;-)

I actually think I had that dream because I read this thread before bed last night. lol

Weird arse brain.

Sorry to chime in and chime out, but for all the naysayers here:
You could actually give Sonar 3 of your 8 cores and give bit bridge 3 different out of 8 cores and more evenly distribute the load across the CPUs.   Or how about 3 cores for sonar and 1 core each for 3 different rewired synths?

Obviously, do what you want.  But for FWIW, it's a shame to have all the smart aleck replies to what for some might be a real solution for a few users.  Especially for someone trying to run on only two cores.    Even if it only helps one user.  I thought this was supposed to be a helpful place for Sonar users.

But whatever.

WOW...such extremes in here...I'm going elsewhere..(beep-beep...roadrunner sound...)

Just for the record - my reply wasn't a smart ass reply.
 
I sincerely question the relevance of this, and I think the OS can make better decisions than I can wrt which cores to place different threads on. I'm quite happy to be told that I'm wrong and that there are some great uses for this - but personally I would never pin SONAR to 3 cores while the other 5 were twiddling their thumbs waiting for a bitbridge, or rewired synth process to come along ;-)
 
But that's just me - you guys do what you want

jbraner


Just for the record - my reply wasn't a smart ass reply.
 
I sincerely question the relevance of this, and I think the OS can make better decisions than I can wrt which cores to place different threads on. I'm quite happy to be told that I'm wrong and that there are some great uses for this - but personally I would never pin SONAR to 3 cores while the other 5 were twiddling their thumbs waiting for a bitbridge, or rewired synth process to come along ;-)
 
But that's just me - you guys do what you want

No worries dude.  I was not at all referring to you or your legit question.


In another post, Sharke asked how to do this and I gave a quick reply that probably begged for a better explanation.  I think Swamptooth was just expounding on my vague answer for Sharke and anyone else who want to try and squeeze the most out of their system.  This kind of bleeding edge stuff is surely not for everyone, but still valid advice just the same.  In most situations the OS cpu decisions would due just fine.  It doesn't do the best choices, it does the average choices and again, for most folks this is just fine.

btw, thanks swamptooth.


EDIT: one other thing.  There are specific reasons why MS built these affinity options into the OS, some of which swamptooth explained.

jbraner


Just for the record - my reply wasn't a smart ass reply.
 
I sincerely question the relevance of this, and I think the OS can make better decisions than I can wrt which cores to place different threads on. I'm quite happy to be told that I'm wrong and that there are some great uses for this - but personally I would never pin SONAR to 3 cores while the other 5 were twiddling their thumbs waiting for a bitbridge, or rewired synth process to come along ;-)
 
But that's just me - you guys do what you want

I feel exactly the same way, j. I didn't consider what you said to be negative or anything....I think it's ok to question anyone that comes on here posting a registry edit. This of course is not to take away from swamp's finding or sharing his advice....I think it's great that we have this capability. But I also don't think it's wrong to question it...especially when it involves registry stuff and some of the non-advanced users may make a mistake if they try it or try it while not quite understanding it.
 
There's also a thread scheduling option in Sonar prefs for aud.ini which may be helpful to swamp and others if they haven't tried it yet.
 
Preferences/audio/configuration file. Look for "Thread Scheduling". Make sure to read up on how to edit aud.ini as you don't just make a change in here.
This variable goes in the [Wave] section and controls the interaction of the main audio thread and worker threads on multiprocessor systems when the Use Multiprocessing Engine option is enabled. Depending on the system, a particular model may result in less glitching and better overall performance. The values are as follows:
0 = Same as previous versions of SONAR.
1 = (default) Better thread balance. Model is more efficient and can provide cycles for other tasks.
2 = Additional worker thread is created. This may result in improvement with Quad processor systems or higher. Not recommended for Dual processor systems.
 
So it may be worth a try to do it here as it's a super simple fix to revert back without literally going into the registry. It's probably not as powerful as what swamp is teaching us...but it's something worth visiting for those that may be up for a test tweak. I've tried the above and noticed I was better with option 1 for all my boxes including my big quad core i7 and my octo. Something to think about. I do appreciate what swamp has shared...thanks swamp! :)
 
-Danny

Preferences/audio/configuration file. Look for "Thread Scheduling". Make sure to read up on how to edit aud.ini as you don't just make a change in here.

Thanks Danny, didn't know about that one.

wow i had no clue that this would be so controversial!!! i for one would never recommend registry edits for anything... i see a lot of that concerning multisamples and programs for cakes synths but i basically just move folders to external disks and create symbolic links to their locations and above all i almost always use installation defaults. processor affinity is pretty benign but for the love of god never try to run sonar in realtime mode!!!

thanks though for all the support guys. ive learned a ton here and have some geekitude to pass along in a techie kinda way.:D

i think for me this is a question of system balance... how am i going to balance processing sensor input and video analysis and possibly mobile device input in real time... how much does sonar need, how much do the analysis processes need... i can run about 30-40 kontakt and reaktor combos and clip about 10-15 percent of all 8 cores so why use them all wwhen it runs at 30% on 4 and the other 4 can do otherr stuff without interference. yup geek city.

Many people incorrectly think that Processor Affinity is used to dedicate one or more cores to a process and that is incorrect. It limits the process to only make use of the subset of cores that you specify.

While this has a purpose I don't find it useful for Sonar. I would prefer an option to dedicate some cores to Sonar without the possibility of being interrupted by some background process. And while this can be achieved to some degree you would have to play with the settings of all active processes in order to accomplish something like that.

That being said I haven't run into any performance problems yet with my hyperthreaded quad core I7 3770 @ 3.9GHz. Then again I can't say that I've really stressed Sonar yet having a max of 16 soft synths and 8 audio tracks recording simultaneously.

In the end it's probably best to let Windows schedule the use of CPU resources and use well behaved multi-core aware applications.