![]() It has also exposed some fascinating facts. However, in the case of 'DAW Bench' the balance of audio tracks, plug-ins and soft synths is a very reasonable representation of many real-world songs. I've never seen much point in testing how many instances of a plug-in you can run on a PC before it falls over, as I feel this bears little relation to the real world of the musician. Such incremental accuracy not only makes it easier to quantify the relative performance of different dual-core processor families, but even to spot fairly small differences between different PCs with identical dual-core processors, which may be due to different BIOS settings, RAM speeds, and so on. Faster dual-core PC results become even more accurate because they can run even more Magneto instances. Moreover, because even the slowest dual-core PC can manage nearly 40 Magneto s at 12ms latency, and you're enabling them one by one, listening for obvious audio breakup rather than relying on your interpretation of a CPU meter reading, you can reliably measure performance increments to about 2.5 percent (one in 40). First, you avoid inaccurate meter readings (particularly at low latencies), but second, you also find out exactly how many plug-ins you can run on a particular system. There are two strengths to this approach, compared with running a static test containing a fixed number of plug-ins and then simply reading the Cubase or Nuendo CPU meter. The idea is to run the song and then start enabling the single Magneto plug-in on each track in turn until you hear audio breakup, and then report the number of Magnetos your system can manage. Overall, this 'Blofelds DSP40' test runs 40 stereo audio tracks, 40 4-band EQ plug-ins, 40 VST Dynamics plug-ins, one Multiband Dynamics plug-in and up to 40 Magneto plug-ins. Then a Magneto plug-in (initially disabled) was added to each of the audio tracks. The benchmark started life with the well-known 'Blofeld's Return' demo song that can be found on the Nuendo/ Cubase CD-ROMs, which was then modified to keep the audio (hard drive) loading more constant and had 25 30-second audio tracks added to it, each containing a sine-wave tone. What actually happened was rather more revealing, as we shall see. The aim was to produce a test that could be reliably used by all parties as a reference for measuring DAW performance. 'DAW Bench' ( ) can be downloaded and run in Nuendo/ Cubase SX3 on both Mac and PC (although it's hoped that in future it can also be adapted for other sequencers).ĭeveloped by Australian Vin Curigliano of AAVIM technology, it's been in development since August 2005, with the periodic involvement of DAW vendors, some audio manufacturers and various end users. There's now a new benchmark test around that has already caused quite a stir amongst manufacturers and users alike. You can download all of these from the ADK Audio web site at 'DAW Bench' Examples include the Nuendo/ Cubase SX3 'Thonex' song, the more demanding Nuendo/ Cubase SX3 'Fudd' test, with a different mix of plug-ins and soft synths plus loads of audio tracks, and two versions of Scott Reams' Sonar 4 benchmark song. However, various more strenuous benchmark songs are now available that run rather more plug-ins and soft synths, and, in most cases, a clutch of audio tracks, bringing them more into line with what the majority of musicians are doing with their computers. ![]() However, its processor drain is so low on many modern PCs that while its results are still valid they are beginning to bear little relation to most real-world songs. PC Notes investigates.īack in SOS November 2003, I discussed benchmark testing of music PCs, pointing out that the traditional tests used by most mainstream PC magazines don't shed much light on how a particular computer will perform when running music applications.įor several years I've tested music PCs using the Cubase 'Five Towers' test, because its needs are relatively modest, so you can run it successfully on a wide range of PCs and compare their audio performance. A promising new PC system benchmark test has emerged that shows up a previously elusive audio interface problem. ![]()
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