Sound to light uses loads of CPU resources in version 3.0.1?

[mart0037]

Hi folks, has anyone got any idea if theres any way of reducing the CPU usage by the sound to light in freestyler.

I use vista with freestyler version 3.0.1, earlya versions for some reason just wont work on Vista (with earlya versions I didnt get this problem)

When running, freestyler uses very little CPU resources, until I turn on the sound to light, then it rockets up to about 50% or more!

The older version of freestyler didnt do this, even with the sound to light running, it didnt make any difference.

My laptop does cope with this, but by using more resources the laptop tends to run hotter. Laptop spec is - 2GHz, 3G RAM, 256mb G Force card

My old laptop ran on XP & I could run freestyler & virtual dj together, no problem at all. On Vista, I can still do the same but with both running its using like 60-70% of the system. Bit scary for me that, my older machine was no where near as powerfull & it coped fine & used about 20% of the system.

Any suggestions would be much apriciated.

thanks

[aquas]

Downgrade to XP, still better then Vista, all people say the same... the laptops don't have enought resources to run Vista. i think the improvements in Vista are no enought to forget XP. Hoo i forgot that are microsoft operating systems... hehehe, i have new one and next week...hard work to put XP...

[mart0037]

Surley this must be an issue with freestyler, as it only does this when the sound to light is activated?

Have turned down the refreshrate on the sound to light but it doesnt realy make that much difference.

[remco_k]

Surley this must be an issue with freestyler, as it only does this when the sound to light is activated?

You can't say that, as enabling Sound to Light functionality uses up way more CPU (depending on you hardware/driver configuration the CPU usage could be a little higher or sky high...). The point: Its just normal.
Also Onge has a good point, you really cannot compare Windows XP and Vista on eachother.
Windows Vista is not just a renamed Windows XP, the internal structure is heavily changed, resulting in many things slowing down big time.
Next to that, comparing to older/other hardware is also somewhat ambigious. Maybe your old laptop had an Intel processor, and you new one an AMD. Wich in my opinion is not always better, not even if the AMD is faster. The same goes for the mainboard chipset. Maybe your old laptop had an Intel chipset, your new one a Via chipset. This last brand: worthless crap, avoid Via if you can. Even with the proper drivers (Via Arena) installed.
Over and over again I have issues with Via chipsets. Maybe 1 out of 10 running normally like it should.
This all have influence on speed and CPU load of certain operations. So don't just say something without having it confirmed on a good reference situation.

But its runs good, does'nt it? Yes, your laptop gets hotter because of the higher load, but normally it should be designed for that so that you wont run into troubles.
Make sure its air in- and outlets are free and you'll be fine.

[rick_v]

I just want to say that i am experiencing the same issue. I am not experiencing it like a real problem because i do not observe any difference in performance but i do agree that it is very strange that the cpu-load jumps from 10% to 100% when you activate sound to light.

Maybe it is hardware, but can also imagine it is a bug of some kind.

[remco_k]

Well, It might be that the Sound to Light function is enhanced in 3.0.1 for better beat detection or so. I think I've read that somewhere. Have no time to dig that up now. (Anyone? Onge? )
But with that, it could eat up more CPU. Kind of normal when working with audio and frequency filtering.

[mart0037]

Does anyone use virtual dj & freestyler?

anyone had any trouble running them both together?

I thinks its best to just use a seperate laptop for dmx

[remco_k]

In theory its always the best to split those things to 2 seperate computers.
Less risk of something bad going wrong wich takes down everything.

But, sometimes the money just is'nt there. So when CPU utilisation allows it, it could be working just perfectly together on just one machine.

I have a nice comparison to this; I work as a technician at a local radio station, I maintain the computers and network as well as the complete audio section, including the transmitters.
Because we are a local radio station, (non-commercial) we are on a tight budget. Few years ago we had 5 computers running 24/7. Most of them were old, like 600MHz machines or even one 300Mhz. 1 of them downloads the remotely created news hourly and serves the internet stream (AAC+ and MP3), another computer serves the webcam and RadioText (RDS), and next to that some other small things.
These kind of services, as I prefer to call them, were split onto seperate computers because of the CPU limits.
Of course there is a playout/live assist computer and database/file server, these are pretty new.
But the other old computers were getting really old and started barking at me. So a year ago or so I replaced the 3 very old computers with 1 pretty big vm-server, as I call him, on this server I have installed 3 virtual machines, so in fact 3 windows installations are running on that machine, at the same time. There is a Q6600 quadcore intel cpu in it, so theres about plenty of CPU 'room'. Also the memory (4GB I think) is split into 3 small pieces of about 512MB. The rest is left over for another 2 or more VM's (Virtual machines) that can be born some day when I need a new 'computer'.
The good: Cheap. Buy one machine and use it as it is 3 machines. Lower power consumpion as 3 real machines. Good to maintain. A VMware image is NOT hardware dependand. So can be moved easyliy between completely different computers.
The bad: If hardware fails, then everything running on that machine is down.
Fortunately I have a backup VM-server standing by with copies of the VM's. So if it goes down (and it does'nt because the real OS on that server is Linux, except when hardware really fails), then I go to the studio, turn on the spare VM server and I'm kind of ready.

My point; everything on one computer has advantages, but you need to know the disadvantages before you use it in real life.
Think and test before use, I would like to say.

@Onge: just saw the news here, very much snow there is'nt it?

[djSupport]

I do belive raph asked a while back (like a few years ago) if anyonew could or would re-write the sound to light module so if any of you can then feel free to contact him! [freestylerdev][/freestylerdev]

[wee_jimmy_mehrts]

Yea this needs to be sorted because I have a few jobs coming up with older computers in different locations that do not perform well with the current sound to light application.

would it be possible to use another sound to light program such as the one from DasLight virtual controller? That is easy to use and picks up beats very well while being very light on the cpu.

I looked at Task Maanger while sound to light was running in FreeStyler and it was using 50% cpu power!! Not good.

The sooner this gets sorted, the better for everyone who uses it. Especially on older systems.