Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
First of all, To be honest, I wasn't that much impressed with the samples, but for the money, I didn't feel it was a wast. GPO works better if no solo part, to my ear. I think I will still reach my two of K2600Rs for orchestra simulation, but GPO sure will be handy when I an on the load. Now NI really sux! Yes, GPO Studio is the culprit of the CPU hog, because (a) it won't allow bigger than 512 buffer, which seems to (don't quote my guesses :-) be designed for OS9 SndMgr originally, and they haven't updated it to CA object, and (b) for reason I was unable to determine, GPO Studio is the one have to kick the CPU load up even when playback thread is not called. In another word, GPO behaves as expected if instantiated with dedicated Mac host application such as Digital Performer and DSP-Qattro, those which I tested with so far, instead of GPO Studio. I haven't tried to reproduce Chuck's problem yet, because! I created a DP sequence with GPO on my AlBook1.5 while I was out of my studio. The CPU load was too much to playback without CPU spike so I copied it to my studio rig when I was back. It's G5 Dual2.5GHz. Even though GPO runs just fine on this Dual2.5GHz, this particular sequence I created on my AlBook can't see where the .wav files are. A Path mess? Like Windows? Anyway, I too didn't know where these samples are actually stored so I let Kontakt Player go find them. Well, it has been almost 30 hours (not typo). I see it is finding one by one. Why it won't finish all when it found the first one is beyond me. I did check the option of assume all are the same place kinda checkbox, tho. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Yes, it is horrible. But it runs very nice on my $350 Dell Dimension 2400. steve On Jun 15, 2005, at 4:55 PM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: First of all, To be honest, I wasn't that much impressed with the samples, but for the money, I didn't feel it was a wast. GPO works better if no solo part, to my ear. I think I will still reach my two of K2600Rs for orchestra simulation, but GPO sure will be handy when I an on the load. Now NI really sux! Yes, GPO Studio is the culprit of the CPU hog, because (a) it won't allow bigger than 512 buffer, which seems to (don't quote my guesses :-) be designed for OS9 SndMgr originally, and they haven't updated it to CA object, and (b) for reason I was unable to determine, GPO Studio is the one have to kick the CPU load up even when playback thread is not called. In another word, GPO behaves as expected if instantiated with dedicated Mac host application such as Digital Performer and DSP-Qattro, those which I tested with so far, instead of GPO Studio. I haven't tried to reproduce Chuck's problem yet, because! I created a DP sequence with GPO on my AlBook1.5 while I was out of my studio. The CPU load was too much to playback without CPU spike so I copied it to my studio rig when I was back. It's G5 Dual2.5GHz. Even though GPO runs just fine on this Dual2.5GHz, this particular sequence I created on my AlBook can't see where the .wav files are. A Path mess? Like Windows? Anyway, I too didn't know where these samples are actually stored so I let Kontakt Player go find them. Well, it has been almost 30 hours (not typo). I see it is finding one by one. Why it won't finish all when it found the first one is beyond me. I did check the option of assume all are the same place kinda checkbox, tho. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
and there is going to be a Tiger update soon, according to an email I received from Gary a few days ago. Hi Chuck, Thank you for your kind words...and thank you for the information that the Tiger update is on its way soon. That is good to know and will hopefully clear up some of the problems you are having. ..I did find the crash log files listed below, and there were many crashes listed for the Formac Studio TV that sits in the corner of my screen, keeping me company while I do stuff that doesn't require all of my attention. So I quit that application. I think that may be the timer app that is crashing...it is one of the Formac processes that runs in the background (or is supposed to run!) There are issues with Formac startup too apparently under Tiger. I have heard that setting the Formac Studio to launch at login helps but I'm not sure how effective that really is. The best thing is probably, as Darcy said, to not run Formac at all while you are using GPO(I'm sorry :-( ) You may have to actually restart the computer too after you quit Formac because some background processes can keep causing problems even after you quit the parent application. But, also as Darcy mentioned, podcasts are nice! Here is a link for some dashboard widgets that you may like! http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/radio_podcasts/ Note: it is a good idea to uncheck the box in Safari preferencesGeneral where is says...Open 'safe files after downloading...as a precaution even though there are currently no damaging viruses for Mac... So the question I have, asked in what I imagine to be some naivete, is (please excuse the split infinitive): what is happening during the period between starting GPO and the time it decides to hog the CPU (some hours - maybe 24 or so), and is this something GPO or Kontact can fix? Or can I? I think that I would have to say that I second everything Darcy and Hiro were talking about in previous postsI think they are on the money as far as this goes and I don't have anything more to add. As Darcy mentioned, I also open my GPO documents from within the GPO application rather than double clicking on the document to launch GPO. Not sure if this makes a huge difference but it may allow GPO to start up more quickly. Finally, I'm wondering if the Ambience reverb plugin within GPO is adding to the CPU problems over time. You can open the Ambience window and turn the Quality/CPU percentage down (and set the room to be smaller too perhaps?) see if that helps...may not sound as good, but may help with CPU usage. That's all that I can think of that you can do to remedy this (aside from the restarting that has already been mentioned.) The rest I think is up to Garritan and NI. Again, hopefully the Tiger update will help. I'll look forward to hearing what the Garritan tech has to say. Thanks for doing that legwork and sharing it with the list! I may have mentioned that the next version of MOTU's MachFive will work as a standalone application with Finale. I'm looking forward to that and I'm curious as to whether anyone on the list knows anymore about this upcoming release? From a personal standpoint (sitpoint?), learning to control Finale has taken quite a while, and the information needed to use it takes up considerable space in this old CPU of a brain of mine. Not sure I'm buying this Chuck! From your posts, it seems that you have quite the ability to swing with Finale and computers too! Hope you are having a good weekend! Take care, Karen ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
My problem with GPO is the Kontact engine. It doesn't load many instruments before the sound cracks up on a Mac. I find Reason to be much more efficient. Mind you, Reason doesn't have those nice Keyboard Switches that GPO has where you can change samples (e.g., arco to pizz to trem. etc.) within the same MIDI channel. I haven't used Reason as a GM machine. I have collected samples over the years, from commercial sample discs to my own custom made ones, and I have a nice orchestral template ready to go. I've even played the GPO samples on Reason converting them using a program called CDXtract. The commercial discs that I've used come from companies like Denny Jaeger, Dan Dean, and East-West to name a few. Reason does have some good starter sounds built in their own sound banks (Orkester), but over the years I found it paid off to make my own instruments from samples collected elsewhere. Another thing I like about Reason is that up until version 2.5, I can run it on System 9 as well as X, and therefore I can use my old computer as another synth/sampler. Let me know if you need even more specifics. -Randolph Peters P.S. I don't use the Reason sequencer and a number of the other modules (drum machine, synths), but I do like the mixer, the reverb, and of course, the sampler. At 7:13 AM -0400 6/11/05, dhbailey wrote: Randolph Peters wrote: BTW, I'm not too impressed by the efficiency of GPO. Reason gives me a lot more bang for my buck without overloading the CPU. I really think people should think twice before committing to GPO. What sort of sample library are you using for realistic playback in Reason? I was very impressed with the demo when I played around with it a couple of years ago, but couldn't see any way to get it to be a GM machine. I even contacted them via e-mail and the tech-support people said that while it would be possible, it wouldn't be easy. Have things changed? I would very much appreciate any specifics concerning how you are using Reason with Finale, please. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Hi Karen, Darcy, Hiro et al, It seems you guys are likely to be right! GPO has been running overnight - without the Formac TV, and it and my Mac have remained stable, with the GPO usage remaining at about 16% in the activity monitor. So all those background crashes of the Formac software seem to have been interfering with the operation of other things. I'm not sure I am privvy to exactly how that happens, but it's not counterintuitive to understand that it might be a possibility. Maybe Formac will fix this, but for the moment, it seems GPO is not the culprit. Sorry about that misleading complaint. Now I've forgotten who else said he was having the same problem. Was it Ken Durling? Whoever it is should also look elsewhere under the hood for a conflict with GPO. I'll use the links you guys suggested to find good music when I'm not attempting to make my own. Nice to have friends. Many thanks, Chuck On Jun 12, 2005, at 1:15 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and there is going to be a Tiger update soon, according to an email I received from Gary a few days ago. Hi Chuck, Thank you for your kind words...and thank you for the information that the Tiger update is on its way soon. That is good to know and will hopefully clear up some of the problems you are having. ..I did find the crash log files listed below, and there were many crashes listed for the Formac Studio TV that sits in the corner of my screen, keeping me company while I do stuff that doesn't require all of my attention. So I quit that application. I think that may be the timer app that is crashing...it is one of the Formac processes that runs in the background (or is supposed to run!) There are issues with Formac startup too apparently under Tiger. I have heard that setting the Formac Studio to launch at login helps but I'm not sure how effective that really is. The best thing is probably, as Darcy said, to not run Formac at all while you are using GPO(I'm sorry :-( ) You may have to actually restart the computer too after you quit Formac because some background processes can keep causing problems even after you quit the parent application. But, also as Darcy mentioned, podcasts are nice! Here is a link for some dashboard widgets that you may like! http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/radio_podcasts/ Note: it is a good idea to uncheck the box in Safari preferencesGeneral where is says...Open 'safe files after downloading...as a precaution even though there are currently no damaging viruses for Mac... So the question I have, asked in what I imagine to be some naivete, is (please excuse the split infinitive): what is happening during the period between starting GPO and the time it decides to hog the CPU (some hours - maybe 24 or so), and is this something GPO or Kontact can fix? Or can I? I think that I would have to say that I second everything Darcy and Hiro were talking about in previous postsI think they are on the money as far as this goes and I don't have anything more to add. As Darcy mentioned, I also open my GPO documents from within the GPO application rather than double clicking on the document to launch GPO. Not sure if this makes a huge difference but it may allow GPO to start up more quickly. Finally, I'm wondering if the Ambience reverb plugin within GPO is adding to the CPU problems over time. You can open the Ambience window and turn the Quality/CPU percentage down (and set the room to be smaller too perhaps?) see if that helps...may not sound as good, but may help with CPU usage. That's all that I can think of that you can do to remedy this (aside from the restarting that has already been mentioned.) The rest I think is up to Garritan and NI. Again, hopefully the Tiger update will help. I'll look forward to hearing what the Garritan tech has to say. Thanks for doing that legwork and sharing it with the list! I may have mentioned that the next version of MOTU's MachFive will work as a standalone application with Finale. I'm looking forward to that and I'm curious as to whether anyone on the list knows anymore about this upcoming release? From a personal standpoint (sitpoint?), learning to control Finale has taken quite a while, and the information needed to use it takes up considerable space in this old CPU of a brain of mine. Not sure I'm buying this Chuck! From your posts, it seems that you have quite the ability to swing with Finale and computers too! Hope you are having a good weekend! Take care, Karen ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
End of day report: Worked w/Finale GPO all day - no Formac TV, and a few minutes ago (about 6:30 PM), GPO choked up again. The Activity Monitor was showing that it was back to using 70% + of the CPU. Quit restart GPO - redo MIDI in Finale (only takes a couple of minutes) and again, all is well. We are back where we started, except I understand how to live with the issue and work around it. I am back to being convinced that this is a GPO/Kontact problem. Chuck Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Chuck Israels / 2005/06/12 / 09:32 PM wrote: Worked w/Finale GPO all day - no Formac TV, and a few minutes ago (about 6:30 PM), GPO choked up again. The Activity Monitor was showing that it was back to using 70% + of the CPU. Chuck, Next time, in Activity Monitor, highlight GPO which is showing the high proc use, Hit Opt+Cmd+S. It will start sampling the thread. If it seems to be frozen, don't worry, just go to dinner. It might finish in a second, or it might take 30 min. Save it as text then email me off list. I can't promise anything since proc sample is hard to read for a flute player, but I might see something interesting. There is another way. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
I wrote: There is another way. Ooops. My finger slipped and it went out before finishing the sentence. Sorry! The other and more practical way is to run Shark against GPO if you have DevTool installed. I will see what I find when I get my hands on my copy of GPO :-) Tho I am so behind my work these weeks. One of my clients is getting inpatient I haven't finished mixing :-( -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Hi Hiro, I'll do this the next time it starts to choke up, and I'll send you the report. I don't have that Shark thing you mentioned in the next email, and that is getting out of my experience, but if you will walk me through some of this stuff when you have a free moment, I'll try to learn how to do these things. It is kind of interesting to learn how computers work. Anyway, let's wait to see what develops when I send you the sample. Then, if there's more to do, we can try to find a moment when we can talk on the phone and attempt to diagnose the problem. I feel lucky to have found so many friends. Thanks, Chuck On Jun 12, 2005, at 6:40 PM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: Chuck Israels / 2005/06/12 / 09:32 PM wrote: Worked w/Finale GPO all day - no Formac TV, and a few minutes ago (about 6:30 PM), GPO choked up again. The Activity Monitor was showing that it was back to using 70% + of the CPU. Chuck, Next time, in Activity Monitor, highlight GPO which is showing the high proc use, Hit Opt+Cmd+S. It will start sampling the thread. If it seems to be frozen, don't worry, just go to dinner. It might finish in a second, or it might take 30 min. Save it as text then email me off list. I can't promise anything since proc sample is hard to read for a flute player, but I might see something interesting. There is another way. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Randolph Peters wrote: I'd like to add my data points that Tiger sometimes slows down to a crawl even when I'm only in the Finder. The fan starts revving and I can't tell what it thinks it is working on. Restarting seems to be the best solution so far. BTW, I'm not too impressed by the efficiency of GPO. Reason gives me a lot more bang for my buck without overloading the CPU. I really think people should think twice before committing to GPO. What sort of sample library are you using for realistic playback in Reason? I was very impressed with the demo when I played around with it a couple of years ago, but couldn't see any way to get it to be a GM machine. I even contacted them via e-mail and the tech-support people said that while it would be possible, it wouldn't be easy. Have things changed? I would very much appreciate any specifics concerning how you are using Reason with Finale, please. Thanks! David -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Dear Karen, As usual, your response is thorough, deeply knowledgeable, and generous! I'll try to answer a few of these things, and then I'll take the time to explore some of those that are beyond my everyday experience with this machinery. (How do people like you and Darcy have the room in your brains to know so much music and so much technology. I have a feeling that the tech knowledge is something that your generation is comfortable with - having grown up with it. It's still a little mysterious to me, though I don't feel the complete fool all the time.) On Jun 11, 2005, at 2:49 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Chuck, I'm sure you've probably already done this but just in case...are you running the latest version of GPO Studio? (v. 1.2) Yes, I got it directly from Gary, and there is going to be a Tiger update soon, according to an email I received from Gary a few days ago. Also, in addition to all of the great suggestions that Hiro and Darcy have given...you can also try opening your crash log files and seeing if there is some background process that is crashing somewhere...or...look for CrashReporter in Activity Monitor and see if it is active (you can change views in the drop down menu in the activity monitor window to toggle between active processes and inactive processes among others.) Hmmmn. I couldn't find this. Must not be looking in the right place, but never mind because I did find the crash log files listed below, and there were many crashes listed for the Formac Studio TV that sits in the corner of my screen, keeping me company while I do stuff that doesn't require all of my attention. So I quit that application. Interestingly, at the moment of responding to your suggestions, GPO had been on long enough to have reached its trouble level, and the activity monitor showed it at 75% of the CPU (and green right up to the top of the window!). The computer was behaving in just the recalcitrant ways I have described earlier, so I quit GPO, and everything smoothed out to normal. Then I restarted GPO, with the activity monitor window open, so that I could watch what was happening. Here's the sequence: Double click on the particular GPO document I want to open (my silly little imitation jazz band setup); it doesn't open, but GPO Studio application does; opening the application takes up all the CPU activity (substantial red showing at the bottom of the CPU activity window - indicating system usage, and the rest, green all the way to the top - indicating process usage); the activity then settles down to a reasonable proportion, but I must double click the GPO document again to get it to open. This starts a similar pattern in the activity monitor window which eventually settles down into what appears to me to be a reasonable and stable situation, with GPO using about 16% of the CPU (lots of black left above the green). So the question I have, asked in what I imagine to be some naivete, is (please excuse the split infinitive): what is happening during the period between starting GPO and the time it decides to hog the CPU (some hours - maybe 24 or so), and is this something GPO or Kontact can fix? Or can I? It really isn't that big a deal to me to restart GPO every day or so, but it seems to indicate a problem that will need repair before Mac users can rely on this software. I hope it can be solved, because I now have a little personal involvement with GPO, and that's fun for me, but it will not be, if I am unable to recommend it to friends. I have less than a hand in this - maybe a fingernail, and I am trying to get Gary to address the issue, but I think he's not really a tech guy and may not understand the significance of it. I did ask him to put me in contact with the guy who takes care of this for him, but he has yet to do it. Wait! I just found his email, so I will copy some of this correspondence to him, and we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I am grateful for the attention I have gotten from those of you who have responded with suggestions, and I'll keep you all posted as I hear from Gary's tech guy. Thanks, Chuck To check your crash log files: ApplicationsUtilitiesConsoleClick on the Logs buttonClick on the triangle next to ~/Library/LogsClick on triangle next to CrashReporter. Then look through the logs and see if any of them are being currently written to. I had this happen to me with a process called dmnotifyd (a dot mac process) which was was crashing at the time...my system was showing some odd behavior and my backup program kept hanging up. My iDisk wasn't mounting correctly and/or it lost connection to the .Mac server. After I reset my iDisk settings my system was happy again. A couple of other thoughts: are you running Quickeys and have you updated to the most recent version? (v. 3.02...must be done for Tiger) Did you
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On Jun 10, 2005, at 10:46 AM, Gerald Berg wrote: Yah! Here too ---but reboot unnecessary -- quit GPO (still pain I know but much less than reboot) and start it up again -- that should fix it. Jerry Thanks, Jerry. I may have done that too - and forgotten that it's a short cut to solving the problem. Still, wouldn't it be good to know what's causing it, and maybe how to repair it permanently? Perhaps this is a problem of Kontact's integration on Mac OS. I keep hoping for updates (Kontact -whatever that is, and why should I have to know about it at all? - or Finale 2006) to solve this irritation. Chuck On 10-Jun-05, at 1:40 PM, Chuck Israels wrote: Hi folks, I have asked about this before, and not been able to resolve the problem despite suggestions from Darcy and Hiro, so I simply put up with it and re-boot whenever necessary. But there's something wrong, and I think it has to do with GPO. I'd like to understand it better, so I'm describing it again in the hope of gleaning something useful from people who know more about computers under the hood than I do. G 5 with newly installed mucho RAM (3.5 GB) which I thought might help but didn't. Tiger OS. I run GPO, which takes two double clicks to open - one for the GPO Studio, and another for the specific set of sounds. Then I open Finale, which also, stubbornly, takes two starts; one to get the program running and another to open the file. I can't remember if this reluctant and annoying behavior started with Tiger or with the installation of GPO in Panther (sorry). I am only using a half a dozen samples - bassoons as a poor substitute for saxes, trumpets, trombones, grand piano (very nice - seems to me), and thumpy pizz. bass (kind of awful). No strings etc. at the moment, though I don't know if these sounds are lurking in the background and using up processing power, since the inner workings of this are mysterious to me. Things then run OK for awhile, maybe as long as 24 hours, but eventually the computer begins to choke up and stutter. Everything not only slows down, but sound, keyboard and mouse response, become intermittent to the point of uselessness, and a restart is required. This then solves the problem for another similar period. I have learned to look at the activity monitor, though I'm not sure I understand all its implications. One thing, however, seems awry, and that is that GPO is hogging between 65 and 75% of the CPU. Does that seem right? I may be naive with regard to the integration of some kind of acceptable sketch sounds with Finale (I'm not trying to get much more than that out of this), but it does seem to me that I am not alone in wanting to be able to access better than GM sounds and attach them to Finale in a simple setup process that will work seamlessly in the background. From a personal standpoint (sitpoint?), learning to control Finale has taken quite a while, and the information needed to use it takes up considerable space in this old CPU of a brain of mine. I'd love to avoid the need to learn a bunch of other arcane things just to get better than GM playback. I'll forward a copy of this to Gary Garritan and ask him to send it on to his programming person to see if some light can be shed from their end. TIA for your thoughts. Chuck Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Gerald Berg ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Chuck Israels / 2005/06/10 / 01:40 PM wrote: I have asked about this before, and not been able to resolve the problem despite suggestions from Darcy and Hiro, so I simply put up with it and re-boot whenever necessary. But there's something wrong, and I think it has to do with GPO. I'd like to understand it better, so I'm describing it again in the hope of gleaning something useful from people who know more about computers under the hood than I do. G 5 with newly installed mucho RAM (3.5 GB) which I thought might help but didn't. Tiger OS. Hi Chuck, I have a suspicion at Tiger itself quite a while. There are at least 2 other apps I run displays problem similar to what you describe. The app slows down when Tiger is doing some other task, and the app never regain speed until it is restarted (not reboot). I have pinged this to many places but has not received any response yet. Workaround is easy as restarting the offending app. When you check Activity Monitor, does memory usage increase over time while left idle? If so, there can be a memory leak. GPO charged my credit card a while ago, and I have been patiently waiting for my copy to arrive :-f -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Hi Chuck, Jerry's right, just quit GPO Studio when that happens, and everything should go back to normal. Although I have only seen what you describe once, and that was on 10.3.9 (I'm waiting for 10.4.2 before installing Tiger). And I frequently leave GPO Studio running in the background for days. Everything not only slows down, but sound, keyboard and mouse response, become intermittent to the point of uselessness, and a restart is required. Normally, that's a sign of RAM saturation, but you have plenty of RAM. However, it's possible there could be a memory leak in one of the apps you are using? When this happens, are you running anything other than GPO Studio and Finale? Any third-party utilities running in the background? The UI for GPO Studio does suck. I've never tried double-clicking on a studio setup, I just double-click on the GPO Studio app, then select Open from the File menu (which, for some godawful reason, is not even mapped to cmd-O!) and pick the setup I need from there. Then it asks me if I want to save the (noexistent) changes the existing (empty) setup -- grr. If you can get Gary to do something about these annoyances, that would be great. and thumpy pizz. bass (kind of awful) A couple of things you can do to (somewhat) alleviate the awfulness -- adjust the pan so that it's centered (instead of 92% right) and adjust the duration from 50% to 75-100% (depending on the tempo). It's never going to sound like Oscar Pettiford, or, well, _you_ (at least, not yet!) but it's much better than the default settings. I have learned to look at the activity monitor, though I'm not sure I understand all its implications. One thing, however, seems awry, and that is that GPO is hogging between 65 and 75% of the CPU. Does that seem right? During playback, yes. Sitting idle, absolutely not. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On Jun 10, 2005, at 11:00 AM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: Chuck Israels / 2005/06/10 / 01:40 PM wrote: I have asked about this before, and not been able to resolve the problem despite suggestions from Darcy and Hiro, so I simply put up with it and re-boot whenever necessary. But there's something wrong, and I think it has to do with GPO. I'd like to understand it better, so I'm describing it again in the hope of gleaning something useful from people who know more about computers under the hood than I do. G 5 with newly installed mucho RAM (3.5 GB) which I thought might help but didn't. Tiger OS. Hi Chuck, I have a suspicion at Tiger itself quite a while. Me too. There are at least 2 other apps I run displays problem similar to what you describe. The app slows down when Tiger is doing some other task, and the app never regain speed until it is restarted (not reboot). I have pinged this to many places but has not received any response yet. Workaround is easy as restarting the offending app. When you check Activity Monitor, does memory usage increase over time while left idle? If so, there can be a memory leak. I will try to understand how to see this in the Activity Monitor and report back. GPO charged my credit card a while ago, and I have been patiently waiting for my copy to arrive :-f Well, when you do get it, we'll all benefit from your experience with it, assuming some of us old fogies can plumb the depths of your descriptions of computer operation (a reference to my shortcomings in this regard, not to the clarity of your communications to those who are familiar with the jargon and all the operations you know about.) Thanks, Chuck -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
I don't think Tiger is to blame for this. I'm on G5 1.6 3 gig RAM and OSX 10.39. Jerry On 10-Jun-05, at 2:00 PM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: Chuck Israels / 2005/06/10 / 01:40 PM wrote: I have asked about this before, and not been able to resolve the problem despite suggestions from Darcy and Hiro, so I simply put up with it and re-boot whenever necessary. But there's something wrong, and I think it has to do with GPO. I'd like to understand it better, so I'm describing it again in the hope of gleaning something useful from people who know more about computers under the hood than I do. G 5 with newly installed mucho RAM (3.5 GB) which I thought might help but didn't. Tiger OS. Hi Chuck, I have a suspicion at Tiger itself quite a while. There are at least 2 other apps I run displays problem similar to what you describe. The app slows down when Tiger is doing some other task, and the app never regain speed until it is restarted (not reboot). I have pinged this to many places but has not received any response yet. Workaround is easy as restarting the offending app. When you check Activity Monitor, does memory usage increase over time while left idle? If so, there can be a memory leak. GPO charged my credit card a while ago, and I have been patiently waiting for my copy to arrive :-f -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On Jun 10, 2005, at 11:01 AM, Darcy James Argue wrote: Hi Chuck, Jerry's right, just quit GPO Studio when that happens, and everything should go back to normal. Although I have only seen what you describe once, and that was on 10.3.9 (I'm waiting for 10.4.2 before installing Tiger). And I frequently leave GPO Studio running in the background for days. Everything not only slows down, but sound, keyboard and mouse response, become intermittent to the point of uselessness, and a restart is required. Normally, that's a sign of RAM saturation, but you have plenty of RAM. However, it's possible there could be a memory leak in one of the apps you are using? When this happens, are you running anything other than GPO Studio and Finale? Any third-party utilities running in the background? Hi Darcy, Sometimes I am running Formac Studio TV in a corner of my monitor - watching dumb TV while I format parts. Other than that - Dragthing, Mail and Quickeys. The UI for GPO Studio does suck. Big time! I've never tried double-clicking on a studio setup, I just double- click on the GPO Studio app, then select Open from the File menu (which, for some godawful reason, is not even mapped to cmd-O!) and pick the setup I need from there. Then it asks me if I want to save the (noexistent) changes the existing (empty) setup -- grr. If you can get Gary to do something about these annoyances, that would be great. and thumpy pizz. bass (kind of awful) A couple of things you can do to (somewhat) alleviate the awfulness -- adjust the pan so that it's centered (instead of 92% right) and adjust the duration from 50% to 75-100% (depending on the tempo). Good ideas. It's never going to sound like Oscar Pettiford, or, well, _you_ (at least, not yet!) but it's much better than the default settings. I have learned to look at the activity monitor, though I'm not sure I understand all its implications. One thing, however, seems awry, and that is that GPO is hogging between 65 and 75% of the CPU. Does that seem right? During playback, yes. Sitting idle, absolutely not. It is idling when the CPU use shows this much, and I thought that seemed wrong. My knowledge of this is superficial, but intuition suggested that this was not a happy circumstance. If I find out anything more, I'll report in. Thanks, Chuck - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On 10 Jun 2005, at 1:58 PM, Chuck Israels wrote: Perhaps this is a problem of Kontact's integration on Mac OS. I keep hoping for updates (Kontact -whatever that is, and why should I have to know about it at all? - or Finale 2006) to solve this irritation. Garritan is -- effectively -- not much of a software company at all. What they do is record samples from live instruments, and design sample libraries for playback (keyswitching, etc). But they don't make the software that actually plays back the samples. That software is made by a company called Native Instruments, and the software used by GPO is based on a Native Instruments product called Kontakt. The version of Kontakt included in GPO is a lite version called Kontakt Player -- it lacks the advanced features of the full version of Kontakt, which is a very expensive piece of software (more than twice the retail price of GPO!). However, the version of Kontakt Player included with GPO has also been specially customized for playing back GPO instruments. Unfortunately, Kontakt Player performs incredibly poorly on existing Mac hardware. It is a quick-and-dirty port of PC software and has not been optimized for the Mac at all. The full version of Kontakt was recently updated to version 2.0, and that version apparently contains (badly-needed) optimizations for G4 and G5 processors. Eventually, Native Instruments will make a new version of Kontakt Player for GPO based on Kontakt 2.0, and eventually that version will be released -- hopefully as a free download for existing GPO users. (Gary can probably tell you a lot more about this than I can!) - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Hi Chuck, Sometimes I am running Formac Studio TV in a corner of my monitor - watching dumb TV while I format parts. Other than that - Dragthing, Mail and Quickeys. If you're just doing parts, you don't need GPO playback anymore, right? Why not quit GPO Studio after extracting parts? That will free up a lot of resources. BTW, I'm not familiar with the app, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts Formac Studio TV is a big resource hog as well. I would try to avoid any situation where you had to run both Formac Studio TV and GPO Studio simultaneously. If quitting GPO while you extract parts isn't an option, why not try listening to smart radio (via RealPlayer or, better, podcasts in iTunes) instead of watching dumb TV? [grin] - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On Jun 10, 2005, at 11:16 AM, Darcy James Argue wrote: On 10 Jun 2005, at 1:58 PM, Chuck Israels wrote: Perhaps this is a problem of Kontact's integration on Mac OS. I keep hoping for updates (Kontact -whatever that is, and why should I have to know about it at all? - or Finale 2006) to solve this irritation. Garritan is -- effectively -- not much of a software company at all. What they do is record samples from live instruments, and design sample libraries for playback (keyswitching, etc). But they don't make the software that actually plays back the samples. That software is made by a company called Native Instruments, and the software used by GPO is based on a Native Instruments product called Kontakt. The version of Kontakt included in GPO is a lite version called Kontakt Player -- it lacks the advanced features of the full version of Kontakt, which is a very expensive piece of software (more than twice the retail price of GPO!). However, the version of Kontakt Player included with GPO has also been specially customized for playing back GPO instruments. Unfortunately, Kontakt Player performs incredibly poorly on existing Mac hardware. It is a quick-and-dirty port of PC software and has not been optimized for the Mac at all. The full version of Kontakt was recently updated to version 2.0, and that version apparently contains (badly-needed) optimizations for G4 and G5 processors. Eventually, Native Instruments will make a new version of Kontakt Player for GPO based on Kontakt 2.0, and eventually that version will be released -- hopefully as a free download for existing GPO users. (Gary can probably tell you a lot more about this than I can!) That's a clear explanation - and news that makes me optimistic about forthcoming transparent improvements at little or no further expense. Thanks. Chuck - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Gerald Berg / 2005/06/10 / 02:12 PM wrote: I don't think Tiger is to blame for this. I'm on G5 1.6 3 gig RAM and OSX 10.39. I see. Here is an interesting point. Both you and Chuck has more than 2GB RAM. Can GPO address more than 2GB RAM? Darcy? -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On Jun 10, 2005, at 11:20 AM, Darcy James Argue wrote: Hi Chuck, Sometimes I am running Formac Studio TV in a corner of my monitor - watching dumb TV while I format parts. Other than that - Dragthing, Mail and Quickeys. If you're just doing parts, you don't need GPO playback anymore, right? Why not quit GPO Studio after extracting parts? That will free up a lot of resources. Good idea. BTW, I'm not familiar with the app, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts Formac Studio TV is a big resource hog as well. I would try to avoid any situation where you had to run both Formac Studio TV and GPO Studio simultaneously. If quitting GPO while you extract parts isn't an option, why not try listening to smart radio (via RealPlayer or, better, podcasts in iTunes) instead of watching dumb TV? [grin] Another good idea from a cultured guy! I could certainly miss another Law and Order rerun, couldn't I? Chuck - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Darcy James Argue / 2005/06/10 / 02:20 PM wrote: If you're just doing parts, you don't need GPO playback anymore, right? Why not quit GPO Studio after extracting parts? That will free up a lot of resources. While I am waiting for my GPO, this doesn't make sense to me. The nature of sample playback engy is that it should not tax cpu at all when not playing. By the way, if GPO is nothing to do with playback engine as you said, I wonder why it doesn't offer streaming since NI sample playback does offer streaming and buffer modification, no? -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On Jun 10, 2005, at 11:33 AM, A-NO-NE Music wrote:Darcy James Argue / 2005/06/10 / 02:20 PM wrote: If you're just doing parts, you don't need GPO playback anymore, right? Why not quit GPO Studio after extracting parts? That will free up a lot of resources. While I am waiting for my GPO, this doesn't make sense to me. Thenature of sample playback engy is that it should not tax cpu at all whennot playing.Now that you mention that, isn't that what Darcy was suggesting when he said that GPO should not be hogging the CPU when idle?By the way, if GPO is nothing to do with playback engine as you said, Iwonder why it doesn't offer streaming since NI sample playback doesoffer streaming and buffer modification, no?This last bit is slightly over my head.Chuck Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On 10 Jun 2005, at 2:33 PM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: While I am waiting for my GPO, this doesn't make sense to me. The nature of sample playback engy is that it should not tax cpu at all when not playing. In an ideal world, yes, but obviously this isn't happening for Chuck. Also, remember that because the samples are RAM-based, GPO studio could easily be sitting on 1 GB or more of physical memory, potentially increased memory swapping in other apps. By the way, if GPO is nothing to do with playback engine as you said, I wonder why it doesn't offer streaming In my post, I explained that Native Instruments build a _custom version_ of Kontakt Player that is designed specifically for GPO. But Garritan doesn't make that software -- NI does. Also, GPO Studio does offer Direct-From-Disk streaming (as an optional install) -- they just don't recommend using it, because playback is much more processor-intensive that way. Chuck has plenty of RAM so there's no need to use DFD. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
Darcy James Argue / 2005/06/10 / 02:41 PM wrote: Also, remember that because the samples are RAM-based, GPO studio could easily be sitting on 1 GB or more of physical memory, potentially increased memory swapping in other apps. Hmm, With his 3.5GB RAM.. Even legacy app usually utilize at least 2GB without swap, tho. Also he mentioned cpu tax was listed under GPO. Something else is going on. One possibility is something got in a loop, which can be found by running Proc Sample from Activity Monitor, while the output file is usually hard to read unless you are the developer, you can still send it to the developer. Another question is does GPO gives the list of the size of each sample? I remember about streaming you mentioned a while ago. My memory is not good. I used to play in a jazz combo, all black one Japanese, kinda weird looking group wants me to memorize everything. I said I can't remember anything, but this is why I am always happy since I don't remember anything bad happened to me. Life is much better this way alto I don't remember anything good, too. They laughed and let me put music on the floor :-) I can't wait to get hands on my copy of GPO. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
I wondered and I wondered ... why?:) Jerry On 10-Jun-05, at 2:26 PM, A-NO-NE Music wrote: Gerald Berg / 2005/06/10 / 02:12 PM wrote: I don't think Tiger is to blame for this. I'm on G5 1.6 3 gig RAM and OSX 10.39. I see. Here is an interesting point. Both you and Chuck has more than 2GB RAM. Can GPO address more than 2GB RAM? Darcy? -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On 10 Jun 2005 at 14:00, A-NO-NE Music wrote: I have a suspicion at Tiger itself quite a while. There are at least 2 other apps I run displays problem similar to what you describe. The app slows down when Tiger is doing some other task, and the app never regain speed until it is restarted (not reboot). I have pinged this to many places but has not received any response yet. Workaround is easy as restarting the offending app. Now, I'm not a Mac user, so take this for what it's worth (exactly ZERO), but I know a little bit about how the theory of virtual memory management is supposed to work. What you describe sounds to me like a problem with an application that isn't recovering well from not having a certain portion of the total CPU usage. MIDI, for instance, has real time requirements, and is thus supposed to get pretty high priority (though not as high as something like disk writes will get). What you describe sounds like the OS swapping some memory pages (i.e., triggering a disk write), which is going to be higher priority than the application, and the application is never recovering back to the level of efficiency it had before the OS grabbed CPU cycles for swapping. One thing that has also been something to try on Windows machines with massive amounts of RAM is to play around with the size of the VMM's swap file. Sometimes with very large amounts of real memory, the overhead required to manage it can cause *more* swapping than there would be with less physical RAM. One strategy is to try making the swap file very small, so that things basically stay in RAM. Another setting that many VMMs have is to pre-allocate the file space, rather than making the swap file sizing dynamic. This is usually done by setting a minimum size so that the sectors on the disk are permanently reserved for pages swapped out of memory. Of course, different VMMs are, well, different, and tuning of particular parameters may have different effects (positive on one VMM, negative on another). But I would also suspect the apps that exhibit the problem of not being engineered robustly enough if they can't recover from the OS taking over for memory paging (I'm assuming it's not those apps whose memory pages are being swapped, which would be problematic and shouldn't happen if the apps are properly written). -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
David W. Fenton / 2005/06/10 / 06:34 PM wrote: One thing that has also been something to try on Windows machines with massive amounts of RAM is to play around with the size of the VMM's swap file. Sometimes with very large amounts of real memory, the overhead required to manage it can cause *more* swapping than there would be with less physical RAM. One strategy is to try making the swap file very small, so that things basically stay in RAM. Another setting that many VMMs have is to pre-allocate the file space, rather than making the swap file sizing dynamic. This is usually done by setting a minimum size so that the sectors on the disk are permanently reserved for pages swapped out of memory. Photoshop creates a lot of vm despite the size of given scratch disk, and I was wondering if it was this way before. But this doesn't slowdown Photoshop. Instead, it slows down some other apps that is running at the moment, and that one's speed is the one doesn't get recovered until restart. I have vm_stat printed onto my desktop for real-time monitoring. There is no way in Mac to set the size of vm as far as I know. However, Tiger did change the vm behavior. Prior to Tiger, the single vm is limited to 64MB, and create another one as needed. Tiger still does this up till 2nd vm, but then the size will increase: swapfile0 : 64MB swapfile1 : 64MB swapfile2 : 128MB swapfile3 : 256MB swapfile4 : 512MB and so on. The interesting part of this is that the same Photoshop file produce the same number of swapfiles between Panther and Tiger, but the size is now different as you can see above, 320MB vs 1,024MB. This doesn't make sense to me. -- - Hiro Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA http://a-no-ne.com http://anonemusic.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
On 10 Jun 2005 at 18:58, A-NO-NE Music wrote: [] Prior to Tiger, the single vm is limited to 64MB, and create another one as needed. . .. I wasn't talking about the size of the VMs for individual apps -- I was talking about the size of the swap file, since writing to/reading from disk is likely to slow things down much more than, say, having to allocate another VM for an app. The interesting part of this is that the same Photoshop file produce the same number of swapfiles between Panther and Tiger, but the size is now different as you can see above, 320MB vs 1,024MB. This doesn't make sense to me. OS X uses multiple swap files? OK, that's one I've never heard of. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: GPO hogs CPU
I Googled 10.4 tiger memory leak: http://tinyurl.com/cb6rc - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY On 10 Jun 2005, at 10:39 PM, Randolph Peters wrote: I'd like to add my data points that Tiger sometimes slows down to a crawl even when I'm only in the Finder. The fan starts revving and I can't tell what it thinks it is working on. Restarting seems to be the best solution so far. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
