The Animus Shimmerverb Ensemble - now in the PropShop!

[Melody303]

I went to check this out now with the sale going, and unfortunately it chokes my system out on more than half of the presets I've tried, but I don't want to waste my trial on account of that. Does anyone have any specific recommendations of presets to try out or specific settings to play with? (note I'm not looking for subtle effects here)

I tried it on an pretty old i7 and it worked quite well. Can you please give some more info? Maybe what OS and what power management do you use? As an example, if i use an avarage power savings settings i get crackles and half of DSP is full on simple stuff. If i use high power settings, the DSP meter is not event winking most of the time (yea, ok, if i have a bunch of stuff in it, it does...). So, please provide more info, before you talk about performance problems.

As I wrote in a prior post, this is an AMD 8350 CPU, with 8GB of RAM. The Operating system is Win7, and the machine was under heavy casual load (meaning many browser windows open, for the most part). These conditions didn't prevent me from playing through full songs I wrote in Reason without issues (with many instruments and many effects), and didn't have issues trialing the other REs I've tried today. But Reason stopped playing audio with a 'computer too slow to play song' error many times while trialing, and had very high DSP usage on many others.
One preset for example which gives me the too slow error is '14 The Blessed'.

The purpose of my comment wasn't a "watch out everyone, heavy CPU load", it was a "I'm having a hard time trying this out, but I wanna know if it's worth it for me despite that, so does anyone have any patch recommendations? The best that this device can offer in your opinion?" So it's a shame the focus went to this instead of that.

[Loque]

I tried it on an pretty old i7 and it worked quite well. Can you please give some more info? Maybe what OS and what power management do you use? As an example, if i use an avarage power savings settings i get crackles and half of DSP is full on simple stuff. If i use high power settings, the DSP meter is not event winking most of the time (yea, ok, if i have a bunch of stuff in it, it does...). So, please provide more info, before you talk about performance problems.

As I wrote in a prior post, this is an AMD 8350 CPU, with 8GB of RAM. The Operating system is Win7, and the machine was under heavy casual load (meaning many browser windows open, for the most part). These conditions didn't prevent me from playing through full songs I wrote in Reason without issues (with many instruments and many effects), and didn't have issues trialing the other REs I've tried today. But Reason stopped playing audio with a 'computer too slow to play song' error many times while trialing, and had very high DSP usage on many others.
One preset for example which gives me the too slow error is '14 The Blessed'.

The purpose of my comment wasn't a "watch out everyone, heavy CPU load", it was a "I'm having a hard time trying this out, but I wanna know if it's worth it for me despite that, so does anyone have any patch recommendations? The best that this device can offer in your opinion?" So it's a shame the focus went to this instead of that.

I got your message and request. Its not me getting nervouse...

[MrFigg]

As I wrote in a prior post, this is an AMD 8350 CPU, with 8GB of RAM. The Operating system is Win7, and the machine was under heavy casual load (meaning many browser windows open, for the most part). These conditions didn't prevent me from playing through full songs I wrote in Reason without issues (with many instruments and many effects), and didn't have issues trialing the other REs I've tried today. But Reason stopped playing audio with a 'computer too slow to play song' error many times while trialing, and had very high DSP usage on many others.
One preset for example which gives me the too slow error is '14 The Blessed'.

The purpose of my comment wasn't a "watch out everyone, heavy CPU load", it was a "I'm having a hard time trying this out, but I wanna know if it's worth it for me despite that, so does anyone have any patch recommendations? The best that this device can offer in your opinion?" So it's a shame the focus went to this instead of that.

I got your message and request. Its not me getting nervouse...

Me too. No nerves here. Just thoughts, reflections and speculations .

[Exowildebeest]

There seems to be a bug in the current version of Animus: the impulse response doesn't actually change after picking one until you move the Decay parameter.

[aeox]

There seems to be a bug in the current version of Animus: the impulse response doesn't actually change after picking one until you move the Decay parameter.

I noticed that as well. Also, none of the reverbs sound good to me at all. Hopefully it will get some improvements

[MrFigg]

I tried it on an pretty old i7 and it worked quite well. Can you please give some more info? Maybe what OS and what power management do you use? As an example, if i use an avarage power savings settings i get crackles and half of DSP is full on simple stuff. If i use high power settings, the DSP meter is not event winking most of the time (yea, ok, if i have a bunch of stuff in it, it does...). So, please provide more info, before you talk about performance problems.

As I wrote in a prior post, this is an AMD 8350 CPU, with 8GB of RAM. The Operating system is Win7, and the machine was under heavy casual load (meaning many browser windows open, for the most part). These conditions didn't prevent me from playing through full songs I wrote in Reason without issues (with many instruments and many effects), and didn't have issues trialing the other REs I've tried today. But Reason stopped playing audio with a 'computer too slow to play song' error many times while trialing, and had very high DSP usage on many others.
One preset for example which gives me the too slow error is '14 The Blessed'.

The purpose of my comment wasn't a "watch out everyone, heavy CPU load", it was a "I'm having a hard time trying this out, but I wanna know if it's worth it for me despite that, so does anyone have any patch recommendations? The best that this device can offer in your opinion?" So it's a shame the focus went to this instead of that.

If you’re getting cracks and pops and “too slow” messages then try closing some of the “many browser windows” you mentioned and see if that helps. That should let you try out the device to see if “worth it” for you. If you haven’t already done so you can try optimizing your pc for audio. That can give great performance improvements.

[JdA57]

I tried it on an pretty old i7 and it worked quite well. Can you please give some more info? Maybe what OS and what power management do you use? As an example, if i use an avarage power savings settings i get crackles and half of DSP is full on simple stuff. If i use high power settings, the DSP meter is not event winking most of the time (yea, ok, if i have a bunch of stuff in it, it does...). So, please provide more info, before you talk about performance problems.

As I wrote in a prior post, this is an AMD 8350 CPU, with 8GB of RAM. The Operating system is Win7, and the machine was under heavy casual load (meaning many browser windows open, for the most part). These conditions didn't prevent me from playing through full songs I wrote in Reason without issues (with many instruments and many effects), and didn't have issues trialing the other REs I've tried today. But Reason stopped playing audio with a 'computer too slow to play song' error many times while trialing, and had very high DSP usage on many others.
One preset for example which gives me the too slow error is '14 The Blessed'.

The purpose of my comment wasn't a "watch out everyone, heavy CPU load", it was a "I'm having a hard time trying this out, but I wanna know if it's worth it for me despite that, so does anyone have any patch recommendations? The best that this device can offer in your opinion?" So it's a shame the focus went to this instead of that.

01.
Same CPU-Problems with some Presets here. But I'll not get the message 'Computer to slow' (MAC OSX 10.9.5), here only CPU-meter will go up to 100% (red) and sound crackling. Same Preset: '14 The Blessed' (and some more)

Only loaded 1 Dr. Octorex and one Animus, routng Dr. O-REX via Effect-send to Animus, send leve. ca. 30%, start Reason ... . Checked this on some more MAC and allways same probpem (not important if 2 or 4 Core). Its for shure a bug or feedback-leck or whatever in Animus.

02.
And yes, there seems to be a problem too,while changing impukse responses.



Yes this RE for shure is a little bit buggy, but Jiggery' for shure will fix this (Y)

[MrFigg]

Just wondering...any more on the suspected "impulse bug"?

[MrFigg]

I’m bumping this because I’ve not read any more about the suspected bug anywhere. Anybody? JP?

[MrFigg]

As I wrote in a prior post, this is an AMD 8350 CPU, with 8GB of RAM. The Operating system is Win7, and the machine was under heavy casual load (meaning many browser windows open, for the most part). These conditions didn't prevent me from playing through full songs I wrote in Reason without issues (with many instruments and many effects), and didn't have issues trialing the other REs I've tried today. But Reason stopped playing audio with a 'computer too slow to play song' error many times while trialing, and had very high DSP usage on many others.
One preset for example which gives me the too slow error is '14 The Blessed'.

The purpose of my comment wasn't a "watch out everyone, heavy CPU load", it was a "I'm having a hard time trying this out, but I wanna know if it's worth it for me despite that, so does anyone have any patch recommendations? The best that this device can offer in your opinion?" So it's a shame the focus went to this instead of that.

01.
Same CPU-Problems with some Presets here. But I'll not get the message 'Computer to slow' (MAC OSX 10.9.5), here only CPU-meter will go up to 100% (red) and sound crackling. Same Preset: '14 The Blessed' (and some more)

Only loaded 1 Dr. Octorex and one Animus, routng Dr. O-REX via Effect-send to Animus, send leve. ca. 30%, start Reason ... . Checked this on some more MAC and allways same probpem (not important if 2 or 4 Core). Its for shure a bug or feedback-leck or whatever in Animus.

02.
And yes, there seems to be a problem too,while changing impukse responses.



Yes this RE for shure is a little bit buggy, but Jiggery' for shure will fix this (Y)

Well I bought it and (as I wrote in another thread) it is now my favourite RE of all time. I absolutely love it. But yeah... some patches hiiiigh DSP. Especially The Blessed as mentioned above. Is that just the nature of the beast or is there a fix to make it less CPU hungry? I hope so but maybe you just can’t fix those things.

[JiggeryPokery]

To answer a couple of questions above.

There are no known issues in changing impulse responses, but these have specific usage rules.

Any change of impulse response in convolution devices requires the new impulse to loaded be recalcuated on-the-fly. This is not an instantaneously magic process. So especially when audio is present in the signal chain of you will always get some issues as the new impulse needs to be calculated while still playing the previous selection. Some of these artefacts occur when changing values to RV7K in convolution mode too. Trying to mitigate some of these would likely end up being more costly in terms of DSP. This was partly why I used a pop-up selector list, so at least it is far less possible to have lots of impulse calcs inadvertantly running as would happen when moving a knob quickly through multiple convolution selections, although note that changing rapidly between device patches may still result in it attempting to calcuate multiple convolultion impulses (which would result in spikes or even clipping on the main output). So the simply answer there don't change patches rapidly.

As for a few specifically heavy patches, yes, "The Blessed" is definitely on the mega-heavy side, but I don't think that's a reason not to include such patches, (although in hindsight perhaps it might have been preferable not in the best-of preview list ). But note that patch does use very long delay times (1 to 4 seconds) as well as max samples and density. One of the problems with patch-building I'm sure all devs face is that one inevitably constucts to the ability of the machine one is working on. Based on an NNXT instrument, it's only 3/4-bar patch here on my 1800x. Slower or faster machines or DSP heavy instruments then of course the results will be different. I would expect there are users who have better performance that I get with it. (It may even have performed better at the time it was created if Meltdown/Spectre fixes have had any significant impact on Reason's DSP usage in the months since; I've no evidence for/against, it's just something that has occurred to me that is worthy of consideration at least.)

In all cases, whether it's The Animus or indeed any device where a particular setup eats resources, one either simply avoids such patches, or if it's too good to avoid, remember that Bounce in Place is always at hand. Sometimes processes need a lot of DSP, guys; this isn't the CF-101.

[MrFigg]

Thanks for the clarification JP. All as it should be then . One day in for me now and still the best RE EVER!!!!!!

[Steedus]

JP did you ever work out if the short impulse decays that I was experiencing was a bug, or just how you intended it? I never really got a good answer, and as such never bought the plugin. I don't know if I ever really explained it well enough, but imagine a reverb decaying strongly for 2 or 3 seconds, and lets say at the end of those 3 seconds the reverb tail has decayed to roughly 70-80%, but then within the next 1 second it suddenly drops to 0. That's how it behaved for me.

[MrFigg]

Seemed relevant so thought I'd post. Just did a complete Windows 10 reinstall. The only program I'm running (essentially) is Reason 10. I and some others wrote describing unusable patches which threw DSP up to full. Since reinstalling and optimizing I'm up to between 3-4 blips on the most CPU intensive patches (Blessed, Enormity) with no crackles or pops and that's on 64 latency. Just goes to show .

[ckoe]

Nice sounding plugin, but the DSP Power is sooo huge, so I can't use ist in a project on my i3 Laptop. On the big i7 desktop I can use one instance.

[WongoTheSane]

Nice sounding plugin, but the DSP Power is sooo huge, so I can't use ist in a project on my i3 Laptop. On the big i7 desktop I can use one instance.

Are you sure you have HT on in the options? I can have 12 of them at the same time with an i7 6700K...

[MrFigg]

Nice sounding plugin, but the DSP Power is sooo huge, so I can't use ist in a project on my i3 Laptop. On the big i7 desktop I can use one instance.

Are you sure you have HT on in the options? I can have 12 of them at the same time with an i7 6700K...

How many can you run with the “Blessed” patch?

[WongoTheSane]

Are you sure you have HT on in the options? I can have 12 of them at the same time with an i7 6700K...

How many can you run with the “Blessed” patch?

Three of them (with the same latency as you, 64 samples, but setting it to 512 doesn't change anything). Also, I meant multi-core above, not HT, obviously. Be aware that's just a test setting with the default Europa patch and an 8 bar loop with random notes playing, duplicated three times. If it was a real song with loads of instruments/tracks, I'm pretty sure I couldn't go above one instance of "Blessed" too. The developer has said that he went all out on some of those patches and that they were meant more as an intellectual pursuit than to be used in production, though, so I wouldn't use this particular patch in a song (or at least, not several instances of it, it's already a full wall of sound by itself). When programming the device myself, I rarely use more DSP than any other "heavy" reverb.

[MrFigg]

When programming the device myself, I rarely use more DSP than any other "heavy" reverb.

Same here

[JiggeryPokery]

How many can you run with the “Blessed” patch?

not several instances of it, it's already a full wall of sound by itself).

Exactly that. I'm finding that one instance is typically more than enough when it comes to shimmer anyway; if needing it on multiple instruments it's probably better just to have one or two on a send, or via a group bus insert.

As I noted above, there are plenty of patches that aren't at all heavy, or one can reduce the number of Shimmer channels in the device and/or reduce the delay times of those channels. Often three active rows will be more than enough.

I honestly don't think it's heavy with sub-one second delay times: sure it's more intensive than a standard reverb, but it's not a standard reverb and normally shouldn't be used in quite the same way as a reverb.

But if I do any more updates I'm nuking that damn Blessed patch to hell!

[WongoTheSane]

But if I do any more updates I'm nuking that damn Blessed patch to hell!

...or just rename it "Blessed (heavy DSP test)"!

[JiggeryPokery]

So I've had a close look at a few things.

The issue with the convo not updating on selection, but having to then move to Decay knob first, will be fixed in 1.0.4, though note any change of convo wave still takes a second or two to recalculate.

In terms of DSP usage, "The Blessed" does actually use the second longest convolution waveform in the set, the 20.5 MB "120 Massive Plate". ("110 Immense" is a few bytes more!).

So I was a rather off-target in previous posts: DSP usage comes down largely to the size of the convolution selected, then by the number of active channels or the delay time, or the decay length of the convo (comparitively those are far less in typical usage (whatever that is ) ).

To help, what I've just done here is been through every convo in the device in Reason, and I've added a star-based rating to each selection on the pop-up menu. Admittedly this is a tad arbitrary: it's the number of DSP bars here at my standard ASIO in "reverb only mode", i.e., no shimmer channels active, but it should be indicative enough to be a useful guideline. So no star is little DSP usage (which is most of them from the first release), but at the lower reaches of the menu with the longer constructs I added in 1.0.3, this may be useful: the hardest on your DSP, 110 and 120, for example, are *** selections.

AnimusDSPList.PNG (19.07 KiB) Viewed 2080 times

I'm just trying to think if I can realistically fit an indicator in the actual display; it'd be small, but I'll give it a try...

... maybe this

AnimusDSPList2.PNG (24.13 KiB) Viewed 2068 times

[MrFigg]

Still one of the best REs ever

[Wobbleburger]

Still one of the best REs ever

Yep!

[WongoTheSane]

To help, what I've just done here is been through every convo in the device in Reason, and I've added a star-based rating to each selection on the pop-up menu. Admittedly this is a tad arbitrary: it's the number of DSP bars here at my standard ASIO in "reverb only mode", i.e., no shimmer channels active, but it should be indicative enough to be a useful guideline. So no star is little DSP usage (which is most of them from the first release), but at the lower reaches of the menu with the longer constructs I added in 1.0.3, this may be useful: the hardest on your DSP, 110 and 120, for example, are *** selections.

That's useful, clear and concise. Jiggery Pokery design, best design.