shout if you need any help… there is an orac developers thread on the forum which might be useful/ a good place to ask questions etc.
ok, for me its about 75-78%, but thats definitely in the same ‘ballpark’
Brds is a heavy CPU synth, even when I released it as a standalone module I only enabled 4 voices , because 4 voices + a reverb was hitting the limits, so no surprise you can’t get 2 in orac
This is why I provided a mono version of it (and others synths) so that when you dont need polyphony you can save the cpu.
(*) in PD, each voice of a poly synth consumes a good deal of its cpu load regardless if it its playing or not.
at the end of the day, the Organelle is a single core arm processor, so it has its limits,
Orac cannot increase this, rather it just allows you to choose where you want to use it…
does Orac carry an overhead vs a single patch?,
sure a very small amount, but its actually pretty efficient since compared to most patches :
a) it dynamically loads modules… so only what your using consumes cpu/memory
b) all the parameter overhead, drawing, updating is all done in C++ , not PD
so most of the cpu load you see, is due to the module processing rather than orac.
so its a bit like a PC/DAW… on a low powered computer, if you go grab a few hungry VSTs, and use multiple instances - you will bring it to its knees
(note, the info screen % is not quite accurate, its about 5-8% off, as it includes the load to run python and the OS, not just Pd - but doesn’t really matter, since you wont be able to run at 100% without audio glitches )
ok, thats i guess is the ‘bad news’, but let’s look at this more positively, what can we do…
- turn off wifi, this does increase CPU load a bit, and causes potential audio glitches.
- use mono versions of synths where you can, they save considerable cpu
- different fx and synths required more/less cpu - learn which ones combine well e.g. basically requires much less that analogpoly, reverb less than r_reverb (rings) … edrum is very cheap!
- samplers generally use less cpu, but with large samples can start consuming memory (which is also limited)
- sequencers don’t tend to use too much cpu
- the fx are quite varied, some are really ‘cheap’, others can use quite a bit of memory, and/or cpu
- easter egg modes - many (not all!) patches for the organelle were designed to use the available cpu/memory, so of course, with some you are not going to be able to run much else alongside them
I guess, since I put these things together, I have a ‘feeling’ of what uses a lot of cpu, and what not, but I think others have gained this out of experience - I actually find it quite fun to see what I can get out of it
Actually, perhaps we should run a challenge to see who can get the most out of Orac from a musical perspective - personally, Ive been quite surprised what you can do with a bit of creative thinking (particularly, using the ‘cheaper’ module or samplers )