Fw: [PD] Pd and Gem, some questions regarding performance

[Ricardo Climent]

-----Original Message-----
From: Olaf Matthes [mailto:olaf.matthes at gmx.de] 
Sent: 10 April 2002 12:53
To: pd-list
Subject: Re: Fw: [PD] Pd and Gem, some questions regarding performance


Hi Rory, Ricardo,
I would not recommend to use netsend / netreceive! As I pointed out in
my post
concerning the 'blocking netsend', the problem is that any action that
can not be
executed within one dsp cycle is likely to crash Pd or at least cause
interrupted
audio.

I think using midi to send data from one machine to another should be
safer. 
------------------
Hi Olaf. I think this is what I said!: manipulate and send midi
instructions remotely (in the first computer) and do the dsp processing
in the targeted computer. It worked fine to me with 16 midi channels
simultaneously controlled by a ControlFreak attached to the first and
passed by netsend~ to the second computer.
------------------

In my
'music for films' patch I used netreceive to get the input from the
webinterface.
It sometimes happened that Pd was freezing when a new socket was opened
or just
data transmitted. But I have to say that I also used oggcast~ and
shoutcast~
externals on the same machine (which create their own sockets and cause
a lot of
net traffic) and was getting a total CPU load of around 80 - 95 % on a
P4 1.8GHz
running Win2k.
As I understand it, midi is only processed / received from the input
fifo when
there is any time left to do so (please correct me someone in case it's
completely
wrong). I usually use a midi fader box to controll my Pd patches because
this is
much saver than using the mouse. The GUI sometimes becomes really slow
making it
nearly impossible to move any sliders or number boxes (or even to turn
off dsp).

In general I sometimes feel that a faster machine not necessarily
improves
performance or stability. I have some externals that use, say, 25 % CPU
on a P2 400
MHz and 20% on a P4 1.8 GHz. That's not really what one would expect (I
would
expect CPU usage to go down to about 8%).


Olaf


Ricardo Climent schrieb:

> Also I  would manipulate midi instructions remotely
> (using netsend/receive) and do the dsp-process in the target computer,
unless
> you want to stream the audio from other computer via Ethernet using
other
> objects.