I noticed it on my Asus laptop (i5 8th gen). So the only solution I found is to set polyphony to "pessimistic" without sacrificing the preset's settings. I don't know how much it drops the polyphony, but it is a solution. The problem is because the many microphones of each piano preset. If reduce them to just 2 microphones, the problem solved. But I prefer the first solution.

Just installed v. 9 last night on my older iPad mini with an A12 chip. Running the standalone app. Two things immediately apparent that I chalked up to the older hardware:

1) presets now take 20-30 seconds to load.
2) CPU use is up dramatically, especially noticeable on the Sombre presets for my piano packs. Lots of crackling and cutting out, even on simple playing.

For # 2, I set the polyphony to 'Pessimistic' and brought the sample rates down to 22000 and the sample size to 256 and it became playable. This helped and I could play the new presets.

Will test on my much newer laptop and see how it behaves.

Hi,

Higher cpu usage (in standalone version, not only in vst) is expected as it is part of the soundboard improvements we have made, they do come at a cost -- it may depend on the specific instrument you are playing.

But that doesn't make sense if you can no longer use these sounds because of the high CPU load on Pianoteq. There should at least be an option to simply disable the CPU-intensive improvements so that you can at least work with the sounds at the level of Pianoteq 8 without having to constantly switch between versions 8 and 9.

Higher cpu usage (in standalone version, not only in vst) is expected as it is part of the soundboard improvements we have made, they do come at a cost -- it may depend on the specific instrument you are playing.

I work with Windows 10, 32 GB RAM, fast SSD.

Hi there,

Pianoteq 9 sounds great, but when using the vst3 in Cantabile I notice significantly higher CPU usage than v8. Also, a lot of CPU spiking (and crackling), also visible in the built in performance meter in Pianoteq. Performance is better in the standalone version. For now, v9 is unusable for me for live perfomance in Cantabile, so will keep using v8 for now.

Is this to be expected for v9? Anybody else with the same experience?

I get exactly the same, I hope that it gets fixed, because there are some nice new things in v9, but for now it is not suitable for live performance (nor rehearsals).

I have the same problems with Pianoteq 9.
I also notice significantly higher CPU usage than v8.
Also, a lot of CPU spiking and crackling.
For now, v9 is also unusable for me, so I will keep using v8 for now.

Oddly, on my intel-based macbook pro, I have the opposite experience: things have been running considerably more smoothly than they have in v8.

I did hear some crackling at lower external bitrates (44.1khz) but at my current settings (192k, 384k), no problems to report

JorgV wrote:

Hi there,

Pianoteq 9 sounds great, but when using the vst3 in Cantabile I notice significantly higher CPU usage than v8. Also, a lot of CPU spiking (and crackling), also visible in the built in performance meter in Pianoteq. Performance is better in the standalone version. For now, v9 is unusable for me for live perfomance in Cantabile, so will keep using v8 for now.

Is this to be expected for v9? Anybody else with the same experience?

I have the same crackling experience with the stand alone version on my Windows audio PC.

I also noticed higher CPU usage and higher chance of crackling on my M1 Mac mini under extreme conditions. This never happened with V8. Seems to be the price for the Pianoteq improvements. Yet still usable.

Hi there,

Pianoteq 9 sounds great, but when using the vst3 in Cantabile I notice significantly higher CPU usage than v8. Also, a lot of CPU spiking (and crackling), also visible in the built in performance meter in Pianoteq. Performance is better in the standalone version. For now, v9 is unusable for me for live perfomance in Cantabile, so will keep using v8 for now.

Is this to be expected for v9? Anybody else with the same experience?

I have the same crackling experience with the stand alone version on my Windows audio PC.

Pianoteq 9 sounds great, but when using the vst3 in Cantabile I notice significantly higher CPU usage than v8. Also, a lot of CPU spiking (and crackling), also visible in the built in performance meter in Pianoteq. Performance is better in the standalone version. For now, v9 is unusable for me for live perfomance in Cantabile, so will keep using v8 for now.

Is this to be expected for v9? Anybody else with the same experience?