I experimented with redhat fairly early, it was one of the earliest "distributions", before that we were cobbling everything together ad hoc.
I didn't particularly like it and have managed to forget most of its foibles
Without much to else compare it to redhat "Seemed" OK.

I think dpkg has done a LOT to help stabilize all Debian based distributions. updates/upgrades are well controlled because their dependencies are known.

In general I'm quite happy with Fedora. I started from Redhat 9 and later continued using Fedora.
I can say a LOT has improved since Redhat 9, also for audio applications.
But Fedora is a very adventurous distro that wants to promote bleeding edge software development. "If it ain't broken don't fix it" is *not* quite Fedora's philosophy.

Another thing is that the realtime kernel package (kernel-rt) is developed as a patched version of the official Fedora kernel by a 3rd party, and available from the PlanetCCRMA repository. It's not an official Fedora development. It can (or at least it should) provide better audio performance, but with the risk of stability issues.

Having said that, I'm really happy the Modartt/Pianoteq people - unlike many other pro-audio software developers - have made the right choice to also support Linux musicians!

I think dpkg has done a LOT to help stabilize all Debian based distributions. updates/upgrades are well controlled because their dependencies are known.

I have a i3 running at 3.4GHz and in normal playing, CPU usage maxes around 15% to 20% at 44.1KHz with around 11ms latency.

/* edit */ oh yeah forgot to mention, stability and performance are consistent even when a new kernel version is released. Dunno what causes this problem with fedora.

I have had versions where Pianoteq would run with max polyphony and low latency without any xruns almost out-of-the-box.

When you get that kind of performance out-of-the-box, it's time to stop messing around and leave it at that! Forget about updating kernel if it works!

But my experiences until now have varied with every Fedora version, and every PlanetCCRMA kernel version. Configuring my system until I get good PTQ performance can be quite annoying sometimes. But I like a bit of adventure :-)

In general I have no problems getting good-enough latency (around 5 - 10 ms) but stability is a problem and can vary with every new kernel version. It would be nice if every new kernel version or every new Fedora version would be an improvement for the audio performance. Unfortunately this is not the case. I have had versions where Pianoteq would run with max polyphony and low latency without any xruns almost out-of-the-box. Then after a Fedora and/or kernel update Pianoteq would crash if I tried to play a chord with more than 3 notes.

I love Linux Fedora. But I would hardly recommend it for Musicians who just need rock-solid performance and reliability. I don't know how the situation is compared to OSX and Windows. Maybe there are people who have tried it all and who are able to share their experiences when comparing different platforms for using Pianoteq?

The demo Chopin piece gets up to about 75% CPU load in the fast parts where the sustain pedal is down, but it doesn't overload or produce pops, drop-outs, etc.
Halving the sample frequency to (I think) 24K reduced that to about 40% without a huge degradation in the sound (OK, still through the same crummy speakers, so maybe it did but I can't hear the difference)

I may try a version 3 and will almost certainly try it in the Linux partition.
BTW, V2.1 was a 25Meg file

aandrmusic wrote:

I had picked up a "refurbished" 900HD one for $85 a week or so ago.
It had Windows XP installed, but I shrank that and installed Ubuntu studio (Low Latency kernel) on a new partition - using an external DVD drive.

Hey, another ubuntu studio user! Howdy

Yeah, i haven't been posting a lot on here lately, but i'm still happily twiddling around with pianoteq presets, and slowly but surely becoming a decent piano player.... at least i hope so

For me 5.2.1 is working fine, i3@3.4GHz, 4GB mem, using jack at 44.1KHz with a latency of 11ms (yeah that's good enough for me) .... pianoteq standalone says performance index around 70, and CPU usage around 15%.... never reaches 30% even if i mash all the notes with the sustain pedal all the way down.

Yep, I like all the other "stuff" that comes with studio, plus it is generally less of a resource waster of resources than windoze.

I will probably try back-grading on the EeePC 900HD until I can get some sort of "acceptable" performance.
It is a bells and whistles vs tolerable latency trade-off, I just want it to basically WORK, even if I have to step back to my original V2 and work forwards from there
I am not an advanced player, or a picky sound tweaker, so piano'ish sounds are good enough for my practice.

I had picked up a "refurbished" 900HD one for $85 a week or so ago.
It had Windows XP installed, but I shrank that and installed Ubuntu studio (Low Latency kernel) on a new partition - using an external DVD drive.

Hey, another ubuntu studio user! Howdy

Yeah, i haven't been posting a lot on here lately, but i'm still happily twiddling around with pianoteq presets, and slowly but surely becoming a decent piano player.... at least i hope so

For me 5.2.1 is working fine, i3@3.4GHz, 4GB mem, using jack at 44.1KHz with a latency of 11ms (yeah that's good enough for me) .... pianoteq standalone says performance index around 70, and CPU usage around 15%.... never reaches 30% even if i mash all the notes with the sustain pedal all the way down.

https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v500.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v501.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v510.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v511.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v512.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v513.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v514.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v520.exe
https://www.pianoteq.com/download?file=...p_v521.exe

Unfortunately I just updated from version 5.x.x (don't remember which revision number) to 5.2.1 and I have now random crackles and the general performance is not as good as it used to be (it was even better than with version 4.5.5).

i7 quad core, windows 8.1, and the problem is present with both Reaper and Plogue Bidule.

Is it possible to revert to a previous 5 version, without going back to 4.5.5? Unfortunately I can't see a way to download a previous 5 version, and have a gig in 2 days...

Thanks a lot!

BTW, you can always try and reduce the sample rate rather than increase the latency. That would also help reduce the CPU usage.

That said, no matter how much sample libraries get bigger, they can never really replace the playability and response aspect that Pianoteq has. That simply isn't gonna happen, the principle is too different.

aandr, ~30% on your CPU is a good result, I would say, if you didn't adjust CPU-related stuff. Even if it's i7, it's a mobile low-power version. At least make sure that things like core parking and SpeedStep are disabled, so that your CPU is always working at max, providing the best performance it can (2670QM can go up to 3.1 GHz in Turbo mode, you should definitely use that, as per-core speed is actually more important than the actual number of cores, for most of programs). You don't need a hardware upgrade. 30%-ish of CPU usage doesn't mean it's unusable - it's in fact VERY usable, especially if that's the only thing you're running (say, for a live gig). I don't know if you use other stuff along Pianoteq, are you talking about using it live, or using it in a DAW, you didn't give out those details. But it's definitely fairly usable, I would say.

Another option to reduce CPU is to increase latency (done in linux/jack in increasing the buffer size).   Note that CPU usage per se is not the most important issue, DSP load is, and increasing the latency decreases the DSP requirement.
Of course, at some point latency becomes evident in live play so you can only do do much with this.   Also if you are using CPU frequency scaling, make sure to set the CPU to "Performance".

I agree, right now we can adjust some settings, but if the trend toward needing more resources continues then I think more and more of us will give up on it.

The point at which Pianoteq's appeal drops precipitously, where latency affects its responsiveness/playability.

This will be a competitive issue as much as it is a technical one, sample players continue to improve and SSD upgrades are a lot simpler/cheaper than CPU/GPU/motherboard/whole_system swaps.

For some of us the options appear to be;
a) Hardware upgrade.
b) Step back however many revisions it takes
c) Stop using it.

Right now I resent the idea of a) above,
b) would leave me with a frozen version, locking me out of new features and improvements, such as V6.
I can't imagine V6 REVERSING this trend.
c) may be the "cut my losses" strategy of choice.

Unfortunately if I head toward sample libraries I will probably WANT an SSD, so that puts me back to a) again
OTOH, SSDs are cheaper than faster processors and for all other purposes this I-7 is adequately fast.