I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with this patch - it seems to be eating way too much CPU power (40% on my Pentium M 1.6GHz). When metro is unticked, it seems to half the CPU usage. But even 20% seems a bit too high.

What I am trying to do is crossfade between the two noise sources. As soon as the crossfade starts, filter frequency has to start going up incrementally. Is there an easier / more efficient way to achieve this?

I would be grateful for any advice / comment.

Many many thanks!

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/noise_test.pd

It must be something CPU specific. I am getting 0.5% usage (1GHz VIA)

one way to debug this would be to start removing objects until cpu usage drops suddenly.

..and then maybe file a bug report because those are all normal objects and i am also showing only less than 1% cpu usage.

I get this here from "top":

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3113 root 20 0 142m 39m 12m R 14.6 7.9 0:24.80 Xorg
3895 claude 20 0 21480 9204 4856 S 2.3 1.8 0:03.51 pd-gui
3893 claude 20 0 5032 1644 1340 S 2.0 0.3 0:01.90 pd

So, it's almost certainly the gui objects being activated so often that are causing the cpu load (pd's gui is notoriously inefficient).

Thanks for your comments!

I had a suspicion it was a graphics-related issue. I've posted earlier about my CPU hitting 100% when trying to do relatively simple things with GEM.

I'm on Windows XP and I always try to have the latest drivers for my video card. It appears that latest is not always better - out of interest I've now downgraded to the old (2004) drivers supplied by the OEM - and the same patch that was hitting 100% before is now floating around 40%! Great!

However, while the patch I attached to this thread is using less CPU, it's still around 20%. So I did a bit of investigation and it appears that a process called "wish84.exe" is responsible for that. WTF? It's using 19-20% while pd.exe itself is only using 1%, just like all of you suggested. At first I thought it was a virus, but google search results mention it in relation to Cygwin. Whatever. If I try to kill wish84, it kills pd as well. So what is it?...

Anyway, thanks for all your help. I've learnt so much at this place - my MA final project is now entirely PD-based. It's getting easier and easier to make up new things and realise concepts / ideas. Possibilities are endless indeed. You are all amazing!

Now I just need to shoot the thief (wish84.exe)

Thanks!

wish is the tcl/tk shell that hosts pd's gui - so if you kill the gui pd's engine disappears in panic

solution/workaround is to remove all non-necessary gui objects - not fun but unlikely to be fixed soon...

Wow, this is amazing ClaudiusMaximus! I don't mind replacing almost everything with non-GUI objects. That sounds like a really great workaround.
I'll do some tests / comparisons and post the results.
THANKS!

I would remove those bangs after the metros. there's no real reason why you need to see them flash every 80ms, is there?