VirtualMIDISynth 2.x alpha available for testing

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Posts: 59
Joined: April 19, 2014 - 06:23
Re: Windows 8/10 VMS performance
KaleidonKep99 wrote:
Ray890 wrote:

Slightly off topic:  I tested PianoFromAbove+VirtualMIDISynth-stable on Windows 10 technical preview, only to find it preforms worse than it does on Windows 7:  https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/12f32115-f94c-41cb-b44...

This problem is present on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 too, because the MIDI-Mapper is hardly wired to MSGSWS (MIDI inputs passes through it).

What's MSGSWS?  Microsoft's GS synth right?  if so, ouch!  I can't find any information regarding this on google tho :\

It's come to my attention that midi performance is even yet worse in W10's new build [about 40 seconds in build 9860 compared to 12s in build 9841], and its time to make some proper noise toward MS.  So I plan to create a W10-Uservoice topic regarding this, and send a message regarding it to each BMT (and related) members, once I know the technical background on it.

- Main laptop: Sager NP4658, Intel i7-4810MQ, 2*8GB DDR3 (PC3-10700), 512GB+512GB SSDs, Intel HD4600/NVidia GT840M

Posts: 1972
Joined: March 25, 2012 - 01:19
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released
Ray890 wrote:
Upon first vms launch after installation, I'd sometimes get either a crash or non-working audio.  I've un-installed and re-installed Alpha7 a couple of times and noticed this behaviour on most of the re-installations.

Will have a look

Ray890 wrote:
---- at 500 voice limit, synth lightly bottlenecks the MIDI player; as VMS's thread appears to use ~2-3 times as many cpu cycles as midi program's thread
---- at 100 voice limit, synth notibly lags/stutters a little before the point where the midi player lags; as VMS thread appears to use ~3-7 times as many cpu cycles as midi program thread

I'm not a "BlackMIDI" expert, but is it a real lag?
I mean, I've lost a couple of days trying to fix what seemed a lag to me too, then it sorted out that the "holes" I heard were due to the voice limit itself.
Setting such a low limit will cause removed notes being (likely) from the "melodic" part of the track rather than (less likely) from the thousand notes of the background.
I built my idea observing the time counter of VanBasco and TMidi: they never stop nor slow down.

Sorry for my "non technical" speaking, hope my thoughts were clear.

Ray890 wrote:
you should consider replacing that with a link or button inside the soundfonts tab of the configuration window

Good suggestion, will change it.

Ray890 wrote:
And, a popup systray balloon that tells the user to restart VMS to apply changes when the user presses 'ok' or 'apply' to change something would also be nice.

This needing will be removed soon. I'm working on "live apply" of settings while the synth is running...

Posts: 26
Joined: March 12, 2013 - 16:35
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released

That delay introduced in alpha v7 is just awfull and completly ruined my midi experience. :/

v6 is free of this bug.

Claudio, I'll send you email soon with the details.

Posts: 1972
Joined: March 25, 2012 - 01:19
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released
supergod wrote:

That delay introduced in alpha v7 is just awfull and completly ruined my midi experience. :/

v6 is free of this bug.

Claudio, I'll send you email soon with the details.

Thanks to your detailed report I was able to reproduce the bug on my side.
It was due to GZDoom closing/reopening the same device a lot of times in a short interval when changing game scene.
Will have a look.

Posts: 59
Joined: April 19, 2014 - 06:23
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released
coolsoft wrote:

I'm not a "BlackMIDI" expert, but is it a real lag?

I mean, I've lost a couple of days trying to fix what seemed a lag to me too, then it sorted out that the "holes" I heard were due to the voice limit itself.  (I feel that three quarters the way into "bad apple 3.5 million" makes for a good tester for this) 

In the sense that that the midi player is lagging, nope.

It's more that the synth is, producing the loud static, stuttering, and inconsistent slow downs.

In task manager, I'm seeing VMS easily reaching 13% total CPU (AKA. 100% thread usage on my 8-threaded i7), while Vanbasco's or Tmidi is still only at 0-1% total CPU.  This is heavily influenced by the voice limit; but even a voice limit of 16 causes VMS to use significantly more.  The new amount of stutter created by the new 1000 voice setting has caused this setting to be unusable with the black midi community (and even causes claims that v1.12.0 broke performance in general and therefore reverts back to v.1.10.1).

I suspect the excessive cpu usage is caused by how many samples are being played simultaneously, and that there is an inefficentcy in this area within either the VMS or the Bassmidi department.

Some additional observations

- Unique to Alpha7, lag is only increased and made more inconsistent when "output buffer" is added.  Additionally outside of testing, I've always kept my output buffer setting to "0ms", because I never noticed any difference in performance figures in any VMS version I've tested.  I think this kind of buffering system only works correctly when a midi synthesizer is integrated into a midi player.

- Piano From Above/PFA seems to be much more of a performance bottleneck than I originally thought, now that I'm testing programs like tmidi, timidi64, vanbasco's, and miditrail more

- Alpha7 seems to currently have the same performance as the latest stable, only differences are that stuttering artifacts are just heard in a different way, and the separation of the midi player and vms processes is making it a lot easier for me to discover bottlenecks

- TimeBeginPeriod(1) is called as soon as VirtualMIDISynth.exe is opened and keeps the windows timer resolution at 1ms until it is close, this is wasteful, instead the timer should only be touched/raised when the synth driver is actually playing notes/being used.

- Main laptop: Sager NP4658, Intel i7-4810MQ, 2*8GB DDR3 (PC3-10700), 512GB+512GB SSDs, Intel HD4600/NVidia GT840M

Posts: 1972
Joined: March 25, 2012 - 01:19
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released

@Ray890: thanks for your detailed report and links.

VMS does not call TimeBeginPeriod, but I suppose BASS does. VMS-synth component initialize BASS as soon as it starts (actually started by the VMS-driver component), and leave it initialized to have it ready if the driver is stopped/restarted lately. Think about VanBasco being closed and/or restarted by double clicking on a KAR file in Windows Explorer.

Will check if BASS could be uninitialized or "relaxed" without a noticeable loss.

Posts: 11
Joined: October 21, 2014 - 08:30
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released

When is going to be released VirtualMIDISynth 2.0 ?? I mean no alpha stage, no beta, a full version??

Posts: 26
Joined: March 12, 2013 - 16:35
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released

When it's done. :)

Posts: 1972
Joined: March 25, 2012 - 01:19
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released

I know that a lot of you are waiting for new releases, but sadly things are moving slow in the last months.

Last week I was down with the flu so... other days lost both for my real job and CoolSoft.
Hope I can get release something interesting soon.

Posts: 1972
Joined: March 25, 2012 - 01:19
Re: CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth 2.0.0-alpha7 released

I know there's a lot of you waiting for news about VMS2 development.

Well, I'm back working on it and alpha8 is almost ready; will be released in a few days.

Here's an incomplete list of new features:

  • updated BASS libs
  • multiple devices (2 to start, more to come)
  • redesigned configurator dialog, now resizable and scrollable
  • lot of less-visible fixes and improvements

Stay tuned.

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