Burning up your cpu-2018 edition

Or check out what pro tools expert did stress testing the new iMac and copy that ?

Waves Abby Road Plate @96k, eats some serious power.

DMG Limitless
Waves Abbey Road Vinyl
izotope Ozone 8 Advanced (load those slots up!)

I'm not interested in synthetic benchmarks...including ones cooked up by people who quite obviously lack any insight into how virtual instruments work.

I don't want to SEE what the new CPU can do...I want to HEAR what it can do. Thus...what AUDIO plug ins are sucking lots of CPU time, but you put up with it because I mean--LISTEN to that!! The Abbey Road Plate was actually on my short list--when I demo'd it, I liked the sound--that kinda distortion into reverb thing...but, it ate over half my mobile i5 at 88.2 for one instance.

And I didn't buy a K...my 8700 which was part of a bundle with the motherboard I needed and Corsair 3k CL15 RAM for the price of a 8086k chip itself...is sitting right now at 4.3ghz 12 threads. SILENTLY cooled. I don't build studio computers that make noise--that's actually my issue with my Apple...but, I digress. My logic said that 30 more wts of TDP to dissipate for at BEST 10% in a synthetic seemed a little like overclocking gamer enthusiast spend. If it were JUST the extra money, I'd probably have done it, but extra money AND 50% more TDP...I'm already gonna be greasin' up and heat sinking the storage chips to keep them from thermal throttling...since that IS the bottleneck for sample based VIs.

Anyway...so, I'm seeing Acoustica, which is always there in these discussions, which leads me to question if that's not just their marketing hook...mastering processors...what does AbbeyRoad Vinyl do? It's that their answer to the cutting lathe thing? Adding noise and warble? Slight elliptical filter and HPF? I thought that was a gimmicky little thing to make it like "you now have all the machines from Abbey Road"...do you use that on tracks or master? That peaks my interest.

see how many instances of Elevate you can run lol

Noctura u12s...? The one thats 22db at full load. One of them thar Nanoxia cases—thick heavy steel with mass loaded vinyl all in and a dual channel fan controller....Seasonic hybrid PS so it only comes on when it really needs cooling. And all nvme storage....no GPU, so the big case fans just unobstrutcedly pull air bottom front to top back across the board. Thus far, the exhaust seems cooler than ambient....

Im gonna open it back up and get the heatsinks on the nvme drives. I wanted to get it all together and verfiy all the pieces are working before I go removing stickers and applying thermal goo to expensive samsung chips.

$1500’ish. Its all new. I could’ve transferred pieces parts and saved a little...but, i wanted this purpose built ground up to sit in the studio and STFU. Should install OSX fine, but ill cross that bridge if I need to—Ill likely want a AMD GPU if I go that route. My understanding is that OSX’s Metal is really favoring the AMD stuff and basic UI is ver GPU accelerated. So, those, becuase of whatever bitcoin mining BS are crazy expensive....so, add $300 at least for the 580/8gb they use in a normal iMac. Seceral times that for the Vega chips being used in the Pros. If the intention is running OSX or playing Tomb Raider.

Which is how I end up with the “spare” CPU cycles....i have no need for this level of DSP, but sticking eith intel’s lines, theres not any TDP savings until you get WAY slower....and the 65wt i5 ended up saving $70 or something. I was temptd to rick the i3, which is now what i5s once were-non HT quad cores, but even there....saving 10-15% on the total for 30-40% less DSP didnt seem logical to me. Thus I ask what’s burning uo everyone CPU these days.

Oculus Spatializer is another worthy contender. With the acoustic spatializarion on, it really starts chewing up the CPU.

It's in the SDK!

Vinyl didn't seem to move the needle, so to speak, FWIW....the AR Plate Reverb still does....and still has the "issue" I had in my first demo--that it doesn't SIT well...it sounds wonderful if you just listen to the vocal and reverb--but, then when you try to get it sitting at the right level in the mix--it's gone....it's too loud....it's gone....that's usually how I describe using lousy reverbs--but, this sounds really nice out of context, which they usually don't....anyone using it on the regular?

I'll make a note of some of these when I have some mastering to do....

hey--has anyone tried the Soundradix Phi Mixer thing? I tried it long ago, but it just made stuff sound WEIRD....I wrote it off as the machine not being fast enough to maybe switch as quickly or seamlessly as it needed. I'm always interested in new digital ways to "do stuff better".