Fl studio and Dual Cores

[NeoS]

I read somewhere on the web that Imageline wasn't going to rewrite a part of FL studio to use the full capacity of Dual Core systems... Now THAT sucks, doesn't it? It could make a HUGE difference in performance.

As far as i know, only Cubase currently supports dual core cpu's. Or am i wrong?

[-RK-]

With Mac updating all it's systems with dual core technology, it seems unlikely that Cubase is the ONLY Daw that is supporting it, but you could be right.

Maybe Logic or Digital Performer use both cores.

[zircon]

Dual core tech definitely isn't being put to full use by much DAW software that I'm familiar with. KVRaudio.com would be a good place to investigate further, though.

[sgx]

Basically all DAWs that don't already are going to have it in the next version. Sonar5 does, ACID6 does, Live6 will, I assume Project5 v3 will because usually Cake uses the latest Sonar engine for P5, etc. I thought that FL has some support - audio engine on one core and GUI on the other if you have 2 cores.

[Navi]

I'm going to come off as a total techie noob (which i am).

Explain dual core and how it relates to music making?

[sgx]

Dual core cpu's are kinda like having dual cpus...but they are on the same cpu...or something. Music software has to be specifically written to split the real time audio rendering and whatnot into two pieces so that both cores can be working on it at the same time. If not, say you have a dual core 1.83 ghz cpu (which is basically like two 1.83 ghz cpus), you'll have the same performance as someone with a single core 1.83. If the software does support dual cores, you'll get a lot more power.

[tgfoo]

With Mac updating all it's systems with dual core technology, it seems unlikely that Cubase is the ONLY Daw that is supporting it, but you could be right.

Maybe Logic or Digital Performer use both cores.

All of the top of the line Mac systems have been dual core or dual processor for a while now, and all of the major sequencers on Mac support them (Logic, DP, and cubase), though, oddly enough, Logic doesn't support the Dual dual core (quad core as they call it) 2.5 ghz G5 Powermac... which is odd, yet cubase can use all 4 cores.

[Legion303]

The guy who started FL says if you're going to buy a computer specifically for FL, you're better off buying a faster single-core system than a slower dual-core.

Also, here's some amazing news about the upcoming FL7!

de la Mancha wrote :

I heard that FL7 has;

- predictive snap based on mouse movements

- animated channel colours (tempo matched to the project)

- unlimited panning

- 256bit pointless-float internal processing on triple core processors

- a "hello kitty" skin as default

- Rolf Harris Stylophone and Wobbleboard plugins

- demo song is Kiers remix of 4'33" by John Cage

- auto genre detection for mp3 tags

- auto generate full song from 4 bar loop

- NicePear and JuicyMelons are 2 new effect plugins

- NicePear is an uplifter/compressor for making a flat mix into nice round stereo (similar to Steinbergs "VonderBra")

- JuicyMelons is an expander, for adding extra dimension in 3D, although it can leave artifacts

The biggest news of all though is that FL7 will finally get a feature that everyone has been asking for. An animated paperclip that asks if you need help with your soundcard settings

OK, one of the things I mentioned was serious and one wasn't.

-steve

[NeoS]

So... does that mean i just need to update my version of FL? because i think it still uses only one core. It would be awesome if rendering could be done on the second core while still working on the first.

[OverCoat]

I actually noticed an increase in efficiency when I turned hyperthreading off and back on again one day. It could have been that turning it off halved it into a 1.6 GHz though but on screen it didn't say that... Hell if I know anything about processors. Anyway, the whole computer basically ran like ass with HT off. The most noticeable difference was that the wav/mp3 rendering time was ridiculously faster, ALSO there were skipping and pops in the audio where previously there had been none, so the audio latency was likely affected. These are things which are independent of DAWs yet the software depends on it.

The thing is, when you turn the HT/whatever off, the system as a whole suffers from a lowered efficiency, so I think that makes any program [whether it's optimized for dual-core or not] run slower.

I may be "wrong" or whatever, but I experienced this so I'm either right or delusional.

Another guess: Dual CPUs with HT turned off perform worse than a single-core at the same speed operating normally?

I'M SMRT

[Splunkle]

If you are running one process, its better to have a really fast single core. But nobody does that anymore. Oh sure, FL isn't optimised for using both cores... its not that big a loss though. Think about it. How much crap are you running in the background? Virus scanner, firewall, internet browser, word processor, etc, etc. All those can run on your other core, while FL runns on one. Now, I doubt that lal your background crap will use much of the total capacity of the core. But its not like the core is doing nothing but twiddling its thumbs. So generally, its better, in terms of dollar performance, to go dual core. Unless you get a really cheap single core or something.

[ubernym]

Sonar 5 supports 64bit processors, but not dual core. Other than that, I don't know of any PC DAWs that support this.

[Rellik]

Yeah, as was mentioned, AFAIK FL has only a single audio thread, but everything else is separate.

Really, name a sequencer/host and it's probably coded to make good use of two cores at once... Sonar, Cubase, energyXT, Live, Project5, Logic, Podium... most if not all of those split up audio processing so that they can take advantage of dual-core CPUs. FL's something of an exception.