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Quantitative comparison of native and AU EQs in different IOS DAW/hosts

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Comments

  • _ki_ki
    edited August 2018

    Introduction

    When ProQ2 AU was announced, i had the idea of doing a test of the AU versus the native plugin in Auria Pro. I wanted to see how the EQs affected performance and how my iPad Pro 10.5 would keep up with a 'big' project and lots of EQs. So I picked out an old multi-track stem with 44 mono audio tracks added panning and 5 subgroups to get the base CPU when playing all these tracks.

    Some days later, i decided to widen the project scope and add other hosts and all graphic EQs i have installed... and so measuring everything at took a lot longer. It became obvious that 49 native EQs don't bring the iPad Pro to its knees, in the end i even added multiple EQs to each of the tracks and subgroups to test 100 running native EQs.

    Graphic EQ Plugins

    I had a look at:

    • native PSP Channelstrip EQ and Masterstrip EQ (Auria Pro)
    • native ProQ2 (Auria Pro)
    • native StudioEQ (Cubasis)
    • native Waves Q10 (Cubasis)
    • native AUM Parametric EQ node (AUM)
    • ZMors EQ AU V1.4 (Auria Pro, Cubasis, AUM)
    • FabFilter ProQ2 AU V2.14 (Auria Pro, Cubasis, AUM)
    • Blue Mangoo Parametric Equalizer AU V1.0.3 (Auria Pro, Cubasis, AUM)

    The focus of the investigation is on the performance and number of possible EQ plugins in different hosts and not on a comparison of the quality or usability of the individual plugins.

    The test hardware/OS

    • iPad Pro 10.5
    • IOS 11.4

    Base layout of the project files

    • 44 mono audio tracks of 05:56 length
    • 5 subgroups if supported by host
    • 18 pannings of the tracks

    .

    Results

    Every measurement was taken at least 5 times. Since each of the hosts does a different calculation of the CPU percentage, one probably can't compare the numbers between hosts.

    Due to an memory limit for all instances of AU app, one can only open up a maximum number of instances of each AU. The number of instances that can be reloaded from a project file without problems is somewhat less. If one creates just one instance too much, all instances of the AU crash.

    For each of the EQs added, i used a single bell filter between 500Hz and 5Khz, with a Q of up to +/- 5db.

    Auria Pro V2.19

    Setup without EQs     :  2-4%   CPU 
 49 native PSP EQs    :  20%    CPU 
 49 native ProQ2      :  17%    CPU 
 49 ProQ2 AU          :  22%    CPU 
 25 ZMors EQ AU       :  69%    CPU 
 12 Blue Mangoo EQ AU :  17%    CPU 
100 native ProQ2      :  25%    CPU 
 77 native ProQ2      :  22%    CPU
 77 ProQ2 AU          :  26%    CPU

    Cubasis V2.5

    Cubasis does not feature sub-groups. I didn't find a numeric CPU percentage in Cubasis, only a bar-graph. Therefore i took 5 screenshots and then measured the active pixel width in relation to the 100% of the full bar.

    Setup without EQs     :   6-11% CPU
 44 native StudioEQ   :  15-20% CPU
 44 native Waves Q10  :  36-56% CPU
 44 ProQ2 AU          :  42-56% COU
 25 ZMors EQ AU       :  19-28% CPU  
 12 Blue Mangoo EQ AU :  12-29% CPU
100 native StudioEQ   :  19-26% CPU
100 native Waves Q10  :  88-98% CPU

    AUM V1.2.5

    I used 44 file players to play the stems. The panning of 18 tracks was done using the internal AUM stereo pan plugin. The 5 sub-groups were realized with AUM mix-busses.

    Setup without EQs     :  22-41% CPU
 49 native param. EQs :  36-43% CPU
 49 ProQ2 AU          :  35-57% CPU
 49 ZMors EQ AU       :  36-53% CPU  
 24 Blue Mangoo EQ AU :  28-45% CPU  
 77 ProQ2 AU          :  45-66% CPU
 85 ProQ2 AU          :  53-77% CPU

    .

    Conclusion

    The iPad Pro hardware platform is capable of doing heavy studio mixing work - using/playing a large number of audio tracks and adding native, build-in EQ plugins does not stress the CPU at all - so there is enough room for more demanding FX plugins.

    The AU plugin format brings only minimal CPU overhead, even for complex EQs like the ProQ2 AU the limiting factor for the number of instances is not the cpu load, but the crux lies in the memory limit imposed from IOS. AU develops really have to care about memory consumption per AU - or discuss with Apple that this limit needs to be raised or removed if Apple wants to bring AU forward onto the level of native plugins.

    .

    Remarks

    • In the first version of the benchmark, the intial release of the FabFilter ProQ2 could only run a low number instances before running into memory problems. FabFilter evaluated the problem and send me a beta version that fixed the problem. Meanwhile this version was released as V2.14
    • I also diskussed with Blue Mangoo about the AU total memory problem and they are looking into it.
    • I admit that the formal form of this posting is quite boring compared to the more fun and relaxed postings in the AB forum, but after structuring my various test results it just developed that way...

    .

    Edits of this posting

    29.08.2018/22:52 Rewritten conclusion and TL;DR;
    29.08.2018/22:42 Removed ProQ2 V1 and Beta benchmarks and updated to ProQ2 V2.14
    26.08.2018/23:02 Added FabFilter native ProQ2 benchmark with 77 instances like the AU
    24.08.2018/20:40 Added FabFilter ProQ2 Beta AU benchmark results
    20.08.2018/22:05 Added FabFilter ProQ2 AU in Auria Pro V2.19 benchmark
    20.08.2018/22:08 Added BlueMangoo EQ AU in Auria Pro and Cubasis benchmark
    21.07.2018/13:37 Added AUM native parametric EQ benchmark
    21.07.2018/01:25 Added Auria Pro PSP channelstrip and masterstrip EQ benchmark
    21.07.2018/00:45 Initial posting

    .

    TL;DR:

    The use of native EQ plugins is still useful for larger projects since current IOS limits the number of possible AU EQ instances - developers have to optimize their per instance memory. The iPad Pro is a beast :)

  • _ki_ki
    edited August 2018

    @Michael Oh no, the markup tag for code that i used for my tables seem broken...

    This is code, using the inline editor that uses a back-ticks around the text. You don‘t get line breaks and color is red

     This is code using indentation with more than two spaces.

    All good - sorry for bothering you, as seen above, i just found a way to fix the problem. The back-ticks for code (from the inline editor) are also mentioned in the markup doc on wikipedia, but they don‘t seem to work.

  • _ki_ki

    BTW i also checked if AudiaBus 3 V3.1.1 is capable of handling large amout of FabFilter ProQ2 Beta AUs.

    Since there is no simple file-player, i used the microphone input - the results are not comparable at all.

    • With the 10th instance, the 100% CPU barrier is broken
    • AB3 allows only 26 instances (A - Z) of any AU resulting in 280-310% CPU
  • _ki_ki

    FabFilter released the V2.14, i verified that the above ProQ2 AU benchmarks are still the same with the official version and removed the ‚beta‘ from the above text.

    Meanwhile i benchmarked CPU usage of native versus AU plugins of Sugar Bytes Turnado and ProQ2 in Auria Pro . AUs and native plugin cpu usage curves are nearly identical.
  • tjatja
    edited August 2018

    Very, very interesting, @ardnut
    And of course, @_ki

  • _ki_ki
    edited December 2018

    It seems that i forgot to post the ProQ2 benchmark results from september for IOS version 12.0 where the memory limit was indeed raised.

    I hope that my time-consuming benchmarks have provided a good basis for apples intenal discussions :)

    .

    ProQ AU EQ Bench IOS 12.0, iPad Pro 10.5

    Cubasis

     44 ProQ2 = 40-51 %
 60 ProQ2 = 48-70 %
 88 ProQ2 = 68-82 %
100 ProQ2 = 80-89 %
123 ProQ2 = 92-99 %, max without crackles, UI fully usable
124 ProQ2 = crackles on playback

    .

    AUM

     60 ProQ2 = 34 - 53 %
 77 ProQ2 = 38 - 59 %
 88 ProQ2 = 49 - 63 %
100 ProQ2 = 57 - 74 %
115 ProQ2 = max when UI plays animation (mute/solo) 
125 ProQ2 = 65 - 87 %, faders and scrolling ok, but mute/solo crackles
126 ProQ2 = AUs start crashing

    .

    Auria Pro

     60 ProQ2 = 24 %
 77 ProQ2 = 27 %
 88 ProQ2 = 31 %
100 ProQ2 = 35 %
112 ProQ2 = 39 %
113 ProQ2 = AU Gui crashes

    .

    TL;DR: New memory limit of IOS 12.0 is higher, but there is still a lot more cpu-headroom for even more ProQ2 AU instances in Auria Pro

  • stemshadestemshade

    Wow. Thanks

  • RobertFernandesRobertFernandes

    Fantastic work, thanks for sharing!

  • ohwellohwell
    edited December 2018

    Stress test our friend NS2? :)

  • _ki_ki

    @ohwell i don‘t have NS2 or Stagelight with IAP, so i can‘t do tests with these.

  • ohwellohwell

    Auria Pro seems like it performs impressively from your tests so youre probably wise to stick to what you have! :)

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