adrian4u
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 02:14:57
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UnderTow - maybe you have good idea - to choose group of data/parameters to make a test?
But don't expect Sonar will be better than i.e. Ableton or Acid.
Sonar, Cubase and few others look like they take a part in beauty contest, with other important things to judge than PERFORMANCE.
They take strong CPU and GPU just for working, when Ableton and (i.e.) Acid - just WORKS.
Moreover "CPU Usage" meter in Sonar is a one big lie! It can lower real results more than 50% in comparison to system meter in Windows.
And - in "power consumption" test - Sonar could be on the top - as the most power-eater DAW. Not power-efficient.
OK, so maybe we can test VST instruments rendering quality. But some people here can say, that there are only "zeroes and ones", so there should be no diferences in result sound. They're wrong.
For now, the best sounding rendering engine has... not Sonar, and not Cubase....
Maybe we will test "abilities" and "possibilities"? But guess what - Abilities and possibilities are nothing, when you have to spend 1000$ for new computer just because your DAW doesn't want to run properly?
I have ATI 4350 HD in my PC. It's very good for Ableton, Acid, even for Cubase. But for Sonar??? Neeeeee - Sonar NEEDS MORE.... R U kidding me?
But - at the end - I've spent some $$$ to buy this DAW and I WILL buy new PC just for Sonar and few other toys. I even "sacrifice" my "old" PC to make customised-system EFX rack for Sonar.
Phenom II x6 1100T (OC to 6x 4,1gHz), 8gB DDR3/1600gHz RAM, Win7/64; SONAR Producer X1c; Korgs: Z1, M50, Triton Rack, TRinity Rack; NI Maschine; Behringer BCF-R2000; MOTU 828mk3 FW; Edirol Edirol UA-1000; guitars: Cort Z-Custom, LAG JET100 totally customed, Cort SFX-DAO; some other music toys, one very musical cat  *************************************** Be patient for newbie ;)
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chrisharbin
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 02:52:19
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wayofmind
The common argument I hear when debating the necessity of going beyond a quad-core processor is that "Most software is just starting to grasp quad core, let alone hexacore or beyond"...
But what about the software that is supposed to take full advantage of any and all cores, here and now, like X1?
Well, basically I upgraded to a 6-core machine for Sonar X1 alone.
All I have to say is .... Wow. Projects that would bring my old dual core system to a screeching halt are now running fully exposed (meaning nothing frozen), with all of the 6 cores fluttering away fairly evenly, and so far I've never seen them get moderately close to 50% load. Tons of Guitar Rig instances, Drumagog, autotune, Izotope Ozone, all of these heavy plugins .... and Sonar uses all of my cores to ensure that nobody even breaks a sweat.
So, I've had my issues with X1, but as per this subject, I must say, well done Cakewalk. Seriously. X1 uses newer multicores beautifully!
It's really cool to have all that power hun :)
i7 860/MSI mobo/8GB ram/win7x64ultimate/X2/profire 610/oxygen 61/running 48k currently.
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ShermanSmelville
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 04:31:36
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Does perfomance even matter any more when the new computers are so powerful that there is always seems to be headroom to run any combination of tracks/fx?
"If you drive a few cars down the road and back and then claim their performance is about the same it is meaningless"- unless you have a good feeling/understanding of cars.
Music Equipment: Cakewalk, Izotope, Propellerheads, Wavelab, Yamaha guitars, Roland keyboards Sonar X1, Gateway DX4831 (i7 860, NVidia GT320, 64bit, 8gig)
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ProjectM
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 06:52:10
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To me - and I'm just saying - that comparing Live to Sonar is a little weird. Live is - as the name clearly suggests - a live tool while Sonar is a Studio tool. I don't think anyone intended for Sonar to be used live and therefore have a thousand tons more features than Live while Ableton have made Live a very sturdy and reliable software for use in a live situation. And doing so, Live is more limited in a production situation. Still a kick ass product, and definitely not a toy! But different from Sonar. Together, however, Live and Sonar makes a killer couple and I've used Sonar for multi track playback on stage many times along side Live for all the live tweaking mayhem. Just saying... Now back on topic
(Sonar Platinum - Win10 x64) - iMac and 13" MacBook - Logic Pro X ++ - UA Apollo Twin DUO - NI Maschine MKII - NI Komplete Kontrol S61 - Novation Nocturne - KRK Rokit 6 SoundcloudNegative Vibe Records
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adrian4u
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 08:11:37
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ProjectM....
I was starting to use Live 3-4 times, everytime it pissed me off. Last time - I've just made up my mind and live is briliant.
But - whatever good we can say about Sonar - it has NO two essential things that are VERY important when tracking, producing or whatever else - using external audio:
- External Instrument track - in dreams - as flexible as VST tracks)
- External Input gain
And Live has BOTH.
Is this so difficult for Cakewalk programmers to made two little, but essential changes?
Going back to topic and - the last question was: AMD or Intel? ;)
Phenom II x6 1100T (OC to 6x 4,1gHz), 8gB DDR3/1600gHz RAM, Win7/64; SONAR Producer X1c; Korgs: Z1, M50, Triton Rack, TRinity Rack; NI Maschine; Behringer BCF-R2000; MOTU 828mk3 FW; Edirol Edirol UA-1000; guitars: Cort Z-Custom, LAG JET100 totally customed, Cort SFX-DAO; some other music toys, one very musical cat *************************************** Be patient for newbie ;)
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John
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 08:24:37
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I have been using Sonar for years and before that Pro Audio and I assure you that Sonar, any version, can and does handle external audio just fine. If you are talking about the DAW driving a hardware synth and recording the result Sonar will do that with ease. I do it all the time. Nor do I need input gain. I have my signals coming in at the proper level without it. Really there is no difference from have a mic or a hardware inputing to Sonar as far as tracking is concerned. You may find the an external instrument track useful but I had that back in Cubase SX 3 and I never use it. Demanding stuff that can only be thought of as optional and making it a necessity when people have done with out it and never missed it is confounding. That does not mean that having those things would be a bad thing its just its not the end of the world if one doesn't.
post edited by John - 2011/03/07 08:57:24
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panup
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 08:36:16
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adrian4u
Moreover "CPU Usage" meter in Sonar is a one big lie! It can lower real results more than 50% in comparison to system meter in Windows.
SONAR's CPU Usage meter and Windows Task Manager show different information. SONAR'S CPU meter shows percentage of how much time is used before a buffer dropout will happen or something like that. There is a post from Noel at this forum where CPU Meter functioning is described.
post edited by panup - 2011/03/07 08:37:18
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adrian4u
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 11:00:18
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OK, Panup, but - to really see, how your CPU/system is loaded, you have (Win7) to put a widget on your desktop, that sgows parameters like CPU load...
And Sonar has no such meter..... Juzt a meter which means nothing at all.
Phenom II x6 1100T (OC to 6x 4,1gHz), 8gB DDR3/1600gHz RAM, Win7/64; SONAR Producer X1c; Korgs: Z1, M50, Triton Rack, TRinity Rack; NI Maschine; Behringer BCF-R2000; MOTU 828mk3 FW; Edirol Edirol UA-1000; guitars: Cort Z-Custom, LAG JET100 totally customed, Cort SFX-DAO; some other music toys, one very musical cat *************************************** Be patient for newbie ;)
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JazzSinger
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 12:12:07
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How warm, or to be more precise, how loud does the cooling fan get on a hexcore i7?
I use a Samsung N20 atom based laptop/netbook for recording for this reason.
I am looking for a new small laptop, but I prefer the fan not to have to run.
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 13:58:21
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Btw, if the bakers are reading, here is something I have always wondered about: Is there a limit to the number of cores/CPUs Sonar will utilise? What would happen if Sonar runs on a quad processor system with Opteron 6180 processors? (12 cores each for a total of 48 cores). I understand that you probably haven't had the opportunity to test this in practise but would Sonar theoretically utilise all 48 cores? Yes it would. SONAR's engine itself has no limit to the number of cores. We ask the OS for the count of cores and scale up the number of worker threads based on that. There is a limitation of 32 CPU meters in the control bar though which is probably more than any user will be using for some time. If the cores exceed that you just won't see the extras beyond 32 but it wont impact the engine in any way. What we have tested on real hardware are upto 24 core systems. In fact my work machine is an early prototype Intel dual socket machine with 6 cores each. With hyperthreading that gives me 24 cores. Its been useful for flushing out multiprocessing issues.
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koolbass
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 14:15:18
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Thanx for the info and clarification Noel. The fact that you, personally, take the time to clear up some of these issues means a lot to me.
Cheers, Lance "koolbass" Martin Sonar Platinum, Sound Forge Pro 12, ADK built audio computer: Intel 8 core i7 Haswell-E overclocked 4.2GHz; 32 Gig DDR4/2666 ram; Corsair 850W power; Windows Pro 10 x64; Geforce GTX 980 video w/4 monitors (Acer 27" touch screen/primary); 3 Seagate drives - OS, audio, samples, 2 TB external USB3 bkup drive; RME MADIface XT; Ferrofish A16 MKII ADDA; Lucid GenX 6-96 clock www.BoogieHouseMusic.com
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UnderTow
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 16:50:38
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]
Btw, if the bakers are reading, here is something I have always wondered about: Is there a limit to the number of cores/CPUs Sonar will utilise? What would happen if Sonar runs on a quad processor system with Opteron 6180 processors? (12 cores each for a total of 48 cores). I understand that you probably haven't had the opportunity to test this in practise but would Sonar theoretically utilise all 48 cores?
Yes it would. SONAR's engine itself has no limit to the number of cores. We ask the OS for the count of cores and scale up the number of worker threads based on that. There is a limitation of 32 CPU meters in the control bar though which is probably more than any user will be using for some time. If the cores exceed that you just won't see the extras beyond 32 but it wont impact the engine in any way.
What we have tested on real hardware are upto 24 core systems. In fact my work machine is an early prototype Intel dual socket machine with 6 cores each. With hyperthreading that gives me 24 cores. Its been useful for flushing out multiprocessing issues.
Thanks for the info Noel. That is exactly what I wanted to hear.  UnderTow
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UnderTow
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/07 17:11:24
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adrian4u
Sonar, Cubase and few others look like they take a part in beauty contest, with other important things to judge than PERFORMANCE.
They take strong CPU and GPU just for working, when Ableton and (i.e.) Acid - just WORKS.
I must say I can't really judge this as I have had relatively powerful GPUs for a while. (Currently on ATI Radeon HD5750). Moreover "CPU Usage" meter in Sonar is a one big lie! It can lower real results more than 50% in comparison to system meter in Windows.
CPU meters in DAWs are never really reliable and that is not the way to test. The way most things tend to be tested these days is to have a reference track with music or a test tone and then have other tracks/buses with plugins. Keep adding tracks/plugins until the reference track starts having audible glitches/drop-outs or the DAW stops playing. That is when you have reached the limit of the DAW on that particular setup with those settings. Of course there are many different types of plugins and not just the difference between FX and instrument plugins, but also different plugins might react differently in different DAWs. (Not to mention differences between processing intensive plugins, disk/memory heavy samplers etc). So I think the tests that best represent real life situations use a good mix of various plugins. And even then the conclusions can be more complex than one might first think. For instance on one of my older DAW builds which used dual Opteron processors on a Tyan server board, Cubase could handle more plugins at lower latency (good for tracking) but Sonar could handle more stuff at higher latency (good for mixing). On that particular build running XP I could make Sonar use 100% CPU on all cores (In the Task Manager) without any audible glitches by setting the latency very high. (Graceful degradation under load). This can be important for some people in some situations. Cubase while using less CPU and allowing more plugins at any lower latency settings, didn't manage the very high latency in the same way. (I am talking 50 ms latency or more). This gave Sonar an edge when dealing with some of my monster projects with close to 200 tracks... OK, so maybe we can test VST instruments rendering quality. But some people here can say, that there are only "zeroes and ones", so there should be no diferences in result sound. They're wrong. For now, the best sounding rendering engine has... not Sonar, and not Cubase....
The DAWs don't control the actual rendering and dozens and dozens of fully documented tests have been done for summing. All DAWs are the same in the end. Summing or rendering is not something to worry about. (Unless you are talking about something like fast bounce causing glitches or skipped notes or something like that). UnderTow
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himalaya
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/12 17:15:47
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ProjectM
To me - and I'm just saying - that comparing Live to Sonar is a little weird. Live is - as the name clearly suggests - a live tool while Sonar is a Studio tool. I don't think anyone intended for Sonar to be used live and therefore have a thousand tons more features than Live while Ableton have made Live a very sturdy and reliable software for use in a live situation. And doing so, Live is more limited in a production situation. Still a kick ass product, and definitely not a toy! But different from Sonar. Together, however, Live and Sonar makes a killer couple and I've used Sonar for multi track playback on stage many times along side Live for all the live tweaking mayhem.
Just saying...
Now back on topic
If you divide the roles as: Live = live stage/dj use and Sonar = studio, recording use then you have a point. But that's no longer how it can be divided as both can be used for similar roles. (with even Sonar gaining Live-like features. See Matrix). If I use Sonar for a synth plugin based project, and use Live for a synth plugin based project, with both hosts using just the rudimentary features, then what you say holds no water. Those "thousands" of features in Sonar do not come into play here. What does, is how each host behaves at low latency with VST playback. But then, Sonar's inferior audio engine playback is revealed not just through instrument plugins playback. As I have mentioned, and many on this board too, it takes a simple act of grabing the fade envelope in a clip to couse a drop out. Same with moving clips around. This is totally random, but it is there nontheless. And like somebody said above, I still love Sonar's feature set, hence my criticism of the audio engine, as I desperately wish it was improved once and for all, so that I don't have to look at other host options.
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himalaya
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Re:Moved from dual core to hexacore, opened project in Sonar X1 -- WOW!!!!!
2011/03/12 17:27:30
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ShermanSmelville
Does perfomance even matter any more when the new computers are so powerful that there is always seems to be headroom to run any combination of tracks/fx?
Why shouldn't it? Throwing a multi-core PC at Sonar will certainly make Sonar seem like it sails smoothly, but under the hood, it would still be the same audio engine that does not work as well on lesser specified PCs, as other hosts do. (I speak about 8.5.3 here only). Then there are still users with less powerful machines. Myself, I use two, a dual core laptop and a Quad desktop. Unfotunately, due to my sound design work, I need to do a lot of projects on my laptop as it shows the CPU use of presets I make more clearly, and I need this clearer view of CPU use so that I can stay within guidelines. And it's here where I see Sonar choke with drop outs where, Live for example, refuses to drop out even at heavy CPU load.
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