[Ardour-Users] GUI toolkit support

[jonetsu]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 20:29:59 +0100
Robin Gareus <robin at gareus.org> wrote:

> On 11/16/2018 08:22 PM, jonetsu wrote:
>> At the moment each plugin is a distinct linvst process, which
>> prevents them from communicating between each other (very minor
>> drawback).  

> Try that with 64 tracks, 2-3 plugins (Compressor, EQ) per track and
> the cost of context switches will become obvious.  It's far from
> minor, even on modern CPUs.

Fortunately, in the Ardour/Mixbus(32C) family the compressors and EQs
per track are already built-in.

So that leaves the processing power for other, specialized, plugins.
Maybe a special compressor is needed.  Or a special EQ.  Or of course,
effects of all kinds.

And also, if 64 tracks with 2-3 plugins is what constitutes a
processing challenge, then that leaves a lot of room for other uses.
So far at the creation stage, which is done in Bitwig (all mixing is
done in Mixbus32C) I've ran perhaps 35 tracks with maybe 20 of then
being soft synths (both Linux native and linvst) and others being audio
tracks with some having plugins (also both Linux and linvst).  All of
them running in the default config of what Bitwig calls 'independent
plug-in host process for each plugin'.  On a i5 3.2GHz with 16G RAM.

In fact, the only time there was a processing problem in audio,
and related to DSP processing, was when I had one x42 native Linux 1/3
octave spectrum analyzer on each of the some 45 tracks in Mixbus32C :)

Cheers.