-----Original Message----- From: Olaf Matthes [mailto:olaf.matthes@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.