Popular Post CJH Posted March 12, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted March 12, 2018 Haven't seen a thread on Process Lasso (PL) so hoping knowledgable users can share their experiences and give some recommendations to us novice computer based music lovers. Quite a few comphiles use this program from Bitsum (available in a free or a upgrade pay Pro version--I use the free) to automatically help keep their dedicated music computer and servers responsive during high CPU use (HQPlayer, Roon, etc...). It also can be adjusted manually allowing a wide assortment of tweakability. Check out their website to see all the stuff it does. There seems to be a general belief that reducing the load on a CPU reduces noise in the computer/server and improves sound. It is also accepted by many that upsampling in PCM, DSD or PCM to DSD produces very good sound. Tough to reduce the load on your CPU when using DSP. I don't have much in the way of DSD music file so my only DSP is to upsample all my PCM to 705/768 using either JRiver or HQPlayer to good effect. It can be a heavy load on the CPU and this is where PL helps. It was recommended to me a few months back by a local audiophile with a nice sounding computer based system. I am absolutely not a computer guru, so I went at this just trying things that made sense to me for my system. Everyone's needs will be different depending on their CPU, music software and how they use it. Here is what I'm doing so far: Music and software is on a cheap HP refurb laptop with a 3720QM 2.6GHz quad core, 8GB ram, 250GB EVO860. This a low wattage processor so I get about 4 hours of quality listening using laptop battery power. Music files are on an external USB drive that I may be switching to a NAS in the near future. Connection is via wired LAN (blue Jean) into a LAN switch then on to a uRendu/IsoRegen combo to a iDSD Black. All are powered via battery+regulation. I approach this looking at CPU usage (a quad core processor will have 8 single CPUs available--dual core will have 4 CPUs), Priority Class, CPU Affinity, I/O Priority and Memory Priority: I open PL and look at what processes have the highest CPU usage percentage. Then determine if they are part of the playback music process. Examples are Music software, PL, Fidelizer, AO and the LAN process, etc. For me JRiver or HQPLayer use the most processing so I give them a Real Time Priority Class, I/O Priority High, Memory Priority 5 and CPU Affinity of 4 CPUs (0,1,2,3). PL and Fidelizer have High Priority Class, I/O Priority High, Memory Priority High and share CPU Affinity core #4, NetGear LAN has Priority Class High, I/O Priority High, Memory Priority High and CPU Affinity core #4 and all other Windows processes have Priority Class Normal, I/O Priority Normal, Memory Priority 3 and CPU Affinity core # 5, 6, 7. With this distribution of the CPUs even with upsampling to 768 the CPU usage is only 5-8%. Play with these CPU configurations to get the overall CPU usage as low as possible. Note: One thing I tried was with no upsampling/DSP. With this configuration CPU usage is much lower and I put either the JRiver of HQPLayer on only 1 core by itself. With this config the sound had the best transient response I have heard in my system. Overall though I prefer upsampling. These are my current config and I play with them off and on looking for better sound. I would very much appreciate anyone with greater experience making suggestions as well as the experiences others have had with PL. Share your thoughts. Feel free to correct my usage of terms as it should be readily apparent I am no computer guru. Thanks for reading. CJH Dem, shahed99, Bufo Bill and 1 other 4 Link to comment
Bufo Bill Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 Thanks for going into detail about your set up. I don't use this software myself (I am also a novice), but it's useful and interesting to see how others do things, so very interesting to read, thanks. Bill. Jriver, Windows 8.1, HP Pavilion G6 2215so Laptop, Dragonfly Black, Quad QCII Preamp, Quad FM 1 Radio, Quad II amp, Quad ESL Electrostatic speaker. Link to comment
seeteeyou Posted May 27, 2018 Share Posted May 27, 2018 Only 18 bucks for each lifetime license https://bitsum.com/free-pl-pro-chipcz/ Giveaway should appear a couple of times each year https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/process-lasso-9/ Link to comment
maty Posted May 28, 2018 Share Posted May 28, 2018 Weeks ago, I uploaded a capture of my PL setup with Win10 Pro 64 bits in other AC thread: My system has other optimizacions to play multimedia, very important too. OS and soft players. Link to comment
TheAttorney Posted May 28, 2018 Share Posted May 28, 2018 I use PL from a different perspective to CJH. My W10 laptop doesn't do any upsampling now (because my DAVE DAC does it better) so my CPU usage is very low. So the name of the game for me is for PL is to reduce latency, i.e. to reduce the amount of time the CPU is switching between different states, as follows: I leave all the clever PC parameter manipulation to Fidelizer Pro (because its designer knows much more about it than I do), I've also switched off hyperthreading so that there are just 2 real cores instead of 2 real + 2 virtual. Less switching. FP Pro assigns all the music processes and services to Core 0, and tries to move the non-music apps/services to Core 1 (there's a limit to how completely it can do this). And FP Pro also assigns High Priority to the designated music app (Roon i this case), but that is lost if I subsequently stop and restart the app. So I use PL to: 1. Maintain Roon at Core 0 and at High Priority whenever it restarts 2. Keep certain other processes at Core 1 (but in practice the most persistent Operating System background processes refuse to be constrained in this way, so this has limited value) 3. Most importantly, set PL to automatically go into "High Performance Mode" whenever Roon is running. This switches off all the CPU's power saving modes. So that the CPU doesn't keep switching back and forth between different power states, and so always is running at "high revs". The High Performance Mode does not noticably affect the battey consumption of my laptop, but to be on the safe side I've set it to automatically go tio normal mode whenever Roon app is stopped. Link to comment
TheAttorney Posted May 28, 2018 Share Posted May 28, 2018 I see that Maty posted at the same time as me. And that he also uses High Performance Mode. I forgot to mention that I also switch off ProBalance restraint - basically because I didn't want PL to itself be using up more CPU time than it strictly needs to Link to comment
maty Posted May 28, 2018 Share Posted May 28, 2018 PC computer with an old CPU: i5-4460 And silent PSU with low ripple at 5V (USB). Link to comment
seeteeyou Posted December 6, 2018 Share Posted December 6, 2018 Free license for today only, and updates for 30 days are included https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/process-lasso-pro-9-2/ https://bitsum.com/gotd_freebie_processlasso_v9_2018/ Link to comment
Account Closed Posted December 6, 2018 Share Posted December 6, 2018 I have used this software for years on various hardware and it is great. It is very useful even beyond audio. I highly recommend it. For a modest investment I would give it a try. Don't go overboard on optimizations and be sure to use the Performance Mode on critical processes. Link to comment
Shanepj Posted December 9, 2018 Share Posted December 9, 2018 having used process lasso for a quite a while, I found that running it in bitsum high performance mode together with selecting the program you wish to use for audio in real time. I also isolated that program so it runs in a single core mode 0 and everything else shares 2/3 with fidelizer running on core 1. I also upped the memory for my audio program. But apart from that, I’ve not dabbled any further I also know that fidelizer also runs the audio program in real time and single core mode now which must mean it’s a good thing As I only use this PC for playing audio via a multi-boot w10 pc, I haven’t found lose of other features running process lasso in that configuration hope that helps others using it in the same way Link to comment
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