[jur] wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2020 12:27 am
Although I rarely use 3rd party plugins, I always felt like Live and Bitwig are quite equal in this CPU domain, empirically.
So I did a similar test using Diva "init" patch, the same 1/8 notes 1 bar midi clip in Live and Bitwig, 256 samples, 48Khz, no midi controller connected.
On a 2009 MacPro here (6core xeon).
I did 2 tests actually.
One yesterday, where I could see similar results as the OP, i.e around x4 more instances/tracks in Bitwig.
I'm not sure I've used the exact same Diva preset, although I think I was...
So, I just did a test again today:
results is I can use around the same amount of Diva instances/tracks in both DAW: around 54 tracks. At this point both DAW give me crackles but no audio drop out and their respective CPU meters show some headroom left.
I then re-perform the same test but with Diva's internal multicore option activated this time = no difference in Live (54 tracks, starts crackling but no audio drop out and still stable...), but Bitwig was very unstable at 48 tracks and was actually freezing my whole system.
I think there's obvious reasons for this. Bitwig seems to be better at multi threading, but the multicore function of Diva and Repro 1-5 is a selection and not a permanent feature for a reason, in certain circumstances with various DAWs it will not work as well.
I'm not sure how you're getting more tracks than me though? that's pretty nuts. I'm being really conservative with the testing though, if there's even a single possible glitch over a two minute period I roll back. One guy got 80 tracks in another forum, but he was turning off the Plate reverb in Diva's INIT patch thinking that it wasn't part of the INIT patch somehow?
Also wanted to add in that I did a few more tests with Live and Bitwig with a large selection of heavy CPU plug ins, Pigments, Falcon, Repro-5, Diva, Cypher 2, MPC2, Altiverb etc. to try and see how they all hold out under those circumstances. Bitwig still did better than Live, but not markedly better than Digital Performer or Reaper in those circumstances.
I think it's safe to say under decently spread out plug in counts, Bitwig can do extremely well, under circumstances with heavy CPU plug ins, bitwig fares about as well as good CPU saving dinosaur DAWs.
What I really get from this is that Live just doesn't do that well in general. It takes a lot more resources than other DAWs, and I'm not saying that because I hate it or have an agenda, it's just acknowledging something that's consistently been an issue with Live, that it scores at about 70% of what DAWs like Logic, Reaper and DP etc. can do.
Barring a bit of spiking from Falcon though, Bitwig scores as good as the rest of the crowd and under some circumstances insanely good. Due no doubt to it running plug ins outside of the main DAW engine and allowing the OS to take control of allocating threads to them.
It's also worth pointing out that Bitwig had an audio engine rewrite around 2.5, I tested it a lot before then and it was always scoring on par with, or slightly worse than Live.