I was hoping the head tracker would reduce my CPU use under NX, but it’s not.
I’m observing a resource leak related to the head tracker app in Waves NX. This is happening on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 on two different computers, under both Reaper and Audirvana VST hosts.
With the tracker app running, it indirectly makes increasing memory and CPU usage indirectly, through the of the Device Association Service ('Service Host: Device Association Service). It does so somewhat gradually over time, but ending up at 60+% before crashing the PC through overheating.
It does this whether the tracker, camera, or both are being used for tracking. It makes no difference whether the camera is turned on or off. It appears to be in the identification routine for trackers, which cannot be switched off in the app. The only way of stopping the resource usage, outside of closing the tracking app, is to turn off Bluetooth, presumably so that all the requests fail in a non-resource-hungry way to fall back on camera tracking alone. (This means I can’t use my Bluetooth mouse.) Turning ‘automatic connect’ on or off doesn’t make a difference. Being connected to or not connected to a head tracker makes no difference.
I presume there is some real or perceived issue with using the Windows Bluetooth connection service that Waves is working around by implementing its own, using extremely aggressive polling that at least on some Bluetooth chipsets is so (CPU) expensive it becomes a DOS attack. It’s made the head tracker effectively unusable without having to close the tracking app every twenty or so minutes.
Has this issue been identified and is it being worked on?
Tracker firmware is 1.30v1.13; Waves Central is 13.3.2. All NX plugins (Abbey Road, Nx Virtual Studio Collection) are 14.0.0.
I haven’t been using it long, so can’t comment on whether the issue existed in previous versions.