Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
November 27, 2021 7:51 pm
FL Studio is my DAW of choice. Even when running a single instance of Unify with a single patch, the CPU meter constantly spikes into the red. I have a decent spec gaming computer (i9, tons of memory, Strix sound card, RTX 2080Ti, Win 64). I do not experience what I recognize as actual performance degradation or pops etc. I recall a comment by Shane a while back saying that this can be fixed by making some settings changes in FL Studio but I have been unable to re-find that comment. Can anyone point me to that comment or whether I should be concerned about this? Thanks in advance for any help.
November 27, 2021 8:22 pm
@horbgobbler
In FL studio, set Unify to "use fixed-size buffers".
And please, ignore their guff about how this is only for plug-ins that are somehow inferior. Unify requires buffering for its multi-threading ability.
saif_sameer reacted
Topic starter
November 27, 2021 11:11 pm
Sincere thanks! That certainly did the trick. Loaded up a number of complex patches and didn't see a speck of red.
November 27, 2021 11:27 pm
FWIW, this issue actually is not caused by Unify itself, as a matter of fact, it is very well coded & efficiently handling plugin latency, syncing to external clock etc.
But it is rather caused by several plugins might be used inside Unify because they are old (mda and stuff) 😛
And regarding FL Studio as an engine, the development team are working on a final solution to properly load such plugins without the need to specify fixed buffer or max buffer sizes.
"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
Friedrich Nietzsche
November 28, 2021 4:48 pm
@saif_sameer With the greatest respect, you are incorrect. FL Studio calls plug-ins' audio render functions much more frequently than most DAWs do, often asking them to render only a few samples at a time. For >90% of plug-ins (including all the mda plug-ins), this is no problem, because they don't have significant "per-block overhead"; they take just about exactly 2x as long to render 200 samples as they do 100 samples. Unify's per-block overhead is quite high, because of the way I have implemented multi-threading. I may find a better way someday, but for now, Unify cannot handle tiny block sizes efficiently.
December 1, 2021 6:30 am
@getdunne No worries at all, in fact I'm relying in using VST2 format and Unify (as well as U-He plugins which are known to have their own internal buffers) work fine in FL Studio version 20.4 above without the need to set max buffer.
I'm noticing however that VST3 plugins (most of them least to say) are still not stable (timing-wise) perhaps it is because VST3 doesn't accurately report PDC to host (I would guess)?
"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
Friedrich Nietzsche
December 1, 2021 3:12 pm
...Unify (as well as U-He plugins which are known to have their own internal buffers) work fine in FL Studio version 20.4 above without the need to set max buffer.
Thanks, Saif. This is good news (I think). Note I didn't say Unify requires the "max buffer", only "fixed-size buffers". I will get in touch directly to ask a few more questions about this.
...VST3 plugins (most of them least to say) are still not stable (timing-wise) perhaps it is because VST3 doesn't accurately report PDC to host (I would guess)?
I can't shed any light on that, unfortunately. It could be a VST3 limitation, or something specific to FL Studio.
