Universal Audio DSP Usage | What is CPU vs DSP | Plugin Usage Explained

hey everybody welcome back to homerecordingmadeeasy.com and here on my youtube channel and in this video i want to try to clear up some confusion i've been reading some comments on some of my universal audio plug-in review videos and reading some comments and doing other plug-in shootout videos and there seems to be some confusion around the differences between your cpu your internal computer cpu and how that relates to plug-ins and how many plug-ins you can use in your session as well as what is the dsp chips and universal audio hardware can you run universal hard universal audio hardware plugins without their hardware there seems to be some confusion i've gotten several comments over the last month or so and i want to try to clear this all up and i'll use this as a reference the next time i get an email about this topic i'll just refer that person to this video so that's what we're going to look at today talk about cpu and dsp and what are the differences in some of the behind the scenes on how it all works i also have an entire podcast episode dedicated to computer specs and how it relates to cpu power and plug-ins and all that stuff you can check that out at home recording made easy.com just click on the podcast link you'll see the episode there so before we jump in if this is your first time here i want to say welcome to the home recording made easy family go out to homerecordingmadeeasy.com i want to give you a free mixing course worth 50 bucks it's right on the home page it's my gift to you just for visiting homerecordingmadeeasy.com make sure you like share subscribe all the links will be in the description box below so let's head into studio one here okay now we're talking about studio one this will this concept or this theory or whatever you want to call it is really for any daw i just happen to be using studio one cubase pro tools logic reaper doesn't matter so there are two things we're going to talk about here let's talk about cpu okay and how plugins relate to your cpu okay so the cpu is the processor your internal pro computer processor on your motherboard inside of your computer whether you're using a mac like i'm using or whether you're using a pc that's what it is it's the internal power the internal computing power of your computer okay on a mac if you want to know how fast your cpu is i would come up to about this mac and you'll see here that i'm running a 2017 imac pro my processor is a 3.2 gigahertz 8 core processor that's my cpu it's a 3.28 core okay i happen to be running 64 gigs of memory we'll talk about that maybe in another video now if you go into your control panel settings on windows you'll be able to see what kind of processor you have as well the cpu how it relates to how you record or mix and use plug-ins or virtual instruments in your daw is the faster the cpu you have the more cores that you have you will be able to run both more virtual instruments simultaneously in your session and or plug-ins we're going to talk about plug-ins today in the mixing stage okay so for example in this session here i have what 24 tracks and i put some plug-ins on here just to show you okay so the first plug-in i put across all of these tracks is a stock plug-in this is the fat channel by pre-sonus okay i put i don't know what 26 instances of this or 24 instances of this across the session so i have 24 plug-ins then i put another 24 instances of the slate digital third-party plug-in this is called the vmr okay so right now i have 48 plugins in this session they're all activated okay if i come up to my performance monitor and i view this you'll see that my perform my cpu is only running at three percent it's very very low okay i remember having a core processor in this thing so i have a fast processor lots of cores it's only taking up about three percent of the resources even if i were to play back the music and i'll turn down the main output so we don't blow each other out here even as i play back this audio it still stays at three percent okay as long as i have the plug-ins activated and turned on let me shut this off for a second if i were to close this for a minute let me shut off oh i could have done this shut off all the plug-ins and turn off the active you know i deactivated them all now you see i'm at two percent okay so some of the resources are being taken up by the application and of itself and the more plug-ins you put on the higher the cpu is going to go now i'm at three percent okay so what does that mean so that means that any native plug-in and when we talk about native plug-in we talk about stock plug-ins we talk about you go out to your favorite third-party plug-in company and you buy their plug-ins from waves ik multimedia slate digital fab filter plug-in alliance ssl apogee whomever you install the plug-in on your internal computer right hard drive on your c drive or your macintosh hd those plug-ins and this is the same for virtual instruments is running off the internal cpu in your computer so the faster the cpu the more cores that you have in general terms and i know some of the computer geeks are going to talk to me about exceptions i'm trying to do this at a beginner level in general terms the more of these plugins that you can run in your session without having any cpu spikes now not all plugins are created equal from a cpu usage point of view typically your stock plugins are going to be really well made for the daw and they're going to be built in a more the most efficient way to help you use the least amount of resources in your computer cpu as possible third-party plug-in manufacturers for the most part today have done the same thing and more times than not most of them will require very little amounts of cpu so you can put a ton of plugins on in your session however there are some exceptions to that and let me show you for example and this is not to pick on ik mail to multimedia there's lots of them like this but the ik multimedia tape machines for example if i just drop one of their tape machines on the master bus just one instance of this plug-in beautiful plug-in sounds great by the way okay and now i check my performance monitor look at what happens we're 29 percent so we went from three percent to 29 with one plug-in so if you're someone that has a lower spec computer with a slower few amount of cores like a dual core processor or an old quad core computer that's probably more than four or five years old you would have a difficult time being able to put a ton of plug-ins on in your session and you certainly couldn't put this tape machine across all your tracks look at how many resources that it takes up now if i just shut that plugin off even though it's loaded in the session as soon as i deactivate it it only goes to three percent okay keep that in mind same thing with virtual instruments if you're using a virtual instrument in your session and you're done recording with it the best thing to do to save some cpu power is to shut that plug-in off or convert it to audio the midi to audio and remove the instrument for the session so that's one example of a plug-in that can take up a lot of resources typically tape machines and the other thing is reverbs and delays high quality reverbs and delays sometimes will take up a lot of resources not all manufacturers like the slate digital reverb doesn't take up hardly any resources at all and i'll show you that and then we'll talk about dsp and we'll talk about what that is with universal audio so if i come over here to let's see slate digital and let's say i grab their reverb they're very popular reverb the verb sweets classics and let's say i just dropped that on the first kick drum track just for sake of argument here okay here's one of those so i was at three percent prior to putting this plugin on now i'm still at three percent that's a reverb okay if i put how many how many do we want to put let's say we want to put 23 more instances of this reverb let's see what happens so now i have a reverb on every channel you wouldn't normally do this but again just this demonstration i'm at seven percent so by putting those reverbs across all the tracks i went from i've doubled my cpu i'm still very i'm at eight percent very very low still but it's double because reverbs will typically have more cpu usage a great example of that is something like the waves abbey roads those the chambers those will take up quite a bit as well we're at eight percent right now if i drop a waves abby road on here this is great abbey road chambers wonderful wonderful plug-in now i'm at 30 so i went from percent to 30 percent just with this one abbey road chambers plug-in okay so you have to know and if i just shut that off watch what happens it goes back to about 10 okay so not every plug-in's created equal usually reverbs good quality reverbs and delays and sometimes tape machines in my experience will tend to have more cpu usage sometimes channel strips as well although a lot of plug-in manufacturers the channel strips are built in a way they're very cpu efficient okay so using your performance monitor and checking your cpu usage will help you as you're adding plug-ins to your session when you get up to that 80 90 cpu then you're going to start to hear some um some you can possibly hear some audio artifacts cracks popples popples pops crackles and those types of things when you're spiking up your cpu now some of that has to do with your buffer settings again i have other videos about that i just want to talk about cpu okay so keep in mind anything that you install on your computer from third-party plug-in manufacturers or stock plug-ins is going to run off the internal cpu okay now let's talk about universal audio specifically in their dsp and how that is different and how it kind of runs on your computer okay so universal audio has a line of audio interfaces called the apollo and there's several of them you want to check their fantastic interfaces with wonderful preamps they have an interface at every uh price point from about 400 bucks up to about 3 000 bucks and everything in between you can check the link in the description box below it's sweet water and you can check out all their interfaces i highly recommend them i run an apollo x6 rack mounted unit okay which is a six input interface okay inside of in they so they make audio interfaces they also make a thing called the satellite system which will be connected to your computer either via thunderbolt or via if you have an older one firewire or usb 3 if you're running pc that kind of a thing i'll put some images up on the screen okay the satellite system all that does is run plugins the audio interface the apollo not only runs the plug-ins like the satellite system but also gives you the ability to record microphones and guitars and those kinds of things like what i'm doing here with this mic this mic is going right into my universal audio apollo inside of each one of those units there is what they call dsp chips think of them as the cpu of the universal audio hardware okay the dsp chips is what only universal audio plug-ins run off of the hardware's dsp chip so you could think of the dsp kind of like your cpu where we talked about cpu you have your cores 2 core 4 core 8 core 10 core 12 core processors think of the dsp chips similarly in that they sell a single they call this universal losses single which has one dsp chip they have or not single it's a solo they have a duo which is two dsp chips right double the single right they have a quad which is four dsp chips and they have an octo which is eight dsp chips think of that as going from a single core cpu processor to a dual-core processor to a quad-core processor to like what i have is an eight-core processor which would be the the same comparison to an octo i know it's not exactly the same but stay with me okay so what happens is universal audio makes not only the interfaces but they also make a line of plugins okay you can only buy them from their website or from now sweetwater.com you can buy universal audio plugins as well they're the only other retailer you can buy plug-ins from you can only outside of sweetwater you can only buy universal audio plug-ins at the universal audio website when you read when you buy one of your apollo interfaces or your satellite systems you register it with universal audio so they have a record and you registered your interface and that opens up the door to you being able to use the plugins that are included with your particular interface because they give you a bundle of plugins as well as the ability to buy additional plugins okay and they have a performance monitor as well let me show it to you it's called the uad i know it's a little tiny here i'll try to highlight it or zoom up it's called the this right here dsp okay if i click on this button here you click on the uad to button and you click on system info and here is your system info for the hardware that you have on your system i happen to have an apollo as i said here okay the apollo 6 has four dsp chips in it one two three four i or excuse me six five six six dsp chips in the x6 it's got six dsp chips in it i also have an octo which has four eight dsp chips so i have in when you daisy chain these two units together which is what i've done with the thunderbolt 3 cable i in essence have what eight plus six 14 dsp chips so i guess you could kind of think of it as a 14 core processor if you wanted to kind of bring it back to the cpu analogy but i have 14 dsp chips that are only used to run universal audio plug-ins okay it's completely a separate system from your internal cpu no matter how many native plug-ins from all these other third-party plug-in manufacturers you put in your system it does nothing to your dsp no matter how many universal audio plug-ins you put on in that same session that does not tax your internal cpu only the dsp right now if you look at this you'll see that i'm using where was it here uh about seven percent of my total dsp out of the 14 ships if you will are being used you say well what seven i don't see any plugins in your session i'm using some universal audio plug-ins on this microphone right now as my voice-over mic in their included console software you could see my vocals right here this is this is the piece of software that sits between your interface your microphone and your daw this sits between it this is the power of universal audio stuff for later videos we'll talk about it but right now i'm running my vocals through a neve 1073 okay i'm also running it oops sorry writing it through a universal audio 1176 compressor you can see it working there i'm then running it through a cambridge eq to take some of the mids out of my voice and then i'm running it through a de-esser as well okay so i'm running one two three four universal audio plug-ins in this console software okay let me minimize that that is making up the seven percent of the total dsp that i have there's some i've had people ask me during live streams and stuff or they're under the impression some folks are under the impression that you can buy universal audio plug-ins and run them in your daw if you do not have either an apollo interface or a satellite system a thunderbolt satellite or one of the satellite pcie cards for um for pcs that is completely untrue as of the recording of this video if you're watching this five years from now maybe universal audio has changed something has developed some new types of products and plugins but as of the recording of this video in 2021 march 2021 the only way you could run and purchase universal audio plugins is if you have either an apollo a satellite or both okay you cannot run them on your internal cpu cannot okay does that make sense for everybody i hope that makes sense so here's where you'll see your two systems let me close this now again we're at seven percent right now so let me just show you what happens just like with this with the internal um cpu if i take a bunch of plug-ins and let's say drop it across all of these tracks let me go ahead and put a bunch of channel strips okay here's the api vision channel strip wonderful plug-in okay so i put how many of these oop didn't get them all let me put all 24 on so here's 24 api channel strips across my entire mix let's look at our internal cpu one more time now remember we were at what eight or ten percent before i just put these plug-ins on we're still at only ten percent why because these api vision channel strips have nothing to do with your internal cpu and that's the confusion i see in the comments all the time those plugins run here now look at my dsp i went from 7 to 49 because i just put 24 api vision channel strips so again out of the 14 dsp chips between my universal audio apollo interface and my octo satellite 2 i am using now roughly half of my dsp that's available to me channel strips will typically take up more dsp now if i were to shut all of those dsp chips if i were to shut those plug-ins off again not take them out of the min not take them off just shut the power buttons off and now i go back i'm back to seven percent so you can have them on the session and deactivate them and reserve some dsp but if i turn them all back on oops and i were to look at the at 49 again okay so again tape machines for universal audio reverbs and delays channel strips will take up a lot of cpu things like an 1176 compressor and la2a those types of things will take up far less dsp just like your your tape machines and your abbey road reverb take up more cpu on your internal computer well it's the same kind of thing for the dsp now the thing about universal audio that's great outside of they make great plug-ins they do and their interfaces are great but why this is powerful if you're in if you're into using lots of different plugins and you want to reserve your computer's internal cpu by running universal audio hardware and running their plugins it takes this 49 it has nothing to do with your computer's internal cpu okay nothing it's a two separate things okay so that means you have way more processing power to use more plug-ins but you can only use universal audio plug-ins with the universal audio hardware you can't use plug-in alliance plug-ins on the dsp chips okay i hope that makes sense i hope that was clear because some people get confused about that okay so that's how it kind of works now with universal audio also you can daisy chain things together like i said i have an apollo and i have a satellite octo that gives me a total of 14 dsp chips because i daisy chained them together so universal audio sees it as one big system it automatically depending on how many plugins you have on it'll automatically you don't have to do this it will spread the it'll spread the load of those plugins across the dsp chips on its own you don't have to do that it just shows you here by me putting on all those channel strips you can see how much of the dsp i'm using on the on the different chips and how many plugins are actually running okay you can see it here okay which is pretty handy to know i believe at the recording of this video you can daisy chain up to six universal audio devices they get six might be more they're changing the technology all the time and improving you can go out to their website and check out for the latest but the latest i know it's six so what does that mean if the highest one they make is an octo which is eight chips you can theoretically daisy chain six of those eight chip boxes together which would give you 48 right 6 times 8 48 dsp chips i only have 14 right so that would what triple quadruple the system so you can have a massive universal audio system if you wanted to yes it's pricey but just trying to show you what the possibilities are okay so you want more dsp power for your universal audio rig all you have to do is buy a hot um another box and daisy chain it together okay and you don't have to daisy chain an octo to an octo you can daisy chain a duo to an octo or a quad to a solo right you could do it like that doesn't have to be the same it could be any combination of them which makes it really convenient okay so i hope that clears up this topic because again i i've gotten this question quite a bit it's come up in my live streams quite a bit where people are confused between cpu and dsp completely separate from each other universal audio plug-ins run only on the dsp right not the cpu you cannot run universal audio plug-ins without their hardware and the dsp chips and the native plug-ins native meaning the plug-ins that are installed on your internal computer's hard drive is what taxes your internal cpu you can't offload that to the dsp chips they don't cross-mingle right at least as of 2021 who knows what will happen in the future okay so let me know in the comments below is that clear is there any more questions around this topic i'd be glad to do a follow-up video if i need to if you want to learn more about universal audio and all the things they have to offer you can either leave a comment and ask a question below i'm pretty well versed in it i've been using universal audio for 15 years you can click the link in the description box which is an affiliate link to sweetwater and you can check out their whole line of universal audio products they have everything that they make and their wonderful service and let me know if you use universal audio what do you use what what what kind of system do you have what are your favorite plugins if you don't use universal audio and you're just using native plugins that's totally fine too do you have any issues with your cpu um and you know what what do you think there and like i said again go out to the podcast out on the website at homerecordingmadeeasy.com because i have an entire episode dedicated to well if you're gonna do i need to upgrade my computer and what specs should you be considering when upgrading a computer i did a whole podcast episode on that to clear up some of those questions as well so again thank you so much again for joining me here at home recording homerecordingmadeeasy.com if you have not done so already go to homerecordingmadeeasy.com get your free mixing course it's a 50 value absolutely free check it out let me know what you think of it let me know below about what your uh plug-in thing is as i said a few seconds ago and uh until the next video i've been dave with homerecordingmadeeasy.com and i will see you in the next video take care everybody

Channel: Home Recording Made Easy

Views: 6,200

Keywords: david vignola, home recording made easy, homerecordingmadeeasy, presonus studio one, studio one, studio one 4, studio one 4.6, universal audio dsp usage, audio plugins CPU usage, computer cpu explained, universal audio, audio interface, universal audio dsp

Id: lvLgTlQirrw

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021