Vienna Symphonic Library Forum
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  • 500MB RAM per instrument?

    I've just installed VSL Solo Strings and Vienna Ensemble today. I'm a complete novice with VSL. Sorry if this has been asked before, but I haven't found it in previous posts. Previous posts say things like "All Vienna Instruments load the first 64k into RAM the remainder is streamed directly from disc as and when required." But when I load a violin, over 500MB of real memory is used. When I add a cello, 1.1GB of real memory is used. (Apple's Activity Monitor tells me this.) The OS takes a chunk and Pro Tools takes a chunk and -- presto! -- I have run out of real memory with only two instruments loaded. At this rate I don't see how people can get any serious work done. Surely I'm doing something wrong? I have not touched any presets, matrices, or anything else. Just the delivered instruments in one instance of Vienna Ensemble. Any help appreciated.

  • I don't think you're doing anything wrong. Those of us loading more just have more memory. For example my template is a tad over 24GB and I have 32GB installed.

    I order to check things I would do the following:

    Open Vienna Instruments

    Go to the Patch assign bit of the GUI

    Click on a patch and see how much memory Vienna says it needs

    Load the patch and then compare with what it actually takes.

    DG


  • Thanks, DG. I guess that when VSL says the system requires 1GB RAM (2GB recommended) they intend that nothing as large as a string quartet can be created. Pretty useless.

  • You're probably loading presets. Try loading matrices or patches.

    M


  • last edited
    last edited

    @mosso said:

    You're probably loading presets. Try loading matrices or patches.

    M

     

    Yeah, I agree.  To give you some perspective, my system has 4 GB memory and I can almost load a complete orchestra into a sesion of Vienna Ensemble.  You only load the essential patches (articulations) needed for the piece.


  • Thanks, guys! Following your advice I've studied the delivered violin preset, then ditched it and created my own preset which contains 1 matrix of 1 row of 11 patches. It's less than half the size of the original. On to the next newbie challenge...

  • Also-check out the video RAM Management – Free Your Memory

    http://vsl.co.at/en/68/141/1524/1525/1148.vsl

    It shows how you can force the computer to drop the samples you are not using

    Beware, once dropped, those unused samples are not available and you may need to reset the whole thing to edit again.


  • rverne10, thanks for that. Unfortunately for most of my purposes it doesn't help. Occasionally I create an audio file from a finished score, and in those cases your technique can be useful. (My biggest problem at that stage seems to be CPU power, though, rather than memory.) But 90% of the time I use music software for the composition process, so I can accurately hear what I'm composing. As you can imagine, dropping all samples which haven't yet been used would be a bad idea for me, until the very end of the composing process. But I do appreciate your helpfulness!