Solved Studio One CPU management

[Julien Ober]

Hello everyone,

The question may have already been asked and answered, but I don't think I found the topic in the forum.

This one concerns the CPU management by Studio One (see attached screenshot). I am very surprised to see that there is a huge difference between what SO displays in terms of resources used and what the Windows resource monitor displays. I specify that the plugin sleep mode is enabled.

Does anyone have an idea on the reason for such a difference?

Thank you

Julien

SO 7
Win 10 64
I7 12700kf
64 Go RAM
SSD

 

[Lukas]

The reason is that both measure and display very different things. When it's about the audio performance, Windows Task Manager says nothing!

There's a great and very detailled article on the PreSonus blog that clears up a number of misconceptions:

https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/22234009300877-How-to-Improve-Computer-Performance-for-Digital-Audio

Studio One's Performance Monitor (CPU Meter):
This reflects the real-time processing load on the audio engine, specifically measuring how much time each audio processing cycle takes relative to the available time before the next cycle. It’s not a direct measurement of your CPU’s total usage but rather a representation of how close the system is to audio dropouts.

You can see this meter more like a dropout probability

Windows Task Manager:
This shows overall system-wide CPU usage, including background processes, system tasks, and all active applications. It spreads usage across all CPU cores and may not reflect real-time audio performance bottlenecks.

Also, Windows smooths CPU usage over time, while Studio One reacts in real-time to short CPU spikes, which might not be captured in Task Manager.

If you're experiencing performance issues, focus on Studio One's CPU meter rather than Task Manager, as it better represents the risk of audio dropouts.

 

[Julien Ober]

Ok, thanks for your explanation.

 

[FMN-Music]

If you have the courage/time and are willing to change stuff under the hood, you might be able to bring these two number closer together.
It's a tedious process of trial and error though.
Setup a (fictional) song project with a bunch of Tracks/Instruments/Auxes/Ins/Outs with lots of different plugins until you hit a remembereable number on the ASIO Meter in S1, like i.e. 60%, when you play back a certain area of the song project.
Then begin to change stuff and after every change check if something is better or different. Write every change down.
Things to try may include:
- Create own Power Plan with everything on full performance, no eco stuff, no allowing of sleep of USB ports etc.
- Advanced system settings (Adjust for best performance of background services)
- Device Manager: Look for system devices driver updates
- UEFI (here it can get dicy): Try different factory presets, Disable C-States, Disable Hyperthreading, etc.

 

[Julien Ober]

If you have the courage/time and are willing to change stuff under the hood, you might be able to bring these two number closer together.
It's a tedious process of trial and error though.
Setup a (fictional) song project with a bunch of Tracks/Instruments/Auxes/Ins/Outs with lots of different plugins until you hit a remembereable number on the ASIO Meter in S1, like i.e. 60%, when you play back a certain area of the song project.
Then begin to change stuff and after every change check if something is better or different. Write every change down.
Things to try may include:
- Create own Power Plan with everything on full performance, no eco stuff, no allowing of sleep of USB ports etc.
- Advanced system settings (Adjust for best performance of background services)
- Device Manager: Look for system devices driver updates
- UEFI (here it can get dicy): Try different factory presets, Disable C-States, Disable Hyperthreading, etc.

Thanks, but I do not have courage / time

Maybe one day...