

[Vast]

@bgiles said:

Firstly, thank you Frederic for opening this valuable topic.

 

I, like many others I’m sure, want to avoid having to purchase new hardware in order access this wonderful library, and whilst VSL do specify the minimum system requirements, I would like to establish how realistic this actually is, or if compromises have to be accepted when using the minimum.

 

I have a dedicated MacBook Pro that is only used for live playing, no DAW software, as I use an external Tascam Portastudio for any recordings.

This hardware happily runs VSL Special Edition Orchestra, but now want the lovely Synchron Bösendorfer 280VC, not running alongside the SE, just stand alone.

 

My hardware specification is;

Apple MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.5 13" Mid­-2012 Specs.

macOS 10.15 Catalina

16GB RAM

500GB SSD, SATA 6 GB/s, APFS 300GB free space

Vienna key (x2)

Behringer U-PHORIA UMC204HD Audio Interface (Audiophile 24-Bit/192 kHz resolution)

 

I plan to initially purchase the Standard Library, as I’m aware of the impact of adding too many microphones to the mix.

 

Any feedback from Paul at VSL, or users with similar hardware would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks, Brian

It might work on your system to be able to play the Bösendorfer 280 VC in the Standard Library without drop outs. In your case, the bottleneck is the maximum speed given by SATA. You are using the maximum with an SSD, but it would have to be a very fast SATA SSD. In general, SSDs with higher capacity than yours are a bit faster, also the space you have left is relatively small.  Otherwise, with the other specifications, it should work.

On my system, the new Bösendorfer Imperial only worked without drop out on a fast M2 SSD on a motherboard with PCI Express interface. With this, data rates of over 10 GByte/s are possible, 20 GByte/s for me.

An external SSD that I had connected to the computer via USB 3.0 did not work properly with this library, apparently too slow. Perhaps it would work for you with an external SSD connected via the Thunderbolt port (10 GB/s), but I have no experience with this faster interface in combination with an SSD connected via Thunderbolt.

[bgiles]

Thanks for the reply Vast

I think based on your advice, it would be unwise for me to attempt to run Synchron Bösendorfer 280 VC on my current hardware, as I do already experience CPU spiking issues with the Synchron Smart Orchestra, but not with the older VSL Special Edition Library.

I'll need to invest in newer hardware, probably a new iMac, and concentrate on the SDD capacity and speed, assuming that this library supports the new Apple M1 processor.

Brian