Ableton Forum

dum wrote:Agreed it sounds good, but it's still the biggest cpu pig I've ever encountered.
by a country mile...

C'est la vie

Put ACE in a lower quality mode (still excellent sounding) and it use much less cpu... and yes, in accurate mode it is using lots of cpu, but you get something for it. Also, the current cpu can handle ACE monophonic just fine, even at accurate setting. I have an i7 and can easily have 8-10 instances of ACE on highest quality (accurate) without bouncing to audio. Plenty of presets don't need accurate or even sound preferable on lower setting so in that case it is easy to have even more instances at once.

I think ACE is perfect for the tracks the OP posted. It sounds great for the basics and then can do sounds nothing else can.

Ya,
I know about the lower quality modes..................................
using it at lower settings it sounds grand, sure, but nothing that stands out compared to the other VSTIs I use. At the higher settings, where it shines, for quite a few of the included presets (used for benchmarking) I can't even run a single instance with no other plugs activated without my 2ghz 2gb ram dualcore osx 10.4 iMac being brought to it's knees. I can see a lot of blind freezing/rendering involved at higher quality settings, at least with my machine. I can't fault the sound quality of course

I want to want it though

so I'll revisit the demo when I upgrade to 10.6

indeed ..what can you do eh?
ACE it's very hoggy compared to Operator /NI stuff...even in lower q settings
having more than 2 instances is a cpu killer

I'm always amazed of how efficient NI stuff is cpu/sound wise..
and they all sound great imo...
I think Reaktor is just amazing...and modulation wise even more capable than ACE
and Absynth ist das beez kneez

dum wrote:Ya,
I know about the lower quality modes..................................
using it at lower settings it sounds grand, sure, but nothing that stands out compared to the other VSTIs I use. At the higher settings, where it shines, for quite a few of the included presets (used for benchmarking) I can't even run a single instance with no other plugs activated without my 2ghz 2gb ram dualcore osx 10.4 iMac being brought to it's knees. I can see a lot of blind freezing/rendering involved at higher quality settings, at least with my machine. I can't fault the sound quality of course

I want to want it though

so I'll revisit the demo when I upgrade to 10.6

You cannot run a single instance? Sounds like something is wrong... Or else you are talking only about a patch with polyphony and a high release time. ACE and plenty of other synths can bring any CPU to its knees if you try to make that happen. You could think of ACE as a monophonic synth for bass and leads, use it only for that and it would be well worth the price. Just a thought... cheers

deva wrote:

dum wrote:Ya,
I know about the lower quality modes..................................
using it at lower settings it sounds grand, sure, but nothing that stands out compared to the other VSTIs I use. At the higher settings, where it shines, for quite a few of the included presets (used for benchmarking) I can't even run a single instance with no other plugs activated without my 2ghz 2gb ram dualcore osx 10.4 iMac being brought to it's knees. I can see a lot of blind freezing/rendering involved at higher quality settings, at least with my machine. I can't fault the sound quality of course

I want to want it though

so I'll revisit the demo when I upgrade to 10.6

You cannot run a single instance? Sounds like something is wrong... Or else you are talking only about a patch with polyphony and a high release time. ACE and plenty of other synths can bring any CPU to its knees if you try to make that happen. You could think of ACE as a monophonic synth for bass and leads, use it only for that and it would be well worth the price. Just a thought... cheers

Ya, I know what's wrong. It's a cpu pig.
And no I cant even run ONE instance with quite a few of those patches, it's brought to it's knees straight away. I have lots of other VSTIs & FX, tried plenty of demos too.....ACE is clearly the greediest pig in the sty. No contest.

The dev doesn't even deny it, but what can I say... We can repeat ourselves a third time if you like.
I guess u-he is another one of those devs that inspires fanaticism amongst the user base.

dum wrote:

deva wrote:

dum wrote:Ya,
I know about the lower quality modes..................................
using it at lower settings it sounds grand, sure, but nothing that stands out compared to the other VSTIs I use. At the higher settings, where it shines, for quite a few of the included presets (used for benchmarking) I can't even run a single instance with no other plugs activated without my 2ghz 2gb ram dualcore osx 10.4 iMac being brought to it's knees. I can see a lot of blind freezing/rendering involved at higher quality settings, at least with my machine. I can't fault the sound quality of course

I want to want it though

so I'll revisit the demo when I upgrade to 10.6

You cannot run a single instance? Sounds like something is wrong... Or else you are talking only about a patch with polyphony and a high release time. ACE and plenty of other synths can bring any CPU to its knees if you try to make that happen. You could think of ACE as a monophonic synth for bass and leads, use it only for that and it would be well worth the price. Just a thought... cheers

Ya, I know what's wrong. It's a cpu pig.
And no I cant even run ONE instance with quite a few of those patches, it's brought to it's knees straight away. I have lots of other VSTIs & FX, tried plenty of demos too.....ACE is clearly the greediest pig in the sty. No contest.

The dev doesn't even deny it, but what can I say... We can repeat ourselves a third time if you like.
I guess u-he is another one of those devs that inspires fanaticism amongst the user base.

I've heard other people with similar cpu to you say they were using multiple instances and producing music. That is why I wondered if something was going on with your particular system...

ACE is a resource hog, but the developer at least acknowledges this publicly and the lo-res mode is fine, freezing and/or rendering tracks are still likely to be needed even with some of the more modern i7s etc, especially until native 64 bit versions are coded and you are running an all 64 bit setup with lots of RAM.

ACE is not as much of a hog as Arturia's synths (especially JP8V, with patches rated 4 or 5 - the highest CPU load) and Omnisphere for CPU breakage.

there is plenty good subtractive soft synths, you shouldnt have problem to programm your bass almost on any of them.
sylenth1
rob papen predator
rob papen subboombass
arturia minimoog v
ni massive
synapse hydra/junglist

sound of some softsynth totaly break up when you play very low tones. there are some which stays tight on any note. experiment to find the best one for you, sound-wise/workflow-wise.

stating the obvious, i think it's not about the synth, but how you program it

since you are already using massive, i think what you are looking for could be achieved setting it to monophonic and using the right amount of glide, then draw some overlapping notes with the right interval.

a big friend of mine is using massive 95% of the times, and he definitely does some phat basses.

for my basslines, operator is still the goto choice.

I wonder .. is there any good vsti that wasn't mentioned here ?

3dot... wrote:I wonder .. is there any good vsti that wasn't mentioned here ?

Tassman4 my bread and butter synth for pretty much everything.

3dot... wrote:I wonder .. is there any good vsti that wasn't mentioned here ?

Albino

been playing with massive and FM8, a lot of sound possibilities if you take the time to play with things...

I find 'Massive' to be really a good VA in the style of waldorf/virus/JP8000

deva wrote: I've heard other people with similar cpu to you say they were using multiple instances and producing music. That is why I wondered if something was going on with your particular system...

Similar ? How similar ?
I'm running a dualcore 2ghz machine. dualcore. not core2duo (in case you were mistaken).

Also, what sample rates were those others working at ? and what sample rate am I working at ? and when even the developer admits it's hungry for cpu, what sample rate is he referring to ?

Anyway it's all moot... it's a comparative process. On beefier machines I presume it's easier to overlook just how hungry ACE is.


Although, for the record I'd like to change my recommendation to Reaktor5 instead of FM8 ... I was thinking purely in terms of single synths when I suggested FM8 =)