using env~ to compute input for vu meters seems cpu intensive. i have an app using 11 stereo audio paths (7 rows mixed to one of 4 audio outputs), and i have created a pair of vu meters for each. each vu input looks like this:

[env~ 8192 4096]
|
[- 100]
|
[vu]

i have set the arguments for env~ to a larger sampling window, which helps somewhat, but this is still chewing up a lot of cpu.

i am on a windows 7 machine, and with the env~ objects in place, cpu use (according to windows task manager) ranges from 40-60%. if i simply remove the env~ objects and change nothing else in my program, cpu usage is ~10-15%.

any suggestions for a less cpu intensive way to display some sense of audio level? it does not have to be really precise, but i would like for it to be fairly responsive.

thank you!

I tried using radiobuttons for monitoring signal level (instead of vu), but that is also quite cpu intensive even with long periods for [env~]. To my surprise, it is 'cheaper' to use [scope~] from cyclone library. It does not show signal level directly but for me a scope trace is more informative and you can certainly see when signals are clipping etc.

In addition, my brother made this observation (for his Windows computer): when GUI's like [scope~] or vu are spreaded over the screen, things get much more cpu intensive than in the case where they are all confined to one smaller region.

Katja

thanks katjav for the reply. i may just have to reduce the number of [env~] -> [vu] i use in my application.

anyone else have a suggestion?

You could run [env~] through [speedlim] to make [vu] update less frequently.

I will give that a try, but I think it may be [env~] which is the cpu hog.

i also reckon it's the VU's. what i do with mine, is put a toggle next to them, so that they only output when i need them to.

ie:

[env~]
|
[- 100]
|
| [ (toggle) ]
| |
[spigot]
|
[vu]

you could even be more cpu efficient by using a switch~ to turn off the env's too.

your situation may vary, but in my experience, you rarely need to monitor every channel at once anyway.

@mod - good suggestions, thanks!