There's been a lot of talk here of late about PD not being terribly well optimised in lots of ways - GUI drawing, and potentially other areas. I'd always assumed (naively) that being less impressive to look at, PD was probably quicker (in equivalent circumstances) than MAX.
As such, (and not having much cash for high powered PCs or software) when I came to pick between MAX and PD, I picked PD. Was I wrong in assuming that PD runs more efficiently than MAX (specifically on XP)? I'm not sure I can afford MAX anyway, so the question is pretty much academic, but I'm interested to know peoples' thoughts on the matter. Especially as I've recently come up against PD's issues with Midi inputs on XP (screws my shutdown every time I try to use midi inputs). Ta Dan
I've used only Max in XP in the first versions, and at that time, pd was
much more reliable - you just had to make a metro->bang to have instant
rubato in max. But that was 4 years ago, I don't know how it is now. for
sure is better. max also crahed more often than pd at that time. but that
was the first edition of max for windows.
I myself have no problems with midi on xp (general audio + Multiface), and
never understood why that message is there. maybe that depends on your
hardware?
Pd's GUI is very unefficient, but you'll only be affected if you use it
extensively, or in the "wrong" way. that usually doesn't happen much - but
it can happen. better to give concrete examples.
There's been a lot of talk here of late about PD not being terribly well optimised in lots of ways - GUI drawing, and potentially other areas. I'd always assumed (naively) that being less impressive to look at, PD was probably quicker (in equivalent circumstances) than MAX.
As such, (and not having much cash for high powered PCs or software)
when I came to pick between MAX and PD, I picked PD. Was I wrong in assuming that PD runs more efficiently than MAX
(specifically on XP)? I'm not sure I can afford MAX anyway, so the question is pretty
much academic, but I'm interested to know peoples' thoughts on the matter. Especially as I've recently come up against PD's issues with Midi inputs
on XP (screws my shutdown every time I try to use midi inputs). Ta Dan
With more recent version of Tcl/Tk, they have been big improvements on
GUI drawing performance. I was just testing Pd-devel on Tcl/Tk 8.4.7
( which I think pd-vanilla is still using) and Tcl/Tk 8.4.19 on Mac OS
X. I opened a big patch, hit Select All, then moved the whole patch
around. THere was a huge difference in speed. Plus I hear that Tcl/
Tk 8.5 is even faster. So I think that with a bit more work, we can
ride on top of the recent Tcl/Tk work and make the GUI decently fast.
.hc
On Jan 30, 2009, at 8:32 AM, João Pais wrote:
I've used only Max in XP in the first versions, and at that time, pd
was much more reliable - you just had to make a metro->bang to have
instant rubato in max. But that was 4 years ago, I don't know how it is now.
for sure is better. max also crahed more often than pd at that time. but
that was the first edition of max for windows.I myself have no problems with midi on xp (general audio +
Multiface), and never understood why that message is there. maybe that depends on your hardware?Pd's GUI is very unefficient, but you'll only be affected if you use
it extensively, or in the "wrong" way. that usually doesn't happen much
- but
it can happen. better to give concrete examples.
There's been a lot of talk here of late about PD not being terribly
well optimised in lots of ways - GUI drawing, and potentially other
areas. I'd always assumed (naively) that being less impressive to look at, PD
was probably quicker (in equivalent circumstances) than MAX.As such, (and not having much cash for high powered PCs or software) when I came to pick between MAX and PD, I picked PD. Was I wrong in assuming that PD runs more efficiently than MAX (specifically on XP)? I'm not sure I can afford MAX anyway, so the question is
pretty much academic, but I'm interested to know peoples' thoughts on the matter. Especially as I've recently come up against PD's issues with Midi
inputs on XP (screws my shutdown every time I try to use midi inputs). Ta Dan-- Friedenstr. 58 10249 Berlin (Deutschland) Tel +49 30 42020091 | Mob +49 162 6843570 jmmmpais@googlemail.com | skype: jmmmpjmmmp
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Using ReBirth is like trying to play an 808 with a long stick. - David Zicarelli
On Fri, 30 Jan 2009, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
With more recent version of Tcl/Tk, they have been big improvements on GUI drawing performance. I was just testing Pd-devel on Tcl/Tk 8.4.7 ( which I think pd-vanilla is still using) and Tcl/Tk 8.4.19 on Mac OS X. I opened a big patch, hit Select All, then moved the whole patch around. THere was a huge difference in speed. Plus I hear that Tcl/ Tk 8.5 is even faster. So I think that with a bit more work, we can ride on top of the recent Tcl/Tk work and make the GUI decently fast.
There are also several changes that can be made to Tk itself, which in the end may be less trouble than switching to something else than Tk or than Tcl/Tk, but as usual it's a gamble until someone tries it.
I think I wrote about it in the summer of 2007 when I tried modifying Tk. Perhaps there are ideas I didn't write about back then, I don't recall. Anyhow, one trick involves changing the dirty-flag from being a single bbox to being a tilemap or multiple bboxes. But that trick isn't so great until one changes the way canvas-items express how dirty they are. Currently it's also a single bbox, which means that for a diagonal line, the bbox area is proportional to the square of the length of the line... this is just what I explored, and I only implemented the first. There are surely a lot more tricks one could find.
All this goes back to something James Tittle found out while we were all in Graz.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec
Hello,
Since you're on XP and you can run Max4.6, Max5 and Pd, benchmark the 3 with some kind of identical code and make your decision... In general I found pd more efficient and more reliable than Max but I usually run it on Linux (and Max doesn't even run on Linux) but the last time I run such benchmark was about 8 years ago. FWIW, last year I was involved in a project for which Max was employed and it took a lot of jumping through various hoops to get a reliable timing. But on the other hand, I would be jumping through different set of hoops in order to achieve something else in another part of the code if I were doing it in pd.
That said, there are certain "features" of Max that make programming a little more pleasant and possibly a little higher-level but comparing Pd and Max based on "user experience" is highly subjective and possibly irrelevant.
My demo versions of Max have expired long ago so I cannot do any benchmark patching but if anyone cares to develop some benchmark I will gladly run it on Max5 runtime, Max4.6 runtime, Max 4.5.5 runtime (note that runtimes are usually slightly more efficient, in my experience) and pd in windows XP and pd in linux (ubuntu 8.10 or even pure:dyne). All this on the same machine: 1.8GHz Intel Core Duo.
However, all this boils down to the fact that essentially any project can be done with either. It's just that certain programming problems are easier or more difficult to deal with using one or the other. I do not think that you will find major differences in performance (and yes, Max GUI also eats up CPU if overused!) it is just a matter of preferring one set of quirks to the other in addition to matter such as price tags and philosophical and or social affiliation which are relevant to some people these days.
Cheers
./MiS
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Daniel Bennett pavementsands@googlemail.com wrote:
There's been a lot of talk here of late about PD not being terribly well optimised in lots of ways - GUI drawing, and potentially other areas. I'd always assumed (naively) that being less impressive to look at, PD was probably quicker (in equivalent circumstances) than MAX.
As such, (and not having much cash for high powered PCs or software) when I came to pick between MAX and PD, I picked PD. Was I wrong in assuming that PD runs more efficiently than MAX (specifically on XP)? I'm not sure I can afford MAX anyway, so the question is pretty much academic, but I'm interested to know peoples' thoughts on the matter. Especially as I've recently come up against PD's issues with Midi inputs on XP (screws my shutdown every time I try to use midi inputs). Ta Dan -- Geometer Magazine http://geometer.org.uk
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