live solo improv: ahoy super8

andy_tadzio - 1 -- [6:06]
andy_tadzio - 2 -- [3:44]
andy_tadzio - 3 -- [2:57]
andy_tadzio - 4 -- [3:08]
andy_tadzio - 5 -- [5:09]
andy_tadzio - 6 -- [6:46]
andy_tadzio - 7 -- [3:14]
andy_tadzio - 8 -- [3:02]
andy_tadzio - 9 -- [8:09]
andy_tadzio - 10 -- [4:24]
andy_tadzio - 11 -- [2:59]
andy_tadzio - 12 -- [3:39]

war stars

Decanted Youth - 1 - Rest Assured, I'm Home -- [11:38]
Decanted Youth - 2 -- [11:32]
Decanted Youth - 3 -- [7:14]
Decanted Youth - 4 -- [11:29]
Decanted Youth - 5 - Nowhere to Go -- [16:14]
Decanted Youth - 6 - Church and State -- [14:27]
Decanted Youth - 7 -- [17:51]
Decanted Youth - 8 - Andy Tributes Prince? -- [2:42]
Decanted Youth - 9 -- [14:37]

Not Vampires - 1 -- [8:17]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [10:46]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [10:41]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [4:35]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [7:23]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [14:19]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [11:36]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [11:34]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [7:35]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [3:48]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [4:31]
Not Vampires - 12 -- [2:53]
Not Vampires - 13 -- [8:54]

andre_cory - 1 -- [12:53]
andre_cory - 2 -- [5:48]
andre_cory - 3 -- [7:50]
andre_cory - 4 -- [7:07]
andre_cory - 5 -- [4:27]
andre_cory - 6 -- [5:48]
andre_cory - 7 -- [16:52]
andre_cory - 8 -- [22:57]
andre_cory - 9 -- [4:16]

Decanted Youth - 1 -- [3:18]
Decanted Youth - 2 -- [5:00]
Decanted Youth - 3 -- [2:49]
Decanted Youth - 4 -- [13:50]
Decanted Youth - 5 -- [10:48]
Decanted Youth - 6 - Birth of Insecurity -- [10:07]
Decanted Youth - 7 -- [9:47]
Decanted Youth - 8 -- [29:14]
Decanted Youth - 9 -- [9:13]
Decanted Youth - 10 -- [15:09]
Decanted Youth - 11 - I Lay Me Down -- [3:13]
Decanted Youth - 12 - Same Song -- [5:31]
Decanted Youth - 13 -- [9:39]
Decanted Youth - 14 - Infamous but Never Named -- [2:31]

cory_andre_anette - 1 -- [7:04]
cory_andre_anette - 2 -- [9:53]
cory_andre_anette - 3 -- [4:11]
cory_andre_anette - 4 -- [5:35]
cory_andre_anette - 5 -- [5:34]
cory_andre_anette - 6 -- [3:58]
cory_andre_anette - 7 -- [4:42]
cory_andre_anette - 8 -- [4:41]
cory_andre_anette - 9 -- [4:21]
cory_andre_anette - 10 -- [6:12]
cory_andre_anette - 11 -- [17:32]

Not Vampires - 1 -- [10:45]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [11:04]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [3:27]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [9:49]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [13:55]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [9:25]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [7:30]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [6:16]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [9:02]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [6:25]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [20:21]

Not Vampires - 1 -- [2:31]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [7:09]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [3:04]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [6:17]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [7:08]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [6:51]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [6:20]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [8:30]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [8:02]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [7:11]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [4:00]
Not Vampires - 12 -- [5:37]
Not Vampires - 13 -- [6:25]
Not Vampires - 14 -- [6:49]
Not Vampires - 15 -- [6:18]

andre - 1 -- [8:49]
andre - 2 -- [19:34]
andre - 3 -- [5:58]
andre - 4 -- [8:07]
andre - 5 -- [7:06]
cory - 1 -- [23:24]
cory - 2 -- [11:05]
cory - 3 -- [10:30]

foreign host

Decanted Youth - 1 - A Quiet Place To Rest Your Eyes -- [9:18]
Decanted Youth - 2 - (Before Future Starts Slow) -- [9:28]
Decanted Youth - 3 - Awakenings -- [18:55]
Decanted Youth - 4 - Give It Time -- [8:38]
Decanted Youth - 5 -- [6:20]
Decanted Youth - 6 -- [4:01]
Decanted Youth - 7 -- [6:36]
Decanted Youth - 8 -- [5:38]
Decanted Youth - 9 -- [4:00]
Decanted Youth - 10 -- [6:12]
Decanted Youth - 11 -- [8:19]
Decanted Youth - 12 - More Organ (Lessons), Perhaps? -- [7:38]
Decanted Youth - 13 -- [16:01]
Decanted Youth - 14 -- [9:40]
Decanted Youth - 15 -- [13:07]
Decanted Youth - 16 -- [6:32]

cory_andre - 1 -- [2:55]
cory_andre - 2 -- [8:02]
cory_andre - 3 -- [10:18]
cory_andre - 4 -- [7:39]
cory_andre - 5 -- [24:42]
cory_andre - 6 -- [4:44]
cory_andre - 7 -- [3:07]
cory_andre - 8 -- [7:22]
cory_andre - 9 -- [12:56]
cory_andre - 10 -- [11:09]
cory_andre - 11 -- [8:19]
cory_andre - 12 -- [6:03]

Not Vampires - 1 -- [12:03]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [7:51]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [7:55]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [17:02]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [4:53]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [4:38]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [9:20]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [6:58]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [2:43]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [7:19]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [5:32]
Not Vampires - 12 -- [6:52]
Not Vampires - 13 -- [11:35]
Not Vampires - 14 -- [7:24]

Decanted Youth - 1 - When the World is Quiet -- [4:42]
Decanted Youth - 2 - Don't Drive over the Line -- [7:06]
Decanted Youth - 3 - Dusk -- [7:19]
Decanted Youth - 4 - Sweeter -- [5:19]
Decanted Youth - 5 - Moonwalk -- [9:20]
Decanted Youth - 6 - Navigate Without Me -- [8:55]
Decanted Youth - 7 - Nowhere to Go -- [10:16]
Decanted Youth - 8 - Sea Legs on Dry Land -- [9:35]
Decanted Youth - 9 - Tales of Elsewhere -- [10:04]
Decanted Youth - 10 - Sketching -- [7:45]
Decanted Youth - 11 - Groove till Slumber -- [4:43]

cory_andre_anette_andy - 1 -- [4:44]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 2 -- [5:43]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 3 -- [5:23]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 4 -- [6:17]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 5 -- [4:37]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 6 -- [4:12]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 7 -- [7:21]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 8 -- [7:16]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 9 -- [4:43]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 10 -- [4:45]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 11 -- [6:10]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 12 -- [13:34]
cory_andre_anette_andy - 13 -- [10:59]

Not Vampires - 1 -- [4:45]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [13:53]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [3:31]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [2:44]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [13:02]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [3:11]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [10:43]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [12:26]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [14:21]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [7:50]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [14:33]
Not Vampires - 12 -- [18:02]

seasonal mess

snow and teak

cory_andy - 1 -- [3:52]
cory_andy - 2 -- [13:00]
cory_andy - 3 -- [12:21]
cory_andy - 4 -- [3:38]
cory_andy - 5 -- [17:50]
cory_andy - 6 -- [18:42]
cory_andy - 7 -- [8:38]
cory_andy - 8 -- [6:35]
cory_andy - 9 -- [5:05]
cory_andy - 10 -- [12:05]
cory_andy - 11 -- [17:58]

Decanted Youth - 1 - Beginnings of Sandman -- [7:08]
Decanted Youth - 2 - Waking Up -- [7:21]
Decanted Youth - 3 - Sandman Resuscitated -- [11:18]
Decanted Youth - 4 - Niente -- [4:08]
Decanted Youth - 5 - Sleep Under Water -- [11:52]
Decanted Youth - 6 - Meanderings -- [11:37]
Decanted Youth - 7 - There's a Point Where It Blends -- [5:57]
Decanted Youth - 8 - Onwards -- [7:28]
Decanted Youth - 9 - Birth of Disappear -- [9:24]
Decanted Youth - 10 - Last Light -- [8:46]
Decanted Youth - 11 - We Will Not Let You Down -- [11:28]
Decanted Youth - 12 - There's a Point Where It Bends -- [12:17]
Decanted Youth - 13 - The Beginnings of Spring -- [7:10]
Decanted Youth - 14 - Break from the Ivories -- [6:31]
Decanted Youth - 15 - Don't Be Snappy -- [9:02]

cory_andre - 1 -- [6:38]
cory_andre - 2 -- [7:59]
cory_andre - 3 -- [4:51]
cory_andre - 4 -- [4:00]
cory_andre - 5 -- [13:15]
cory_andre - 6 -- [13:04]
cory_andre - 7 -- [8:50]
cory_andre - 8 -- [5:21]
cory_andre - 9 -- [4:43]
cory_andre - 10 -- [8:27]
cory_andre - 11 -- [7:03]

no more of the same

what the heck huh

Not Vampires - 1 -- [6:55]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [2:51]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [7:00]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [5:39]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [5:31]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [5:54]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [18:06]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [9:04]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [9:56]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [12:51]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [6:18]
Not Vampires - 12 -- [12:34]
Not Vampires - 13 -- [5:47]

cory_anette_andre - 1 -- [3:45]
cory_anette_andre - 2 -- [7:21]
cory_anette_andre - 3 -- [6:02]
cory_anette_andre - 4 -- [5:24]
cory_anette_andre - 5 -- [4:51]
cory_anette_andre - 6 -- [4:24]
cory_anette_andre - 7 -- [5:13]
cory_anette_andre - 8 -- [2:39]
cory_anette_andre - 9 -- [2:37]
cory_anette_andre - 10 -- [4:44]
cory_anette_andre - 11 -- [5:03]
cory_anette_andre - 12 -- [3:51]
cory_anette_andre - 13 -- [4:31]
cory_anette_andre - 14 -- [8:17]
cory_anette_andre - 15 -- [5:12]
cory_anette_andre - 16 -- [6:21]

no party affiliation

paint pain pant

Comment...

1 Comment

After reading an article on hacker news about distrokid.com, I realized I could put all of my many hundreds of hours of recorded music on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, etc etc etc. For $20/year. I wouldn't expect to earn any money whatsoever for my recordings, but it would be entertaining.

So, as a result, step 1 of this process is complete -- which is to say that I put together an album from many of my recent Super8/REAPER-produced recordings. 18 of them, to be exact, totalling about 45 minutes of music, with words. Every song has words. As a result, I titled this album "Songs with Words".

This album, which is incredible in the 2017 sense only, is available via Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, probably others too (search for my name in the respective service) -- and of course it is available for free in streamable/downloadable form via music.1014.org, or here:

• 01_hypertheticals
• 02_somewhere_else
• 03_dont_tell_me
• 04_a_simple_phone_call
• 05_come_over
• 06_on_the_level
• 07_dark_sky
• 08_on_tv
• 09_across_the_way
• 10_just_getting_started
• 11_walk_down_the_road
• 12_what_you_wanted
• 13_not_for_nothing
• 14_the_squeeze
• 15_in_the_rain
• 16_monster_with_your_name_on_it
• 17_back_of_mine
• 18_free_monkey

More albums will probably soon follow, one or two volumes of instrumentals will be next.

Recordings:

cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 1 -- [3:12]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 2 -- [4:01]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 3 -- [5:43]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 4 -- [6:39]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 5 -- [4:05]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 6 -- [5:19]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 7 -- [4:34]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 8 -- [5:16]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 9 -- [5:35]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 10 -- [4:42]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 11 -- [3:13]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 12 -- [5:21]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 13 -- [5:01]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 14 -- [2:59]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 15 -- [4:09]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 16 -- [6:17]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 17 -- [7:37]
cory_andre_anette_aubrey - 18 -- [13:45]

1 Comment

cory_andy - 1 -- [5:38]
cory_andy - 2 -- [21:25]
cory_andy - 3 -- [5:10]
cory_andy - 4 -- [16:38]
cory_andy - 5 -- [9:29]
cory_andy - 6 -- [23:14]
cory_andy - 7 -- [13:14]
cory_andy - 8 -- [7:16]
cory_andy - 9 -- [8:34]
cory_andy - 10 -- [5:59]
cory_andy - 11 -- [9:25]
cory_andy - 12 -- [15:27]

Not Vampires - 1 -- [6:45]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [7:49]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [9:15]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [5:19]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [5:40]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [8:59]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [3:55]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [3:31]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [7:18]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [5:28]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [17:53]
Not Vampires - 12 -- [7:59]

coryanetteandre - 1 -- [3:29]
coryanetteandre - 2 -- [4:40]
coryanetteandre - 3 -- [3:59]
coryanetteandre - 4 -- [4:08]
coryanetteandre - 5 -- [6:40]
coryanetteandre - 6 -- [5:19]
coryanetteandre - 7 -- [4:52]
coryanetteandre - 8 -- [5:58]
coryanetteandre - 9 -- [3:49]
coryanetteandre - 10 -- [4:54]
coryanetteandre - 11 -- [5:29]
coryanetteandre - 12 -- [4:07]
coryanetteandre - 13 -- [5:52]
coryanetteandre - 14 -- [5:26]
coryanetteandre - 15 -- [3:39]
coryanetteandre - 16 -- [6:54]
coryanetteandre - 17 -- [8:47]
no sympathy
not yours to give

Not Vampires - 1 -- [7:29]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [5:58]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [11:49]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [14:07]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [7:51]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [7:23]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [3:42]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [15:40]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [8:21]
Not Vampires - 10 -- [10:53]
Not Vampires - 11 -- [10:11]
Not Vampires - 12 -- [5:05]
Not Vampires - 13 -- [8:04]
Not Vampires - 14 -- [11:15]

bathprobes

andredoug - 1 -- [15:15]
andredoug - 2 -- [12:19]
andredoug - 3 -- [11:36]
andredoug - 4 -- [19:47]

Not Vampires - 1 -- [5:57]
Not Vampires - 2 -- [12:24]
Not Vampires - 3 -- [7:03]
Not Vampires - 4 -- [7:00]
Not Vampires - 5 -- [9:36]
Not Vampires - 6 -- [19:24]
Not Vampires - 7 -- [12:57]
Not Vampires - 8 -- [13:06]
Not Vampires - 9 -- [21:44]

TL;DR: Retina iMac (4k/5k) owners can greatly improve the graphics performance of many applications (including REAPER) by setting the color profile (in System Preferences, Displays, Color tab) to "Generic RGB" or "Adobe RGB." (and restarting REAPER and/or other applications being tested)

I previously wrote in mid-2014 about the state of blitting bitmaps to screen on modern OS X (now macOS) versions. Since then, Apple has released new hardware (including Retina iMacs) and a couple of new macOS versions.

Much of that article is still useful today, but I made a mistake in the second update:

OK, if you provide a bitmap that is twice the size of the drawing rect, you can avoid argb32_image_mark_RGBXX, and get the Retina display to update in about 5-7ms, which is a good improvement (but by no means impressive, given how powerful this machine is). I made a very simple software scaler (that turns each pixel into 4), and it uses very little CPU.

While this was helpful (and did decrease the amount of time spent blitting), it was wrong in that the reason for the faster blit was that the system was parallelizing the blit with multiple cores. So, it was faster, but it also used more CPU (and was generally wasteful).

I discovered this because I've been researching how to improve REAPER's graphic performance on the iMac 5k in particular, so I started benchmarking. This time around, I figured I should measure how many screen pixels are updated and divide that by how long it takes. Some results, based on my memory (I'm not going to rerun them for this article, laziness).

Initial version (REAPER 5.32 state, using the retina hack described above, public WDL as of today):

• old C2D iMac, 10.6: 350MPix/sec
• mid-2012 RMBP 15", 10.12, Thunderbolt display (non-retina): 1500MPix/sec
• mid-2012 RMBP 15", 10.12, built-in display (retina): 800MPix/sec
• late-2015 Retina iMac 5k, 10.12: 192MPix/sec

The one that really jumped out at me was the Retina iMac 5k -- it's a quarter of the speed of the RMBP! WTF. We'll get to that later.

After I realized the hack above was actually doing more work (thank you, Xcode instrumentation), I did some more experiments, avoiding the hack, and found that in the newer SDKs there are kCGImageByteOrderXYZ flags (I don't believe it was in previous SDKs), and found that these alised to KCGBitmapByteOrderXYZ, and that when using kCGBitmapByteOrder32Host with the pixel format for CGImageCreate()/etc, it would speed things up. With retina hack removed:

• mid-2012 RMBP 15", 10.12, built-in display (retina): 300MPix/sec
• late-2015 Retina iMac 5k, 10.12: 152MPix/sec

With retina hack removed and byte order set to host:

• old C2D iMac, 10.6: 350MPix/sec
• mid-2012 RMBP 15", 10.12, Thunderbolt display (non-retina): 1500MPix/sec
• mid-2012 RMBP 15", 10.12, built-in display (retina): 720MPix/sec
• late-2015 Retina iMac 5k, 10.12: 200MPix/sec

The non-retina displays might have changed slightly, but it was insignificant. So, by setting the byte order to native, we get the Retina MBP close to the level of performance of the hack, which isn't great but is serviceable, and at least the CPU use is decreased. This also has the benefit (drawback?) of making the byte-order of pixels the same on macOS/Intel and win32, which will take some more attention (and a lot of testing).

From profiling and looking at the code, this blit performance could easily be improved by Apple -- the inner loop where most time is being spent does a lot more than it needs to. Come on Apple, make us happy. Details offered on request.

Of course, this really doesn't do anything for the iMac 5k -- 200MPix/sec is *TERRIBLE*. The full screen is 15 megapixels, so at most that gets you around 13fps, and that's at 100% CPU use. After some more profiling, I found that the function chewing the most CPU ended in "64". Then it hit me -- was this display running in 16 bits per channel? A quick google search later, it was clear: the Retina iMacs have 10-bit displays, and you can run them in 10 bits per channel, which means 64 bits per pixel. macOS is converting all of our pixels to 64 bits per pixel (I should also mention that it seems to be doing a very slow job of it). Luckily, changing the color profile (in system preferences, displays) to "Generic RGB" or similar disables this, and it gets the ~800MPix/sec level of performance similar to the RMBP, which is at least tolerable.

Sorry for the long wordy mess above, I'm posting it here so that google finds it and anybody looking into why their software is slow on macOS 10.11 or 10.12 on retina imacs have some explanation.

Also please please please Apple optimize CGContextDrawImage()! I'm drawing an image with no alpha channel and no interpolation and no blend mode and the inner loop is checking each pixel to see if the alpha is 255? I mean wtf. You can do better. Hell, you've done way better. All that "new" Retina code needs optimizing!

Update a few hours later:
Fixing various issues with the updated byte-ordering, CoreText produces quite different output for CGBitmapContexts created with different byte orderings:

Hmph! Not sure which one is "correct" there... hmm... If you use kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst for the CGBitmapContext rather than kCGImageAlphaNoneFirst, then it looks closer to the original, maybe. ?

Also other caveat: NSBitmapImageRep can't seem to deal with the ARGB format either, so if you use that you need to manually bswap the pixels...

Update (2019): SolvedWorked around most of this issue by using Metal, read here.

4 Comments