I used Glenn's link to a HUGE version of Mozart's Turkish March  as a test. (Mozart evidently came back to life in 1860 lol). See the Forum thread "Pianoteq Workout".   It gets to a polyphony of just over 100 a couple times

Mac  early 2008 8-core 2.8 GHz, lots of RAM  OS 10.5.8. Coming out of internal digital toslink.

Pianoteq 3.5.1 (standard) in stand alone mode.  C3  Recording preset

max polyphony 128,   48K sample rate (96K host).

@ 64 samples no multi-core rendering, the file squawked and scratched and was useless.

@64 samples again  but with  multi-core checked, the file played better than single core, but still had too many scratches to be workable.
 
@128 samples buffer it played back fine  with or w/o multi-core.

The only way I could get the file to play @64 samples was to use multi-core, internal sample rate @19200, and max polyphony @64, and it worked, but crackled alot.

The lesson is that buffer size is by far the greatest determiner of performance, in my setup at least.  Multi-core rendering seems to make only minor difference on a Mac, although I hope it would help when Pianoteq is used as a plugin.  Of course, the preset could be tweaked to bring down CPU usage.  Once a MIDI file is made, I'll increase the buffer size

3.5 is  a hog, but I like the sound very much in my initial use of it.

But if you have a problem with other sound software not producing sounds while you play Pianoteq, the problem is probably that the internal card just won't let you use both sound sources at once. Can you play two other sound-based programs at once? That shouldn't happen. Assuming your on a Windows machine, did you open the Mixing panel? Something there may be muted or reduced in volume.

Regardless, you may want to invest in one of the several relatively inexpensive external usb or firewire sound cards. They start at around $150, fit in a briefcase or satchel, and produce much better and much louder (2-3X) the sound.

But think about what specs you want. Most have at least one input and output jacks, so that, when you're at home, you could plug in other several other instruments as well and\or run lines to powered monitors. The more inputs, the better. Some have mics inputs. Most, to use a mic for a vocal or recording an acoustic guitar, etc, require that you use an additional amplified mixing board. (These are also readily available, small, and inexpensive, and you could get one later, after you get the basic setup.)

theJourney:

Have you tried the usual experiments with increasing the number of buffers for the sound card?

Something else you might try: A few months ago, someone posted that he was getting surprisingly good sound with the PTeq sample rate reduced to 2200. You'll notice some loss of quality, but not as much as you might expect,and it might be viable for playing in the hotel room late at night.

I must admit I am a bit of a novice.
Especially understanding the relationship between Pianoteq settings, asioall settings, my sound card etc. 

For example, I try to change some parameters but the changes don't take.

Also, why can I not use Pianoteq together with other applications that produce sound?

Have you tried the usual experiments with increasing the number of buffers for the sound card?

Something else you might try: A few months ago, someone posted that he was getting surprisingly good sound with the PTeq sample rate reduced to 2200. You'll notice some loss of quality, but not as much as you might expect,and it might be viable for playing in the hotel room late at night.

I can get PianoTeq running on my Samsung NC20 with VIA NANO U2250 processor 1.6 GHz, however, it can't come close to playing the thunder file (which my home PC  -- Pentium D 2.8 Ghz -- plays just fine).

Any help on tweaking for maximum performance would be appreciated.

An utility that can be used to check the cpu frequency in real-time is rmclock ( http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml )

Gilles: you might want to try that: http://www.tomstricks.com/how-to-set-pr...s-vistaxp/ but I'm not sure if it will help a lot, if you lock the pianoteq process on one core, then you won't get any benefit from multicore rendering

I think I have found a workaround for my dual core balance problem but I find it a bit puzzling.

I first launch the US-122 control panel which starts running under a standard process known as run32dll.exe, then I use its guitar tuning function which puts it in a loop waiting for guitar input, then I set the processor affinity of the run32dll.exe process to cpu 0 EVEN if it already runs on cpu 1.

After that, I launch pianoteq and it starts running on cpu 0 and I get my balanced system where I have both cores running equally, and I get no crackles. I then have to quit the US-122 control panel with the ok button, or it will go on waiting for guitar input forever...

This doesn't work if I don't lock rundll32.exe or try to lock it to cpu 1 where it is already running, pianoteq then, most of the times, starts also on cpu 1...the other running tasks don't seem to have any effect on this behaviour.

The only explanation I can think of is that, on my hardware, Windows mostly uses cpu 0 and the system has a tendency to start cpu intensive processes on cpu 1 first. By starting first the driver loop, the system then uses cpu 0 as a first choice for pianoteq which comes later. But why it work only by setting this false affinity for the rundll32.exe is beyond me! The driver loop STAYS on cpu 1 it doesn't move to cpu 0.

i had the same problem with 3.5.0 about presets savaing, sometimes, with earlier projects made with 3.0

i told it to Modartt and Julien Pommier asked me to try an upgrade, and the problem of presets is gone, but like other here :

much more CPU charge with the same song.

So for now, mabe one temporary solution :

- Reinstalling the v 3.5.0
- open a song made with 3.0 but not saved with the 3.5, so having the right preset the first time. Then, save the FXP preset separatly
- unload the pianiteq plugin of the slot
- save the song without Pianoteq
- open the song
- choose Pianoteq 3.5.0 in the empty slot, and take the right FXP from the drive
- save the song
- open the song : the right preset is good, and the CPU charge is OK.

3.5.1 Pro behaves much better now.

No, the CPU load is FINE. The drivers are what is causing the clicks.

What system are you on? I am on OS X 10.5.8, I can have 64 sample buffer in Login Pro 8 but must have 256 in PTQ and even then... clearly something is wrong with PTQ on Mac/Core audio, IMHO, send quite a few bug reports about this.

And I don't notice any performance difference at all between 3.0 and 3.5

Giles,

Did you try using the latest driver for the more recent Tascam US-144? The two machines are very similar. Just guessing, here. Might, but just might, work.

I looked into it, and the US-122L and US-144 use a completely different driver numbering scheme than the obsolete US-122, so I guess they would not be compatible since the newer models support 96kHz samples while the US-122 is limited to 48kHz. Even these models are now obsolete, having been replaced by a "MKII" version.

The Tascam drivers are annoyingly complicated to install and I wouldn't try it unless I have a really good reason...

I did find (by googling) that a newer driver (3.4.0) exist for the US-122 but it reportedly only adds Vista support which I don't need.

Tascam is not very reputable for software support, having completely stopped selling GigaStudio, which was the reason I had bought the US-122 in the first place...I have to live with my choice for the time being since I find that the 24 bit US-122 sounds very good with pianoteq, better in fact than the other card I have, the Audigy 2ZS.

Did you try using the latest driver for the more recent Tascam US-144? The two machines are very similar. Just guessing, here. Might, but just might, work.

Can I reinstall the 3.05 version over the 3.5 to get rid of the crackling and noise again?

I will get a new machine in a couple of weeks but want to use Pianoteq for the time being as it was before on my outdated CPU.

Gilles: you might want to try that: http://www.tomstricks.com/how-to-set-pr...s-vistaxp/ but I'm not sure if it will help a lot, if you lock the pianoteq process on one core, then you won't get any benefit from multicore rendering

Thanks for the advice, but you are right, it is worse when locking to one cpu. The problem is there is only one pianoteq process running and the loop that takes too much resource in my case is probably a thread inside the process, part of the Tascam ASIO driver.

Sometimes this thread gets launched on the other cpu and that helps very much, but I have no control on the thread assignement.

Of course this might be because the Tascam driver is badly written and shouldn't have such a loop, but I can't update it since Tascam doesn't sell the US-122 any more, and ASIO4ALL doesn't seem to be a very good choice.

If the ASIO driver was launched as a different process, then I would be able to lock it after launch but there would probably be a performance penalty with interprocess communication.

Something that is very important with modern cpus is to make sure that the cpu frequency throttling (that is when the cpu lowers its frequency to reduce power usage) is disabled. In Vista, setting the power management setting on "high-performance" should disable it.

An utility that can be used to check the cpu frequency in real-time is rmclock ( http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml )

Gilles: you might want to try that: http://www.tomstricks.com/how-to-set-pr...s-vistaxp/ but I'm not sure if it will help a lot, if you lock the pianoteq process on one core, then you won't get any benefit from multicore rendering