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IDProjectCategoryView StatusDate SubmittedLast Update
0008429ardourotherpublic2020-09-29 08:382020-10-01 03:09
Reporteralightalike Assigned To 
PrioritynormalSeverityminorReproducibilityalways
Status newResolutionopen 
PlatformArchOSLinuxOS Version(any)
Product Version6.3 
Summary0008429: I just upgraded to 6.3 from 5.x. Why is it so slow?
DescriptionArdour ran so well in version 4. I had no issue with speed. Now in Ardour 6 I am constantly waiting for the program to catch up with what I am doing. Is this an issue that devteam is planning to fix? Is Ardour just going to get slower as y'all add more features? Please advise. Although I greatly appreciate the UX improvements that have been made since version 4, I am strongly considering downgrading due to the awful performance I am getting.

Is this normal?
Steps To Reproduceuse the program
Additional InformationI am running a core i5 6600k with plenty of RAM. My PC should be able to run this program smoothly in 2020.

locate took 51525 usecs for 20 tracks = 2576 per track
locate took 57353 usecs for 20 tracks = 2868 per track
~~~
locate took 62566 usecs for 20 tracks = 3128 per track
locate took 66015 usecs for 20 tracks = 3301 per track
locate took 46869 usecs for 20 tracks = 2343 per track
locate took 2391 usecs for 20 tracks = 120 per track

^^ this isn't the only slow thing that it is doing but it's the only one I see in the console without any flags on startup.
TagsNo tags attached.

Activities

alightalike

2020-09-29 09:09

reporter   ~0025080

Part of the problem was that I had the locked mem limit set to 250MB... I cranked it up to 25GB (my system actually has 16GB) and that helped a lot. It's not perfect but it's a lot better than it was. Please let me know if y'all have any more tips as to making this great program run more quickly.

x42

2020-09-29 13:54

administrator   ~0025081

I have the opposite experience. Overall Ardour 6.x is more snappy than Ardour 5.12.
Could it be that you're using a non-optimized debug build (which is significantly slower)? Menu > Help > About ("Intel 64-bit - debug) ?

How do you notice that it's slow? Is this mainly a GUI experience (scroll, zoom), session with many regions? or increased DSP load?


> locate took 66015 usecs for 20 tracks = 3301 per track

That is a debug message for profiling reading data from disk, to establish I/O performance when seeking.

alightalike

2020-09-30 03:38

reporter   ~0025086

I actually misread usecs as msecs and thought it was taking over a minute to do the process. It is a session with many regions, yes. The DSP load is moderately increased compared to ardour 5. The GUI is definitely the slowest part.

And, I am using a debug build. I'm going back now to rebuild the source as an optimized build

alightalike

2020-10-01 00:09

reporter   ~0025093

I have been so far unable to compile an optimized build that works; I have attached a log of ardour's output.

However, the optimized build I got from the arch repo works fine. It is still very slow to use the GUI (at least with a couple dozen tracks/regions in my session), especially to scroll up and down the tracks list. A workaround for me is simply to zoom out so the entire session is visible on the screen and I don't have to scroll.
out.txt (1,881 bytes)    
WARNING: Your system has a limit for maximum amount of locked memory!
         This might cause Ardour to run out of memory before your system runs
         out of memory. You can view the memory limit with 'ulimit -l', and it
         is normally controlled by /etc/security/limits.conf

Ardour6-native6.3.112 (built using 6.3-112-g5ebb016544 and GCC version 10.2.0)
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: Your system is configured to limit Ardour6-native to 524288 open files
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: Loading system configuration file /usr/local/etc/ardour6/system_config
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: CPU vendor: GenuineIntel
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: AVX-capable processor
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: CPU brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHz
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: Using AVX optimized routines
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: Loading plugin meta data file /usr/local/share/ardour6/plugin_metadata/plugin_tags
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: Loading default ui configuration file /usr/local/etc/ardour6/default_ui_config
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: Loading 449 MIDI patches from /usr/local/share/ardour6/patchfiles
Ardour6-native: [WARNING]: Color file for dark not found along /home/mason/.config/ardour6-native6/themes:/usr/local/share/ardour6/themes
Color gtk_background not found
Color gtk_foreground not found
Color theme:contrasting clock not found
Ardour6-native: [INFO]: Loading bindings from /usr/local/etc/ardour6/ardour.keys
Loading ui configuration file /usr/local/etc/ardour6/clearlooks.rc
/usr/local/etc/ardour6/clearlooks.rc:10: Invalid symbolic color 'bases'
/usr/local/etc/ardour6/clearlooks.rc:10: error: invalid identifier 'bases', expected valid identifier
Color gtk_background not found
Color gtk_foreground not found
Color theme:contrasting clock not found
Cannot find splash screen image file
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'failed_constructor'
  what():  failed constructor
out.txt (1,881 bytes)   

x42

2020-10-01 00:36

administrator   ~0025094

Looks like installing went wrong somehow.
Can you run it from the source tree after compiling (without install)?

cd gtk2_ardour/ ; ./ardev

alightalike

2020-10-01 00:43

reporter   ~0025095

I get the same output running ./ardev from ardour/gtk2_ardour/. The same source compiled and ran perfectly without the flags '--optimize --lxvst --program-name="Ardour6-native"'

I was originally trying to compile with '--vst3 --windows-vst' as well; the flag --windows-vst threw a wine error and I dropped the --vst3 flag along with it.

x42

2020-10-01 01:06

administrator   ~0025096

don't set --program-name="Ardour6-native"'

x42

2020-10-01 01:08

administrator   ~0025097

compare to https://nightly.ardour.org/i/A_Linux_x86_64-gcc5abi/build_log.txt

vst3 and lxvst (vst2) are enabled by default.

alightalike

2020-10-01 03:09

reporter   ~0025098

That fixed my build error. Thanks! The GUI is still painfully slow. It takes approximately fifteen seconds for ardour6 to scroll one notch up or down or side to side on the region list.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2020-09-29 08:38 alightalike New Issue
2020-09-29 09:09 alightalike Note Added: 0025080
2020-09-29 13:54 x42 Note Added: 0025081
2020-09-30 03:38 alightalike Note Added: 0025086
2020-10-01 00:09 alightalike File Added: out.txt
2020-10-01 00:09 alightalike Note Added: 0025093
2020-10-01 00:36 x42 Note Added: 0025094
2020-10-01 00:43 alightalike Note Added: 0025095
2020-10-01 01:06 x42 Note Added: 0025096
2020-10-01 01:08 x42 Note Added: 0025097
2020-10-01 03:09 alightalike Note Added: 0025098