UVI workstation plugin performance

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danny
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UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by danny »

Hello,

I tested the current ubuntu studio 19.10 with different windows plugins (I want to change, because on windows I get minor cracks/xruns even though the CPU load using UVI is very low)

Thanks to many information in the forum I could Install all the things, however I have huge performance Issues when using UVI workstation 3.0.11 via current LinVST 2.8. wine-staging 5.3 and Carla. All x64.
It can be tested / reproduced even on a live ubuntu studio usb stick.
Other windows plugins (e.g. Kontakt) via LinVST work much better, but using the free sound "cinema 1.4" (from the Falcon Preset Tour) in the UVI plugin kills the CPU after a couple of keys (xruns, sound cracks / stuck/ 100% DSP load, high CPU load for LinVst server). You can really max it with the sustain pedal. Also there is a graphics glitch with the GUI and the mouse.
My question is: has any of you experience with UVI within Linux (I found no topic here)? Or are there any hidden tweaks in wine, LinVst which solve this? Or at least to improve the performance significantly?
BTW, there was no need to install or replace anything in wine, it just ran out of the box...

I don't need a ton of plugins at the same time, as a hobby pianist I only like to play my Ravenscroft 275 sample live without cracks and xruns. That activates and runs in ubuntu as well via iLok and even has less problems than the factory sound "cinema 1.4", but it still is unplayable, even with increased buffer / latency on Jack.

Thanks very much in advance
Dan
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polk9
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by polk9 »

I'm really interested by this topic, i just flag it but don't have any answer. Would be great to have UVI Workstation working well on Linux !
glowrak guy
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by glowrak guy »

danny wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2020 2:44 pm Hello,

I tested the current ubuntu studio 19.10 with different windows plugins (I want to change, because on windows I get minor cracks/xruns even though the CPU load using UVI is very low)

Thanks to many information in the forum I could Install all the things, however I have huge performance Issues when using UVI workstation 3.0.11 via current LinVST 2.8. wine-staging 5.3 and Carla. All x64.
It can be tested / reproduced even on a live ubuntu studio usb stick.
Other windows plugins (e.g. Kontakt) via LinVST work much better, but using the free sound "cinema 1.4" (from the Falcon Preset Tour) in the UVI plugin kills the CPU after a couple of keys (xruns, sound cracks / stuck/ 100% DSP load, high CPU load for LinVst server). You can really max it with the sustain pedal. Also there is a graphics glitch with the GUI and the mouse.
My question is: has any of you experience with UVI within Linux (I found no topic here)? Or are there any hidden tweaks in wine, LinVst which solve this? Or at least to improve the performance significantly?
BTW, there was no need to install or replace anything in wine, it just ran out of the box...

I don't need a ton of plugins at the same time, as a hobby pianist I only like to play my Ravenscroft 275 sample live without cracks and xruns. That activates and runs in ubuntu as well via iLok and even has less problems than the factory sound "cinema 1.4", but it still is unplayable, even with increased buffer / latency on Jack.

Thanks very much in advance
Dan
Unplug ethernet, shut down power management, choose
'performance' mode in bios cpu and/or system settings, remove un-used usb devices,
and be rid of auto-starting apps.

Try using Reaper demo, works full for 60 days. It has preference options for choosing number of cpu cores/threads
which can help sometimes. Kontakt often runs better on one cpu. Maybe UVI has similar internal prefs to adjust?

Below items are mostly standard in Ubuntu Studio...

/etc/security/limits.conf textfile should conclude with these lines:

@audio - rtprio 95
@audio - memlock unlimited
#@audio - nice -19

# End of file

so your username must be a member of the 'audio group'. In qjackctl, choose a priority around 70,
which should be good for performance, while still allowing some kernel activity
to go ahead of audio processing when needed.

lso, a super lightweight DE and a graphics card can help.

Run things from a terminal, and watch for names of windows .dll's
that are mentioned, in case something is needed.

There is now a free SampleTank 4 Custom Shop version from
IK Multimedia, which comes with 4.8 gig of sounds,
including a nice Berlin Grand Piano, Vibes, strings ensemble, organs, drumkits/patterns, horns ensemble, kalimba,
and a nice acoustic guitar. Other sounds can be purchased ala-carte. Testing sounds can be done
when the Custom Shop app is running, for 48 hour test period.

IK have an account/authorization manager that works well in linux so far.
Keeps your serials/download links handy, copy/paste serial numbers.
Cheers
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by ubuntuuser »

danny wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2020 2:44 pm Hello,

I tested the current ubuntu studio 19.10 with different windows plugins (I want to change, because on windows I get minor cracks/xruns even though the CPU load using UVI is very low)

Thanks to many information in the forum I could Install all the things, however I have huge performance Issues when using UVI workstation 3.0.11 via current LinVST 2.8. wine-staging 5.3 and Carla. All x64.
It can be tested / reproduced even on a live ubuntu studio usb stick.
Other windows plugins (e.g. Kontakt) via LinVST work much better, but using the free sound "cinema 1.4" (from the Falcon Preset Tour) in the UVI plugin kills the CPU after a couple of keys (xruns, sound cracks / stuck/ 100% DSP load, high CPU load for LinVst server). You can really max it with the sustain pedal. Also there is a graphics glitch with the GUI and the mouse.
My question is: has any of you experience with UVI within Linux (I found no topic here)? Or are there any hidden tweaks in wine, LinVst which solve this? Or at least to improve the performance significantly?
BTW, there was no need to install or replace anything in wine, it just ran out of the box...

I don't need a ton of plugins at the same time, as a hobby pianist I only like to play my Ravenscroft 275 sample live without cracks and xruns. That activates and runs in ubuntu as well via iLok and even has less problems than the factory sound "cinema 1.4", but it still is unplayable, even with increased buffer / latency on Jack.

Thanks very much in advance
Dan
It uses Pace copy protection, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Wine might not be able to handle it at the moment.

I had an older version of Wine Staging and it wouldn't allow Pace/Bonjour to install properly and the newer version of Wine Staging installs it but with an error.

The plugin connects to the Pace copy protection and that might be the problem, copy protection threads going wrong or hogging the cpu etc.
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danny
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by danny »

TL;DR
Thanks for the help. Still no solution found. Testing ongoing. Messing with configurations. But might be out of my power. Maybe future wine / driver updates will help.
.................
glowrak guy wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2020 12:47 am
Unplug ethernet, shut down power management, choose
'performance' mode in bios cpu and/or system settings, remove un-used usb devices,
and be rid of auto-starting apps.

Try using Reaper demo, works full for 60 days. It has preference options for choosing number of cpu cores/threads
which can help sometimes. Kontakt often runs better on one cpu. Maybe UVI has similar internal prefs to adjust?

Below items are mostly standard in Ubuntu Studio...

/etc/security/limits.conf textfile should conclude with these lines:

@audio - rtprio 95
@audio - memlock unlimited
#@audio - nice -19

# End of file

so your username must be a member of the 'audio group'. In qjackctl, choose a priority around 70,
which should be good for performance, while still allowing some kernel activity
to go ahead of audio processing when needed.
Thanks for your reply, and many valuable hints.
As you said, many settings are already standard in my distribution. Some of the others I have tried before as well.

What I have been doing the last couple days is getting rid of unknowns in the chain. Isolate the problem.
Means, I did focus on the core which is wine and how sound is processed there.
So I left LinVST and the bridges away and ran the .exe standalone version. (For me Winecfg must be set to Win7. I have no audio drivers with Win 10)
To have low latency sound I installed WineASIO (exchanged one unknown link of the chain with another... )
Anyway, I tried to get rid of as much wine err and fixme as possible by overriding dll etc.
Although it worked from the beginning, I thought maybe that could help. I'm left with this now:

Code: Select all

007a:fixme:kernelbase:AppPolicyGetThreadInitializationType FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFA, 000000000292FDA0
0076:fixme:win:RegisterTouchWindow (0x1009a 00000000): stub
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x1009a 233 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x1009a 4a 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x1009a 49 1 (nil)
0076:err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {4ce576fa-83dc-4f88-951c-9d0782b4e376} not registered
0076:err:ole:create_server class {4ce576fa-83dc-4f88-951c-9d0782b4e376} not registered
0076:err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {4ce576fa-83dc-4f88-951c-9d0782b4e376} could be created for context 0x6
0076:fixme:win:RegisterTouchWindow (0x2009a 00000000): stub
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x2009a 233 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x2009a 4a 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x2009a 49 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:win:RegisterTouchWindow (0x3009a 00000000): stub
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x3009a 233 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x3009a 4a 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x3009a 49 1 (nil)
0076:err:winediag:wined3d_dll_init Setting maximum allowed wined3d GL version to 3.2.
0076:err:winediag:wined3d_dll_init Using the OpenGL renderer.
0076:fixme:ntdll:NtQuerySystemInformation info_class SYSTEM_PERFORMANCE_INFORMATION
0076:fixme:dxgi:DXGID3D10CreateDevice Ignoring flags 0x20.
0076:fixme:d2d:d2d_d3d_create_render_target Ignoring render target usage 0x2.
0076:fixme:dwrite:dwritefactory_CreateMonitorRenderingParams (0x1): monitor setting ignored
0076:fixme:heap:RtlSetHeapInformation 0x4ad0000 0 0x22d510 4 stub
0084:fixme:midi:handle_midi_event Unexpected event received, type = 42 from 0:1
0076:fixme:win:RegisterTouchWindow (0x200a6 00000000): stub
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x200a6 233 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x200a6 4a 1 (nil)
0076:fixme:msg:ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx 0x200a6 49 1 (nil)
No real problem, which prevented it from running, however the other issue I have is a disappearing mouse pointer when opening the sample browser. If I move the mouse around or drag the UI window or just after some time, the mouse pointer appears again. Anyone has that problem too? Same mouse pointer problem happens with IK Sample Tank. Thanks for the tip with SampleTank btw, looks nice, and I will keep it.
The Berlin Grand works well. No sound issues.

The problem might be the audio handling in UVI. I tried different Wine settings.
This particular Cinema 1.4 sound seems to be the real benchmark. Excessive CPU usage. The simpler DX sound for example works fine.

Unlike in Kontakt (as you also mentioned) there is no option of choosing cores in UVI.
Neighter in the plugin, nor in the standalone version.

Thanks for the tip with reaper, so much more possibilities regarding audio configuration.
I tried a lot of things WineAsio, WASAPI, ReaRoute ASIO through Reaper connecting UVI Standalone.

I will do some more tests because I think there might be 2 problems.
1. Problem with the wine perfomance / CPU usage due to some Audio handling calls
2. Problem with ASIO or JACK since at least the sound is a bit better with MME / WASAPI via Pulse however latency is a problem.

Sure it can also be my interface, driver, configuration etc. However most other things are working without problems.
That's why I'm interested if one of you has that UVI running in a usable fashion?

glowrak guy wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2020 12:47 am lso, a super lightweight DE and a graphics card can help.
I never heard about this lightweight Iso DE yet... do you have a link for me? As google finds many CD images and no Desktop environment. :-(

ubuntuuser wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 2:02 pm It uses Pace copy protection, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Wine might not be able to handle it at the moment.

I had an older version of Wine Staging and it wouldn't allow Pace/Bonjour to install properly and the newer version of Wine Staging installs it but with an error.

The plugin connects to the Pace copy protection and that might be the problem, copy protection threads going wrong or hogging the cpu etc.
Yes, that might be another problem. However other plugins which I unlocked with iLok/Pace/Bonjour are working fine. Maybe they don't communicate so much with the copy protection while playing sounds and rather save the CPU performance for the audio tasks.
I had problems and install errors with different Pace versions too, so I install the newest ilok version (64bit v5.2.0) first and always cancel the Bonjour installer which comes with all the plugins.
However the UVI workstation in the current version (3.0.11) installs and works with its shipped version of Bonjour.
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by ubuntuuser »

I get the disappearing mouse pointer as well.

I also tried it on an i7 and the Cinema 1.4 preset would not work and CPU usage was around 135% or something.

I think it's a Wine problem where some thread and/or maybe the GUI is hogging the CPU and presets with higher CPU requirements make it all worse.
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by AlexTheBassist »

danny wrote:LinVST
This is an issue. Try using native software, like Pianoteq. It's not that expensive.
Being creative does not imply being lazy, stupid, or illiterate.

Working in Harrison Mixbus and Ardour on KDE Neon + KXStudio.
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danny
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by danny »

ubuntuuser wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:22 am I get the disappearing mouse pointer as well.

I also tried it on an i7 and the Cinema 1.4 preset would not work and CPU usage was around 135% or something.

I think it's a Wine problem where some thread and/or maybe the GUI is hogging the CPU and presets with higher CPU requirements make it all worse.
Thanks for the feedback, so it seems not to be a problem with my specific audio setup.
AlexTheBassist wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 11:36 pm
danny wrote:LinVST
This is an issue. Try using native software, like Pianoteq. It's not that expensive.
Thanks, yes, I use Pianoteq too, which works great and it is really nice to see a company that does not exclude Linux customers by design.
However sometimes I like different piano sounds for different pieces and sometimes it is just a mood thing... so I miss the Ravenscroft on Linux.
Adding wrappers at least let us use certain non-native plugins without reboot into windows and most things really work well, if you don't have too much going on. Good to have that option. Since I can already use all my other piano plugins with LinVst and decent low latency performance, the Ravenscroft is the only thing which makes me keep windows... Maybe some next releases of wine / wineasio / LinVst etc. can fix that. Anyway I will keep on testing and my eyes open.
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danny
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Re: UVI workstation plugin performance

Post by danny »

Hi there,
just a quick (and hopefully final) update on this matter.
After almost 1 year, I revisited that topic due to a new installation on another system. And now the current uvi workstation 3.0.17 works fine for me including the Ravenscroft Piano.
No further xruns or excessive cpu load any more. However the mouse pointer bug still persists.
I also upgraded my hardware, so maybe that helped as well.
Current working setup:
Ubuntustudio 20.4 LTS
wine-staging 6.2 (wineasio and linvst)
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