Wacup in IDLE uses up performance

[Zimond]

When ever I have wacup running but not playing anything it draws a hefty amount of performance of the system. I was just looking at my mouse and wondered why my 144hz monitor looked like it was running on 60hz. Once I closed Wacup everything was fine.

[Eris Lund]

We need some details of your WACUP setup like what Skin you used e.g. and any other actions that might help figure out what's going on

[Zimond]

OK I try to give more information:

(Intel 13th gen, 3080rtx, Windows 10)

I am using the classic modern skin.
I tried only to load single mp3 files and no playlists and also no video game music file like sids.

It is not like Wacup is using the whole CPU, in fact it is using about 2% in Taskmanager but there seems to be something locking the system for a tiny amount of time but this seems to be stacking up over time.

I am working with Delphi and noticed that certain things hold up.. like resetting my application and when I close Wacup this hold up immediatly goes away. As mentioned I can see these little hold ups with my mouse cursor.

You know when you draw circles with your mouse that you see a path of the mouse icon? When I open Wacup I can immediatly see holes in this circle. And once closed the holes are gone. I tried other things including a CPU-Z stress test or running a highend game in the background. And none of these things have the same effect. The system reaction (and cursor which I just mentioned since it illustrates it) stays smooth.

Is Wacup maybe polling some system data non stop? Like drives attached or sound devices connected?

[dro]

What happens if you use the base classic skin? Most likely it's something about the re-used modern skin engine plug-in & how it copes with higher than 60fps displays (not something I can currently try out myself).

[Zimond]

Huh, yeah that was it! And CPU usage went from 3% to 0.1%

I am using a 144hz main screen with a 60hz side screen.
Thanks for the help.

[dro]

At least the ui code I've got direct control over seems to be working ok based on your numbers.

Something else you could try out when a modern skin is being used is to go to preferences -> skins -> modern skins -> general tab -> try using either the 30fps or 15fps option in the settings block at the bottom of that preference page tab. It'll make some aspects of the modern skin feel a laggy but unless you're really looking for it you might not notice it & if that does help to reduce whatever conflict is going on for your setup then I think it seems to point towards a painting related issue (am wondering if it's the way the skin updates its main vis area).

[Zimond]

OK, I think I found something. The FPS Setting didnt help. However I just tested disabling the "Desktop Alpha Blending" option and not only was the performance instantly the same as without a modern skin (0.1% cpu) but it also revealed the problem. The main window (see attachment) is ultra long stretching over the desktop bottom. I tried deleting the winamp.ini but that didnt change it.

This also explains to me why I cannot dock other windows to the bottom of wacup when the classic modern skin is used.

[dro]

winamp.ini isn't used to store the modern skin settings, they mainly go into the studio.xnf (I could do with a copy of that file if possible please) & if the WMC skin main window has gotten into that state then it trying to potentially fill so much of the screen many times a second would likely explain the high cpu load & not being able to dock windows to it since the bottom is however far off the screen bottom.

It's not something I'm seeing from a quick re-test but iirc it's been reported a few times over the years along with happening to some of the other modern skins due to the gen_ff plug-in randomly screwing up yet I've still to start on trying to make my own replacement plug-in.