Re: [Audacity-devel] [Audacity-quality] Imports slower on my Windows PC than on my Big Sur Mac

[Peter S. <pet...@gm...>]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 1:48 PM Steve Fiddle <ste...@gm...>
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, 13 Apr 2021 at 13:22, Peter Sampson <
> pet...@gm...> wrote:
>
>> I'm totally baffled by the fact that Imports slower on my Windows PC than
>> on my Big Sur Mac
>> in some cases (WAV in particular) significantly so.
>>
>> This is a spin-off observation from the testing I did today for Bug #2745.
>> For that I made a Macro that does
>> a) 3 imports of a one-hour MP3 audio file
>> b) 3 imports of a one-hour WAV audio file
>> c) 3 imports of a one-hour AAC audio file
>> Copy of Win Macro attached
>>
>> On W10 (seconds)
>> MP3:   18.6   16.5    16.1
>> WAV:   44.5   21.7    25.1
>> AAC:   26.7   12.9    18.2
>>
>> On Mac (seconds)
>> MP3:   11.8   12.0    12.0
>> WAV:    4.8    5.0      5.2
>> AAC:    8.7    8.7      8.8
>>
>> 1) So we see WAV at an average 30 seconds on W10 versus 5 seconds on Mac
>> 2) We see AAC at an average 14 seconds on W10 versus 8.7 seconds on Mac
>> 3) We see MP3 at an average 17 seconds on W10 versus 12 seconds on Mac
>>
>> So:
>> a)  the Mac is consistently faster on the imports
>> b) but also note that while the Mac is pretty consistent,
>>     in contrast on Win the first export of a file-type seems to always be
>> the longest
>>
>> Both these machines are pretty similar in Spec:
>> Both are 2-7GZ 8GB RAM dual-core
>> Both have 256GB SSD ( Win has 60GB free, Mac has 90GB free)
>> Both are Intel processors - Win is i7 Mac is i5
>>
>> The only difference is that the Windows PC is my primary workhorse so
>> gets more work
>> Does this make the SSD more fragmented and thus slower?
>>
>
> Are you running 32-bit Audacity on 64-bit Windows?
> Perhaps there are inefficiencies in writing to the SQLite database due to
> the app being 32-bit on 64-bit hardware (?) If that's the case, then I'd
> expect a 64-bit build of Audacity to be closer to the performance that you
> see on macOS.
>

A very good call I'm thinking Steve ...

Shows the power of 64-bit Audacity on a 64-bit Win engine.

On W10 64-bit (seconds)
MP3:   12.1   12.4    12.1
WAV:   12.3   12.2    12.3

On W10 32-bit (seconds)
MP3:   18.6   16.5    16.1
WAV:   44.5   21.7    25.1

On Mac (seconds)
MP3:   11.8   12.0    12.0
WAV:    4.8    5.0      5.2

So with a 64-bit Win build we have
a) much better consistency MP3 cf. WAV
b) no first export slower
c) but Mac is still 3 times faster at importing WAV - somewhat surprisingly
d) but 12 seconds ti Import a one-hour stereo WAV would seem more than
acceptable to me.

What this *really* tells me is that awe really should not be denying our
Windows users
with 64-bit machines *(quite possibly the majority these days)* the speed
advantages
they could get with Windows 64-bit builds).

We really should be releasing 64-bit for Windows.

*And yes I know that then there's the problem with 32-bit plug-ins ...*

Peter.



> Steve
>
>
>>
>>
>> Fortunately most of our users will not notice this as most of then work
>> on just the one
>> platform so will not see X-platform timing differences.  Plus our timings
>> for 3.0.2, 3.0.0
>> and 2.4.3 are pretty consistently within good tolerance.
>>
>>
>> If anybody can cast any light on the mystery I'd be most grateful.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Peter.
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>