Pigments 5 - using too much CPU still

Software Instruments Pigments
#1

Just bought P5 and I can literally only hold 4 notes until I start getting crackles / drop outs.

Pretty much useless to me :frowning:

Really disappointed. I thought they’d improved performance. Anyone else having issues? I’m using the VST with Ableton Live 10.

I’ve got a macbook pro with osx 11.7.6 (Big Sur)

Processor is 2.2 Ghz Quad Core Intel Core i7 with 16GB RAM

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#2

H @soundsofsynth . Welcome to the community.

Have you activated the Multicore mode in Settings in Pigments right panel? That setting is what have been added.

Which soundcard do you use, and att which samplerate and buffer size are you running?

#3

hi

Ahh…multicore was off. Turned that ON and I can now play more than 4 notes. CPU in Ableton goes up to around 35% which is still high but I’m not getting dropouts which is great.

samplerate is 48000 and buffer 256.

I’m using a Scareltt 18i8 audio interface

Thanks a lot for the help

RIchard

#4

You are welcome.

FYI: As you can see on the product page https://www.arturia.com/products/analog-classics/pigments/details , then it does’nt look like you CPU live up to the specification. You should be able to do quite a lot anyway.

#5

Thanks

Yeah, may be time to buy a new Mac!! But pricey though!!!

Their spec stipulates 4gb RAM. So I thought perhaps with having 16gb RAM it might have made up for the slightly less performance in the CPU.

Richard

#6

Sadly it doesn’t work that way. Any VST that isn’t fundamentally just a glorified digital melotron (sample player) is going to be more CPU-heavy than RAM-heavy, including Pigments. Have a look if you can get a good deal on a recent M-series Mac, ideally with the same 16GB RAM you’ve already got. They are exponentially more powerful than the Intel MBPs they replaced.

#7

I recently upgraded from an iMac - 32Gb RAM, i5 CPU to a Mac Mini M2 - 8Gb RAM as I was having issues with multiple Pigments instances in Logic. I immediately saw a drop in CPU usage and was able to play problematic projects with no problems. The latest update introducing Multicore has just made things even better :slight_smile:

I know its pricey to keep upgrading but, for me, it was a worthwhile experience.

#8

Upgrading to an M-Series doesn’t make the CPU usage better, it just increases your Computational Cap so that you increase what you can tolerate before the problem becomes intolerable.

Users upgrading hardware that would otherwise work fine if they used a different workhorse synth does not fix the issue. It’s just cope.

Arturia needs to optimize the software better and decrease the CPU usage. There are other Synths that offer good feature sets and decent flexibility while avoiding not having such insane CPU utilization. Pigments is high CPU even if you’re just using VA Engines, so this has nothing to do with it being used as a ROMpler or using Sample or Granular-based engines. It’s not hard to duplicate patches and compare CPU usage across Subtractive or Wavetable synths…

I have an Ryzen 7 Desktop, Ryzen 9 Laptop and M1 Pro MBP - definitely stronger than an M2 Mac Mini, last I checked. The CPU usage on all of them is too high. I’m not going to buy a new $1,700-2000+ computer just to cope. Not when I can simply ignore this product and use another without dealing with this issue.

In addition, it’s not delivering U-He Diva, Sylenth1 or even Massive X or Ana 2 levels of sonic excellence while abusing the CPU, either… So, again, why even bother? Because it looks pretty? Brand Loyalty?

#9

Cutting down on polyphony, oscillators, grains in the granular engine, using the Super Unison instead of the Unison parameter and shortening delay and reverb tails can often save on DSP.

So there’s that to think about

#10

I am on a Ryzen 7 2700X which came out in 2018, and I can have 30 instances of Pigments in one project while my CPU is still only at around 20% usage or so. Pigments is really light on CPU compared to other synths like Diva.

#11

Have you tried increasing the buffers size from 256 to 512 or even higher?
Might be a significant change in relation to drop-puts and crackles, but a tolerable latency-increase.

#12

Hello guys.

@soundsofsynth Just as a quick note, the configuration you are running Pigments with is way below the minimum recommended configuration found on the webpage: 4 cores CPU, 3.4 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo-boost) or M1 CPU. So these CPU constraints are sad but to be expected… Of course the multicore will definitely help here as your CPU has pretty weak cores.

@Trensharo: At equal parameters, the CPU usage of Pigments is not higher compared to it’s competitor. However Pigments offers the possibility to go crazy on certain parameters, which can lead to a very high CPU consumption.

For your information, here are the parameters with which you can greatly limit the CPU consumptions: Grain limit, Max partials, unison etc… Also pay attention to the type of filter you are using, the analog ones are definitely more demanding.

Best !

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