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  • VE Pro & Logic 9 - slow EXS24 load times

    My setup is running great so far.  Mac Pro (17 Gig Ram, 10.6.3) has 3 VE Pros behind Logic 9 running Kontakt 4's with Lass and other things, plus Omnisphere and Stylus RMX.  Slave Mac G5 is running 2 VE Pros with all of the Vienna Special Edition Extended (or plus). 

    In addition, Logic on the host is running 6 Plays with EW Sym Orch and various things, plus 4 EXS24 samplers, a Sculpture, and one Space Designer verb.  There is nothing recorded yet in MIDI or automation, but there is a 20 min movie, and 2 stereo audio tracks:  Movie sound with temp music, Movie sound with no music.

    What I'm noticing is really slow load times if I change a patch in an EXS.  Like switching from one acoustic piano to another.  I get the spinning beach ball for quite a while (once it was about 10 minutes, but usually around 5).  My Mac Pro shows 6 Gig RAM in use with 11 Gig free.  The four cores in the Mac Pro are hovering around 50% at rest.  The Logic meters actually show less activity than that with 2 of the cores at zero, one at about 25 %, and the last one at about 15%.

    Not a big deal, just wondered if this was normal for a rig like mine.  Gives me a chance to get coffee...


  • No, those load times are not right. And if by "acoustic piano" you mean the patches that come with Logic, then the load is really not right, because those patches just aren't that big. 

    This doesn't sound like a load or CPU matter as much as a seek issue. EXS may be looking for something and not remembering where it was. If it was loading, you should get a load progress bar. The beachball usually means it's parsing commands (or trying to parse). As your set-up is elaborate already, might you consider EXS Manager? That can re-link the EXS files to their appropriate samples. It's about 100 USD. I can't guarantee that it will help, but if you frequently shuttle EXS samples around, it's an excellent program. 

    In the old days, sometimes RAM had to be shuffled for some arcane technological reason, so a small load would take a lot of time because in fact the whole contents of RAM were being re-allocated (ah, Kurzweil). I'd think we're beyond that now, but that's the only other thing I can think of for such a slow load. Even the humungous perf-legato VSL EXS files would load in under a minute, and that on a slow computer. 

    May I assume that these EXS samples have loaded more quickly in the past? Also as a diagnostic, you could try opening a completely empty song, then load these EXS instruments and see if there is any difference. 

    BTW, I see the new EXS Manager has extended its purview to Kontakt, which you own. I know nothing about Kontakt, but perhaps for you it would be an additional reason to look into EM. 


  • Load times are normal in an empty song.  Must be a RAM access issue.  I'll check my virtual settings on the EXS.

    Thanks!


  • I restarted the computers and loaded the song again, and all was normal again.  Would seem to me that the memory needed "resetting".  It does seem like, after using this setup for a week now, that sometimes you just need to restart to make everything efficient and happy again.