Short Sonar 2.2 benchmark test for you guys

[maggotcontrol]

Well this is an interesting topic. How about we start off with a bit of a Sonar thing? I made this little looping thing awhile back to wank guitar solos over playing through Amplitube in real time.

It contains 4 unique stereo tracks with 2 Cakewalk FXREverbs on each and I duplicated them once for a total of 8 stereo tracks and 16 instances of the reverb.

Rules:

Set Sonar to 1.5ms and 44.1KHz/24bits. (both driver and file bit depth)
If 1.5ms is not possible, post results with your lowest possible latency)
I/O buffer size should be at 64KB.
Input monitoring OFF.

Hit play from the beginning of the project and write down your initial CPU%.
If your system can handle more (I sure hope so!), clone the first four tracks with all checkmarks checked. (except "Link to original")
Repetitions=1.
Once you clone tracks 1-4, playback again and write down results. Repeat if possible and post results and system config on this thread.

Here's the link to the test file: http://www.studiokobari.com/downloads/sonartest.zip
Right click, download and use winzip to unzip.

Remember, set Sonar to 1.5ms 44.1KHz/24bits!

Hope to hear from you guys soon!

Yoshi

[Zikes]

Ok, COOL test and NICE job on the tracks but now I'm a bit worried. My system couldn't handle the test at the 1.5ms latency setting. It was running but the CPU was overloading and the sound was awful. Was barely able to hit the stop button so perhaps I barely passed that test. At 2.9ms, the CPU was bouncing 89-94% with Echo Mia WDM drivers and a bit of noise rather like the old record player noise needle noise for those of us that remember that. At 10.2ms the CPU was bouncing 63-66%. I was able to clone at 10.2ms but the CPU jumped to 94-96% and the mouse pointer was shaky and quite a bit of audio noise starting to develop. I tried ASIO but the latency slider only goes down to 11.6ms in ASIO mode. The CPU was bouncing 61-63% at 11.6ms in ASIO with no cloned tracks.

Here is my system configuration...

AMD XP1700 Processor

Gigabyte GA-7DX Rev 4.3 Motherboard with AMD761 chipset

Power supply is only 300 Watts

PC2100 2X256 = 512K Ram, I thought the memory was Kingston when I bought the system but the invoice says NANYA-K RTL whatever that means.

Windows XP Home in ACPI mode

Leadtek GF2 64MB Video card with TV out

2 40GB IBM Deskstar hard drives with audio on second drive, 1st partition. Running NTSF on all partitions besides D which came from the factory FAT32 as DISE_BACKUP which I gather is for system restore.

Echo Mia soundcard with latest 6X drivers

Midisport 2X2 USB midi interface

I have done quite a few audio tweaks but haven't figured out how to get rid of Messenger in the task bar with the note pad editing and kind of scared to mess with that one. Any help with achieving better numbers would be appreciated. Can't wait to see what numbers others are getting!

[This message has been edited by Zikes (edited 05-01-2003).]

[maggotcontrol]

Zikes, that doesn't sound too bad based on your config. The AMD 761 chipset was a good performer and the 1700+ is still a rockin CPU. In fact, I still use the 1700+ in my test system, but on an nForce 2 board. You'll get a decent performance upgrade if you change that board to an nForce 2.

Perhaps the test rules was a bit too harsh for average systems. 1.5ms is brutal indeed.
2.9ms sounds like something useable.

My initial results on an untweaked system running Photoshop 7, Dreamweaver MX and Outlook Express in the background..just because I was too lazy to close them....they were sitting idle though.

At 1.5ms and with the default 8 stereo tracks, I'm doing about 63-66% on the CPU without any drops or distorted audio. Very smooth and solid. At 2.9ms, I'm about 49-54% CPU.

Now if I clone all of the tracks once for a 12 stereo track count at 1.5ms, the audio plays but nothing will respond until it drops out when it stops at the end. At 2.9ms, it'll play perfectly at 73-76% CPU with responsive GUI etc. At 10.2ms CPU drops down to about 53-57%. No hiccups, glitches, nada.

Of course during mixing and mixdown, I'd raise the latency up to something like 80ms since I want as much CPU headroom possible and latency won't be an issue since I'm not input monitoring.

This test system was running a 1700+ with 512MB (non dual channel) on an nForce 2 board with a 40GB Seagate Barracuda IV drive with an M-Audio Delta 44 - latest drivers running Windows XP Pro.

-yoshi www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[maggotcontrol]

BTW, to get rid of messenger the easy way..
I just trash that messenger folder found in the program files directly...the Macintosh way LOL. Make sure you quit/exit out of messenger first.
Then goto Run->type msconfig
Under startup items, uncheck messenger.

Let's keep the results coming in! Maybe if someone else wants to start another test using a different software ie: Cubase SX, that'd be cool too.

-yoshi www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

p.s. Thanks for your comment on the tracks : )

[This message has been edited by maggotcontrol (edited 05-01-2003).]

[maggotcontrol]

Ok just for the fun of it, I overclocked my system and was able to run 12 stereo tracks at 1.5ms with 82% CPU without dropouts or glitches.

That's 24 FxReverbs on 24 mono tracks at 1.5ms.

I pushed the 1700+ to 2.0GHz (from 1.47GHz) It now thinks I'm running a 2400+ although I'm really just running the FSB at 200MHz and multiplier at 10x. The Zalman is still quiet and keeping the CPU quite cool. (47c)

Note: Don't do this at home please.

Yoshi
www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[This message has been edited by maggotcontrol (edited 05-02-2003).]

[Bops2000]

Thanks mr/ms maggot I will try this weekend,
Hey does Home studioxl count?, as I don't wanna run sonar just yet..

[Zikes]

Yoshi,
Thanks for the advice on the motherboard but Echo cards apparently don't like nForce chipsets. Echo has been good to me, not to mention that they are a half hour from my house not that I've ever dropped in for a visit. It does give me a warm feeling knowing they are so close for some reason.(-: I do want to eventually go to a 8 in-out card on a more dedicated audio system so will have to look at what else is out there when I'm ready. If I ever end up doing anything else live, I plan on using a rack mount system with Project 5 which I'm playing around with now. Things can only get better as far as performance in DAW systems!

I did go into msconfig and dissabled msgr in services and msmsgs in startup and one other thing. My CPU liked that and went to 87-90% at 1.5ms with some audible noise. Now my system starts in "Selective Startup" though. Is this ok... good?

I generally don't use input monitoring when recording sound and just monitor with the mixer on a different buss when recording vocals. I'm using only soft synths now also and latency there is not an issue. I generally keep the slider above 10ms to be safe for general use and that seems to work fine for my application.

Thanks again for the advice and for posting the test. Your file works great for a test track to tweak things a bit!

Norm

[ethereal1]

have no fear of good old selective startup...I've been using it for several months now after realizing that certain programs were installing more than i asked them to. In any case, it won't hurt your computer at all.

I dig the test.

Eric

[maggotcontrol]

Zikes, that's ridiculous about Echo drivers not liking nForce 2 boards...because I have a good handful of clients running everything from Laylas to Mias on nForce 2 based systems that I've personally built, and they're all rockin as far as I know.
Where did you hear about that?

-yoshi
www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[maggotcontrol]

Bops, Homestudio may not open that file. I'm not 100% sure but otherwise, go ahead and try it.

-yoshi
www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[Zikes]

Yoshi,
The Echo web site has a list of "recommended" AMD chipsets. http://echoaudio.com/Support/PC/AMD.php
I also called and tech support said not to try it. If others are having success maybe Echo just doesn't know any better. Good news if true so maybe I'll give it a try. It's only a motherboard anyhow so why not give it a shot!(-:

[maggotcontrol]

That's cool too. I'm not going to argue with Echo but I do know a working DAW when I use one : )

-Yoshi
www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[Alan]

Originally posted by Zikes:
If others are having success maybe Echo just doesn't know any betterIv'e yet to encounter 1 card company that does know better,and that includes all of them.Part of the problem is they don't get the latest boards/chipsets sent to them for testing,nor do they want to pay for them.It seems like most of them test the latest every 2 -3 years.RME got wise and started a users report section, which is something they all should do.

[maggotcontrol]

Alan, I'm totally with you on that one. On another note, I can't stand Aardvark. LOL

[Herman Munster]

Okay, I haven't been at this long so I'm presently making do with an Audigy card using the kx project drivers.

The lowest latency the driver will allow is 10ms. Also, it doesn't support the 24 bit driver bit depth so that was left at 16.

Couldn't playback at 10ms without static, so I bumped it up to the next setting, 20ms, and it played fine. CPU registered at 54-55%.

My setup:
TUSL2C board
PIII 1.4ghz Tualatin w/512k cache
Enermax 430w PS
512mb Crucial PC133 ram
Teac 12X CD burner
Matrox G450 video card
WD ata/133 20G drive (programs)
Maxtor ata/133 40G drive (data)

Windows XP Home
Standard PC (nonessential services disabled)
Sonar 2.2

I plan to get a higher end soundcard in a month or so. Once I do I'll rerun the test and report back.

Herm


[This message has been edited by Herman Munster (edited 05-03-2003).]

[ethereal1]

Well, I just tried contructing a similar test in FruityLoops 4 and didn't get above 8% after two duplications. Either I'm not making this test right, or FLStudio is a more efficient program than I thought...

Eric

[Nick Driver]

Here's my rig:

ASUS P4T-E mobo (i850 chipset, rambus)
512MB Samsung RDRAM as 2x256 (16-device) rimms
1.6aGHz P4 Northwood, overclocked to 2.133GHz
Pair of IBM Deathstar 80GB drives, hardware mirrored by Promise FastTrak 100 TX2 card
Windows XP Pro
Aardvark Direct Pro 24.96 audio interface, still have the Intel AC-97 on-mobo audio enabled. Using latest 7.04 drivers
Sonar 2.2XL

I could not set the "effective" latency (Sonar audio properties screen) to 1.5, my only choices are 3ms and 6ms, it locks up my machine at 3 so I chose 6. Thes numbers match the buffer size settings of 1ms and 2ms respectively.

The Aardvark Manager screen, however, shows a latency of 4ms and that's as low as she'll go.

In ASIO driver mode here's the goods:

Tracks CPU% audio cleanliness
====== ===== ==================
orig 8 .. 45-46 .. clean
12 .. 47-48 .. clean
16 .. 49-50 .. clean
20 .. 51-52 .. clean
24 .. 53-54 .. clean
28 .. 55-57 .. clean
32 .. 57-58 .. clean
36 .. 59-60 .. clean, maybe hint of edginess
40 .. 62-64 .. a bit gravelly distoring
44 .. 64-67 .. definitely gravelly on low frqs
48 .. 68-71 .. cheap transistor radio distorted

"AWDM" (actually MME) driver mode

Tracks CPU% audio cleanliness
====== ===== ==================
orig 8 .. 63-65 .. clean
12 .. 66-68 .. clean
16 .. 72-74 .. clean
20 .. 76-78 .. clean
24 .. 80-82 .. started crapping out quite nasty


[This message has been edited by Nick Driver (edited 05-03-2003).]

[Rico]

System ran at 94% CPU Usage, Latency at about 20ms

Asus CUBXE (Intel 440BX)
Intel Celeron 800MHz
512Meg of mem
MOTU 1224

Great test if you love plugins. However, I try to use plugins and effects sparingly.

[maggotcontrol]

Very cool results Nick. P4s are incredible overclockers. Keep em comin

yoshi
www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)

[maggotcontrol]

Originally posted by Rico:

Great test if you love plugins. However, I try to use plugins and effects sparingly.

Same here Rico. I don't use them when they're not needed and if you know your system's limitations, you can always find workarounds. (ie: bounce to track! LOL)

yoshi
www.studiokobari.com (http://www.studiokobari.com)