New Version -
VUMeter_2.7.0Changes
- Updated the SharpGL library to enable a new render method that solves the increased CPU usage on large libraries.
- Reduced unnecessary rendering particularly during startup and skin changes when a track is not playing.
I don't know if this will fix the stutter/slowdown issues as I didn't really experience that but the CPU usage reduction with large libraries is substantial so I'm fairly confident it will.
For certain foobar skins you will notice RAM usage may fluctuate quite a lot. It depends how they are designed and the resolution of the images used to create the skin. Unfortunately it's the nature of how foobar skins are drawn. Deja Vu Compact - Fischers Lovebird gives a good example of fluctuating ram usage.
On my system this skin fluctuates between 250mb and 1gb. While it might look unsettling it's not really an issue. Here is some info on
Garbage Collection if you are curious.
I think one of the reasons the old render method was using so much CPU was due it calling garbage collection manually for every frame. This new method lets the process happen automatically like it should, hence the fluctuating ram usage. The fluctuating RAM is only and issue for certain foobar skins where most of the VUMeter window has to be redrawn every frame.
For other skin types and older foobar skins you probably won't notice anything. It will mainly be with some of the newer skins Hiccup has created because they use higher resolution images and some of the methods used to create the needle movements just take more resources. Most just require the needle to be calculated each frame but some create needle movement by having a gap in the background image that moves, these are the foobar skins that will use the most ram.
