Introducing Musio 1 - The Non-Subscription Option!
- Thread starter Cinesamples-SG
- Start date
mybadmemory
Senior Member
While Musio is extremely light on RAM it is indeed quite taxing on the CPU. I have the same issue on Mac. It’s really the reverse of many other sample players in that sense.
Just guessing but with 16gB of ram do you notice how much ram is consumed when you run any of your projects? Win may be doing a ton of memory swapping given how little ram you have. FYI with Cubase 12 and Win10 I have not noticed Musio instruments consuming way more CPU than other vendors. I know there are lots of variables. Maybe start a dialog with Musio support? Good luck!
Beathoven666
New Member
Yes. RAM usage is low, only ~800MB for the project in discussion. However, I don't understand why they advertise it as "CPU featherweight champion of the world" then. I will try to cancel the purchase at Best Service because in the current state Musio is unusable for me.
mybadmemory
Senior Member
It varies a lot between patches. Some are lighter and some heavier. But ensemble patches, like the new ones in CineStrings Core for example, often goes up to hundreds of voices while playing.
Guy Rowland
Senior Member
I suppose those patches stream 5 sections at once, which would explain the voices thing.
Mind you, that's a taste of what is to come with multi-mic. Since these new Core patches feel a bit redundant sort of duplicating the CineStrings Pro content, I actually wonder if they are a way of testing the waters with high voice stream count patches.
Beathoven666
New Member
You are right. I have just tried the ensemble patches and playing just a few notes of staccato on one key sends it to overload. Damn, why I didn't buy Nucleus instead...
I have Nucleus too and like both. Each has their strengths.
This may be worth comparing. I just loaded the Musio player (no DAW), loaded Cinestrings Pro Ensemble - Sustain, then played a 7-note chord. I see a max of "44 samples" (voices) and a peak 8% CPU quickly dropping to 22 samples and 4% CPU. Without Musio running I'm at 2% CPU. Total Musio memory consumed is 342mB of ram (doesn't change). CPU here is an i7-12700.
This may be worth comparing. I just loaded the Musio player (no DAW), loaded Cinestrings Pro Ensemble - Sustain, then played a 7-note chord. I see a max of "44 samples" (voices) and a peak 8% CPU quickly dropping to 22 samples and 4% CPU. Without Musio running I'm at 2% CPU. Total Musio memory consumed is 342mB of ram (doesn't change). CPU here is an i7-12700.
Guy Rowland
Senior Member
Would also be interesting to compare this on your rig with a Cinestrings Core ensemble patch, likely 5x the voices.
rsg22
Active Member
Hmmm I have a similar machine but haven't had a chance to try the subscription out yet. Did their support have anything to say?
One thing I've noticed about Musio in my work with it is that it can be a bit fussier about disk drive accesses than, say, Kontakt. I've wound up shifting the samples from a Crucial MX500 to a Samsung 870 because of stalls/dropouts that I think are due to Musio being a lot more aggressive about streaming from disk. I have had issues with that drive with players that seem to use fairly small buffers whereas the Samsung cruises most of the time. It's odd because the BlackMagic benchmark tool puts it only about 5% behind the Samsung on reads and writes and they are both based on MLC memory, but I think the Crucial controller is simply bad at multitasking – it feels as though if it's taking a group of writes, it starts tripping over read operations.
However, as it's on USB-C rather than SATA, it's tough to diagnose what's really happening. It may simply be failing as I haven't swapped it into a machine that lets me look at the SMART data (thanks Apple).
I haven't to my knowledge found Musio suffering from CPU spikes per se. But I wouldn't rule out weird CPU-drive interactions.
However, as it's on USB-C rather than SATA, it's tough to diagnose what's really happening. It may simply be failing as I haven't swapped it into a machine that lets me look at the SMART data (thanks Apple).
I haven't to my knowledge found Musio suffering from CPU spikes per se. But I wouldn't rule out weird CPU-drive interactions.
Simeon
Senior Member
I sent MUSIO some feedback on voice management, as for me when it gets to around the 300 voice count things hit a ceiling. I am using the latest version of Cakewalk and would love to see if I could try your CWP file just to see what numbers I get here running an i9 9900k with 64 gb of memory.
Following this, it seems that the release samples potentially double the voice count, so playing a 22 voice chords and releasing engages the 22 voice release samples causing possible spike when things get a bit crazy.
Doing a little more tests, I found that using multiple instances of the MUSIO player helps to mitigate some of the issue, just as long as a single player does not go beyond for safety 300 voices, and again, the overload seems to happen when there are a lot of release samples that are being triggered when new notes are being played. Cinestrings Core Ensemble can push things over if there is a lot of movement.
I have no doubt they are working on optimizing this, so we shall see.
Joyfully,
Simeon
Guy Rowland
Senior Member
That's really useful info @Simeon. My pet theory is that these Cinestrings Core patches that play 5 sections at once are a public beta to see how this stuff goes, but it feels like a slightly dangerous game if a lot of people find it craps out their system and they cancel their subs because of it.
I've not put Musio in the template yet until the keyswitch octave can be set, so it's only had fairly light use here. I'm old enough to remember how terrible EW Play used to be, it was years til it could stream samples effectiently. Now Opus is an absolutely sublime monster. I hope they get Musio in solid shape a lot sooner than EW did.
I've not put Musio in the template yet until the keyswitch octave can be set, so it's only had fairly light use here. I'm old enough to remember how terrible EW Play used to be, it was years til it could stream samples effectiently. Now Opus is an absolutely sublime monster. I hope they get Musio in solid shape a lot sooner than EW did.
@Guy Rowland, I ran the test with the CS Core ensemble patch and compared to 44 keys-down voices for the CS Pro ensemble patch the CS Core patch yields 125 voices for the same 7-note chord. I have lots more details if interested.
@Simeon Yes I'm also seeing the keys-up voices spike here and from my tests just now I think you're right about release samples stacking up for the CS Core Ensemble.
@Simeon Yes I'm also seeing the keys-up voices spike here and from my tests just now I think you're right about release samples stacking up for the CS Core Ensemble.
Beathoven666
New Member
Thanks for your insights, Simeon. You can find the CWP as well as the Musio rack files attached (it's just a basis of a simple template I started putting together). It looks like the voice count spikes into the high two-hundreds for me.
Edit: I tested splitting the template to multiple instances of Musio player and it helped! It indeed looks that a simple instance has to be kept below ~300 active voices (which can still be easily done with some patches) to prevent overloading.
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Beathoven666
New Member
This is an interesting observation. It's possible that it has something to do with disk access performance. Since Musio uses very little RAM, it probably needs to stream a lot from the disk. I have my data on a 1TB Apacer SATA SSD. Also, as I mentioned, it's only Musio's activity meter that reaches 100%. It may mean a combined CPU/disk usage, as in the Windows Task Manager the CPU usage for Cakewalk+Musio shows me ~40%.
Simeon
Senior Member
Thanks for this, I will give it a go and let you know what happens.
EDIT to add additional info:
I saw where I did not have some of the plugins included in your project.
One of them that caught my eye in particular was the CONVOLOGY (with Briscati impulse loaded). Convolution for me in general seems to be CPU intensive, especially when using Kontakt instruments that have convolution.
Also, MIDI Curve and some others I did not have.
Do you have a link for the Convology, W1, and MIDI Curve?
One thing I can say is that this demonstrated one of the true strengths of using MUSIO.
When I loaded up the project, MUSIO immediately started downloading the instruments that I had not already have installed, this was amazing to see.
Here is a short clip where you can see the playback on my end:
It seems that the performance meter did not go much above 60% in my test (check the video above).
One interesting aspect about performance is that not only can MUSIO fine tune the player itself but even to the extent of being able to improve performance on an individual instrument level. This was the case in particular with Cinepiano which is now at version 1.2 and seems to have improved performance somewhat.
I will keep everyone updated as I continue to discover more.
Joyfully,
Simeon
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Beathoven666
New Member
Thanks, Simeon.
You can just bypass all the plugins you don't have. I've tried it too and there's no impact on performance and the Musio problem. I would be interested to see if your powerful rig also overloads Musio or at what % you get the activity indicator.
Yep, the instrument rack sharing feature is nifty. Overall I really like the UX of Musio. Hopefully they will fine-tune the core engine performance issues.
Edit: If I see correctly in the video, you get the activity indicator to ~60% so the performance of your rig obiously helps here, but still quite a load for mere 13 "monophonic" lines. As I mentioned, for now I have solved the problem by splitting to multiple Musio instances (by instrument sections). Still e.g. the sole string section generates over 100 active voices and ~40% activity, so I imagine I may need to have a separate Musio instance for each instrument if I introduce some polyphony or faster runs.
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jesussaddle
Senior Member
Hi. Purchased the MUSIO 1 perennial thing for $299. But the Musio plugin isn't letting me log in. It doesn't say password is invalid. It just says unauthorized. I'm visually impaired and don't know what I'm looking at here. I submitted a support request but I don't even know the info they need to help. Looking back through their emails and my invoice/receipt, I can't find anything other than a "verify" link that I successfully submitted (thereafter the MUSIO app was working) - and I have my receipt for the $299 payment I made weeks ago. But it looks like I received no additional email (such as with instructions, a license code to extend the service, etc.). Now, today, I try to login to use the app but it has that unauthorized message.
Any ideas?
Any ideas?
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