Helix native 1.8 studio one resource hog

[williamshattner]

Just bought native 1.8 yesterday.  

Using in studio one  (V3), one instance of Native takes 25-30% of my CPU.  For contrast the studio one Amplifie plug-in takes about 5%. 

Even worse the Native plug-in will also cause the system to spike past a hundred every 10 seconds or so, even on a completely empty project with nothing but the plug in added to an empty track.  That makes it fairly un-usable.    

Anyone else getting this sort of resource hogging?  Any tips or tricks to reduce the resource use?

 

 

[craiganderton]

I also use Studio One, but it's version 4, which has been optimized quite a bit compared to V3. Plug-ins like Helix require a lot of CPU; with all due respect to PreSonus, who include some very fine plug-ins with Studio One, their amp plug-in is not on the same level as Helix. Fortunately, Studio One has a couple different ways to do what's called "track freeze" in other programs, so after recording a track, you can bounce it to processed audio, and save CPU. You can also preserve the pre-bounced state in case you need to revert, and edit the plug-in later. 

 

Unfortunately for guitar players, a fact of life is that lower latencies - which give the most comfortable playing "feel" - stress out the CPU the most. Amp sims like AmpliTube, Waves G|T|R, and Guitar Rig can select "lower resolution" modes while tracking, and then when mixing, you can increase the resolution because you can also increase the latency while mixing - you won't notice the change in feel compared to playing. Consider using some of the lower-latency amps in Helix when tracking, then going for the heavy-duty ones when mixing.

 

As to the spiking, that could be something else, and you just hadn't noticed it because it didn't matter until there was something else draining the CPU. Not sure which platform you're using, but for Windows, Latencymon (which is free) will show what's drawing CPU power. For many people, just turning off the wi-fi made a significant improvement in performance. I also found some "HD Audio" drivers that graphics cards install can give a really big performance hit, because they prioritize video over audio. Some will even basically stop your hard drive if needed, so they include a big audio buffer. Disable any unused audio drivers (but note that when there are updates to Windows, you may need to dig in and disable again - they're often turned back on as a "favor" to you).

 

Finally, I've had some mysterious "all of a sudden the program starts crackling" issues when using multiple Helices. Saving the project, closing Studio One, and reopening solved the problem for at least the next several hours, providing I wasn't trying to do a zillion other things on the computer.

 

Good luck! You'll find the same issue with other CPU-intensive plug-ins. You might want to become friends with Studio One's internal performance monitor, which shows CPU drain for plug-ins and what they contribute  to increased latency. It can be quite revealing about what's dragging down a project.

[68plexi]

One instance of Native takes 25-30% well I'm on Studio one 4.5 with a $2500 HP Z-Book and having the same issue. Looks like it's bais amp for me ........

[SaschaFranck]

First off: I don't use Studio One, but compared to other amp sims, I can't exactly say that Helix is using noticeably more CPU horsepower. I can run pretty much every patch created for the hardware on an aging Mac Pro (from 2010, 2x2.66GHz CPU) at 32 samples buffersize (using a Zoom UAC-2 interface, measured roundtrip latency of 4.5ms). This is on a "live" (record enabled) track in Logic, playback tracks are even less of an issue - I think Studio One does it the same as Logic by raising the buffers internally in case a track isn't needed for realtime tasks.

 

However - and that's why I'm replying here -,  what might help a bit is to distribute some CPU load. I have a bunch of patches dedicated to recording where I'm only using the elementary things from HX Native, namely the amp and stompbox stuff with the occasional modulation added. I usually don't even use any cab simulation because it's a lot easier to select them via Logics Space Designer (which also seems to be more CPU efficient). Regarding delays and reverbs, I have a bunch of them running on busses anyway, so all I need to do is to turn up the sends of the Helix track. Again, that seems to save quite some CPU cycles (very often FX bundled with the host are pretty well optimized in terms of CPU useage).

 

I could probably run an entire guitar orchestra with plenty of juice left on this old-ish computer.

[SaschaFranck]

Fwiw, just compared a Helix patch using the Grammatico Jump and its cab with Amplitube 4s "Amercan Tube Clean 1" (just amp and cab as well) and they're using roughly the same amount of CPU juice.

[craiganderton]

I wanted to update my post with some additional information. I think one of the issues people have with Helix and CPU is that it has the potential to create more complex patches that draw more CPU. If you compare a Helix preset using one amp with another plug-in preset using one amp, they may not be that different. But I'm very much into multiband presets, and having something like four amps and a couple cabs is something other sims generally can't do...so Helix can potentially draw a lot more CPU than sims that aren't capable of such complex presets.

 

Also, it's time to update my negative comments about Studio One's amp sims. Version 4.6 replaces the old Ampire with new amp sims that sound really good. Although they don't replace Helix, they provide additional, useful sounds and textures.

 

Finally, I think it's important to re-iterate that some of those "HD drivers" for audio are really problematic. Disable them if at all possible. The quality of the drivers varies among graphics card manufacturers, but one driver a couple years ago increased latency by 75%. Note that with Windows, an OS update can re-enable these types of drivers even if you've disabled them, so check after OS updates, and disable if needed.