Using Your Graphics Card To Process Plug-ins

Convolution reverbs are prime candidates for such a processor, since they require many thousands of similar calculations to be made, so it’s hardly surprising that the second audio product available in a CUDA edition is another convolution reverb, this time from LiquidSonics (www.liquidsonics.com). Their Reverberate LE is donationware and is available in both native and GPU editions, although its developers do warn that, depending on which NVidia graphics card and CPU you’re using, you may find the native version more efficient, especially when using smaller audio buffer sizes for lower latency. This is due to the extra processing overhead of ferrying blocks of data to and from the GPU. Acustica Audio’s Nebula 3 commercial effects plug-in (www.acusticaudio.net) also has optional CUDA-based optimisations for those with suitable graphics hardware. Although, strictly speaking, its effects are based on ‘Volterra kernels’, you can, in practice, consider them a form of dynamic convolution.

CUDA is already popular with game developers, and graphics and other digital content creators, but NVidia are keen to offer help to audio developers who want to explore its possibilities. They have a CUDA Zone web site (www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html) offering information, advice and downloadable toolkits. It does seem ironic that musicians are routinely advised to buy modest graphics cards because they don’t need fast 3D calculations or the associated noisy cooling fans, but the faster NVidia cards are now being used to run more audio plug-ins!

AMB Software’s Directory Report (www.file-utilities.com) looks like a deluxe version of Windows Explorer, but always shows the folder content size in addition to the usual information. However, its title bar provides lots of other options. These include name filters, so that you can, for instance, narrow down your search to WAV or MP3 files, and ‘compare’ directories, which are very useful if you think you’ve installed the same application or library in two or more locations.

You can sort the display in various ways, the most useful being by total size of folder contents. Particularly handy is the Largest files or directories option, which opens a new display showing the largest files or directories. This is great for finding out what’s eating most of your drive space! You can also search for duplicate files or directories.

In all, Directory Report is a most useful tool and has a trial version that’s fully functional for 10 days. The full version costs just £17$25.  0