Liquid Mix - AWESOME!

I just got this and its fantastic! Sounds amazing, and the real surprise to me is that I can get really low latency from it. there is a negligible difference with it engaged (bus or track) or not. amazing.

well i don't own a UAD, but I've done alot of homework on this. Personally I was not ready to buy and install multiple UADs and deal with any issues. I do believe everyone when they say UAD sounds fantastic. However, the LM sounds fantastic. I can really hear the differences in the various limiters, compressors, and EQs. I was pleasantly surprised about being able to use it in realtime. The one problem however, is that I AM getting some CPU hit. Not sure why because it is supposed to offload. I just got it yesterday so I still may need to tweak. I am also using the firewire port on my soundcard and that may have something to do with it.

I did a little experiment thought to test the response of pushing this to the extreme. Check out this article:

http://www.uaudio.com/webzine/2003/april/index8.html

I did exactly what he said he did to get the sound for black dog by zeppelin, and the LM reproduced this effect 100% perfectly!

ORIGINAL: dstrenz

ORIGINAL: Duojet
I am also using the firewire port on my soundcard and that may have something to do with it.

So it seems to work on the 1820m's firewire port? Cool!! Thanks for this info!

How much of a cpu hit are you getting? Any glitches? Even though the processing is offloaded, it still has to pump data round trip through the port. That's gotta take some cpu..

Yeah it works fine through the EMU Firewire port, even at fairly low latency with no glitches. I still bought a PCI firewire card though. I want to power this thing through the firewire port and not use the adapter. The 1820m provides a max of 3W through the port. Even though it works powered through the emu, I'm afraid that if I push alot of tracks it may not have enough power. I find it hard to believe that under full load this thing would use 3W or less. The adapter for the LM is spec'd at 1A@12V, or 12 Watts max. I also dont want to risk damaging the EMU by trying to draw too much power.

I'm getting a 1-2.5% per instance, depending on latency. so at the lowest latencies, 2.5% for each yields pver 75% for the full 32 tracks this thing can do.

ORIGINAL: dstrenz

Thanks again.

fyi, I'm running an AMD X2 also and found this on their site: http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/article.php?id=244

It's definitely possible to run Liquid Mix on AMD processor based PC computers. However, we have documented some problems in the past with the AMD Dual Core 64bit machines involving conflicts between a number of connected devices. For example, if you try to run a firewire sound card and Liquid Mix on the same bus, you may experience CPU spiking, crashes, or poor performance of the firewire devices themselves. Tests have revealed that these problems can be avoided by running Liquid Mix on a separate PCI firewire card. That is, it should have its own PCI or PCIe card which isn't shared by any other firewire devices.

So it looks like the separate fw card was a wise decision.

yeah, you can get a good FW card for $10-$15 including shipping.

I woke up at 3am and ordered one. 'Logic' kept hounding me about the fact that it has at least 3 compressors I'd love to own and each one of them costs a lot more that LM. These damn internets makes buying things too easy... Hopefully connecting it to the main firewire port and moving the external HD to the 1820m's port will work.

I hope you guys are still happy with yours.

ORIGINAL: dstrenz

I woke up at 3am and ordered one. 'Logic' kept hounding me about the fact that it has at least 3 compressors I'd love to own and each one of them costs a lot more that LM. These damn internets makes buying things too easy... Hopefully connecting it to the main firewire port and moving the external HD to the 1820m's port will work.

I hope you guys are still happy with yours.

i didn't have any problems connecting it to the emu fw port (fyi, the emu uses a ti chipset). i think worst case you might need to use the external power supply which is included.

ORIGINAL: Duojet

ok, i know people hate reaper comparisons, but this is just another which shows that it has a more efficient audio engine.

at 2ms latency each instance of LM uses approx 3-4% CPU, in reaper approx .45%
at 4ms each uses 1-3% in sonar, .25% in reaper.

yes, sonar uses 10x the CPU for each instance.

Hmm, that's pretty bizarre. The projects used the same wav files, sample rates, emu latency, etc?

Don't know why anyone object to having that info. Otherwise, how can Cake fix things if they don't know problems exist..

ORIGINAL: Duojet
not quite as much as 10x (retested and edited orig msg). still it adds up. if you use all 32 instances, sonar is using alot of cpu, even at higher latecies. one thing with liq mix that works better in sonar is "hardware follows plug in window" this works perfectly in sonar but not reaper.

3.5-4x is much better but I definitely agree that it's still quite a significant difference. I imagine that in a pinch most, if not all, of an instance's used cpu cycles can be regained by freezing tracks. All in all, that process would surely be simpler than dealing with the hassle of routing 32 real hardware devices and a lot less expensive.

Thanks again for all the investigative work and the info you've provided!

ORIGINAL: tarsier

ORIGINAL: Duojet
at 2ms latency each instance of LM uses approx 3% CPU, in reaper approx .8%
at 4ms each uses 1-2.5% in sonar, .57% in reaper.

What are you using to measure that? Hopefully the same tool otherwise the comparison isn't too meaningful.

the cpu indicator in each app. basically, i did nothing more than open a blank project, add 8 tracks, put an instance of LM in each, and turn on input monitoring on all tracks. used the same latency for each. reaper actually gives the total cpu, the total cpu used by FX, the total CPU for FX on each track. for sonar, i just took the total, deducted the CPU before any FX (minimal), and then divided by 8 to get each track.

Retest using task manager's performance tab.

I have to 2nd that suggestion!
Also you have bit depth, dithering, 64 bit etc.

Max Arwood

ORIGINAL: jabdo56

ORIGINAL: Duojet

ORIGINAL: tarsier

ORIGINAL: Duojet
at 2ms latency each instance of LM uses approx 3% CPU, in reaper approx .8%
at 4ms each uses 1-2.5% in sonar, .57% in reaper.

What are you using to measure that? Hopefully the same tool otherwise the comparison isn't too meaningful.

the cpu indicator in each app. basically, i did nothing more than open a blank project, add 8 tracks, put an instance of LM in each, and turn on input monitoring on all tracks. used the same latency for each. reaper actually gives the total cpu, the total cpu used by FX, the total CPU for FX on each track. for sonar, i just took the total, deducted the CPU before any FX (minimal), and then divided by 8 to get each track.

Retest using task manager's performance tab.

will try this too when I get home.

ORIGINAL: jabdo56

ORIGINAL: Duojet

ORIGINAL: tarsier

ORIGINAL: Duojet
at 2ms latency each instance of LM uses approx 3% CPU, in reaper approx .8%
at 4ms each uses 1-2.5% in sonar, .57% in reaper.

What are you using to measure that? Hopefully the same tool otherwise the comparison isn't too meaningful.

the cpu indicator in each app. basically, i did nothing more than open a blank project, add 8 tracks, put an instance of LM in each, and turn on input monitoring on all tracks. used the same latency for each. reaper actually gives the total cpu, the total cpu used by FX, the total CPU for FX on each track. for sonar, i just took the total, deducted the CPU before any FX (minimal), and then divided by 8 to get each track.

Retest using task manager's performance tab.

task mgr confirms the roughly 2.5x increase in cpu with sonar vs reaper. this is with 64 bit, and dither off in sonar and 24 bit resolution for both. same sample rates, multiproc on on sonar.

ORIGINAL: jonnycakes15
I have had the LM for about 5 months now and I love it too. Are you getting any CPU spikes when you open a project with LM plugins saved in it?

Mine hasn't arrived yet but I've already downloaded the latest driver v2.0.49(rc1) and the first release note says: "Fixed some crashes with reloading sessions in Sonar." Hmm, it also says basically the same thing in the first release note for the previous driver though, so I don't know.. [sm=rolleyes.gif]

i must say focusrite support is extremely responsive and very helpful

ORIGINAL: artsoul
dstrenz can you point me to that please?

Sure, it's here: http://www.focusrite.com/product/liquid_mix/downloads/

About half-way down the page: LiquidMixWebSetup-2.0rc1.zip (size: 7.11mb). The release notes quoted above are in the "READ ME FIRST.rtf" file in the zip.

edit: BTW, there's an updated emulation library dl further down the page. It's a hefty 191mb and isn't dated or versioned. I dl'd it and the files inside the zip are dated 11/14/2006. So, you can determine for yourselves if you want or need to dl it based on the age of your units.