It's a good idea to be frugal with your orchestra. Only use the instruments that you need .. rather than have them all sat around .. just because! I use a similar setup .. a Macbook Pro with 8 gig RAM. Typically I have no more than 30 instances of VI loaded, which gives me pretty much everything I need. Not to say I don't want more .. can never have enough instruments :P .. but if you're limited in CPU and RAM then you have to make choices over how much of what you use.

You can still get a huge sound with a smaller template, you just have to try to do more with a smaller number of instruments. It can actually help you to write having these limitations because you have no choice but to do more with them. Rather than just layering other stuff on top.

Thanks Hetoreyn! Really enjoy your music and podcasts!

Can you tell me what buffer setting you're running at with the 30 instances loaded? I was running into problems on my MacBook Pro 2.66 Core Duo 2... 8 gigs of ram with clicks and pops at a 128 buffer setting in Logic Pro.  My template loaded was the following:

3 VSL Pro's each with a trumpet sec, Horns sec and Trombone section matrix

2 EXS 24's for percussion

6 Kontakt instances with Symphobia (One was a pretty large multi the others were single Symphobia patches)

One thing that puzzled me was that my CPU meter (in Menu Meters for my overall system) never got above 50-60% however the CPU meter in Logic Pro was pegged?

Also with the setup above I loaded this template and was recording my first track which was the Symphobia Multi.(that when I got the clicks and pops)  So in other words no other tacks had been recorded .  They were just sitting there loaded.

So what I wound up doing was deleting all the instances except the Symphobia Multi and recorded that with no clicks and pops  and then froze that track..then I brought in the other tracks one at a time.  

I was trying to avoid fishing/loading sounds while composing.  Any thoughts?

Thanks so much!

Dave

Yeah I do have to run my buffers at 512 in order for 30 instances to work. Frankly this is okay unless you're trying to record vocals in realtime with the music .. but since I don't do that .. this works for me.

I'm running a 3.06ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro which I have to say does a very good job with running everything I need. I get enough overhead to be able to use every effect that I need .. of course I run my creation template with what I need .. and not all the frills. But if I need specific FX then I can add them. I use Pro-Tools to do the final mix down once I've bounced from Logic.

So there you go .. you can run higher buffer settings in order to help your system cope. I guess it depends on how you want to record and what you want to record. If you're writing pure orchestration then its not really a problem.

Thanks Hetoreyn...really appreciate your insight!

Dave

Hetoreyn,

I would think you should be able to get more running than that using Logic?  I am in the middle of setting up a large orchestral template and did lots of testing.  
Either using VE Pro or hosting all the VI Pros in Logic yielded almost the same CPU usage but hosting in VE Pro caused CPU clipping from time to time, likely because I still have to run a 64 and 32 bit server for Play.  Load time is so fast with VI Pro however that I've pretty much ditched VE Pro 64 (main machine only, not on slave), and only run the 32bit one for Play.  I'm seeing a lot more stable CPU and that's on a dated 2.66 quad Mac Pro and I run at 128k.  Are you running any other plugins?  I've got just an instance of VS EQ and Power Pan on each one. 

Chris 

@C_Caouette said:

 Load time is so fast with VI Pro however that I've pretty much ditched VE Pro 64 (main machine only, not on slave), 

Correct me if I am wrong !!!

I have experience the new VI PRO, it does not load faster, it is twice slower.

My orchestral template was loading in 15 minutes, now it is loading in 30 minutes, this includes what is loaded in background (it is 80 instruments in 8 VE PRO in one VE PRO 64 bit server)

When I was loading my 8 instance separately, and I add the time it takes only 4 minutes to load the 8 VE PRO

The new VI PRO is saying that it is loaded, it is not true, it's only reserving memory for the samples.

After the memory is reserved, it is letting you back the hand but you cannot work as you need all the samples to be loaded and it is loading the samples in background and it takes twice the time than before, my template is 154 000 samples

If you dont wait for all the samples to be loaded in background you will get instruments not played, overload errors, cracks........

Thanks for VSL to have try this route,  VSL has to re-work on that.

Just  an idea :

You load a VE PRO in a VE PRO server, pause this VE PRO

Load all the VE PRO

Then you start all the VE PRO.

Best

Cyril

Hi Cyril,

I cannot confirm this!

I just opened a large orchestral Logic template (156 260 samples) and from initial launch after a reboot, it took 19 minutes and 29 seconds all in all.

This gives me an average loading time of 8,36 MB (133,67 samples with a header of 64 kb, which loads into RAM) per second.

I stream the samples from an external FW 800 drive and I tested this on an iMac i7 2.8 GHz, MacOS 10.6.5 with VE Pro 4.1 build 7553

Can it be, that something else has changed on your system?

Best, Marnix

I can see still that even at 19 minutes I should host in VE Pro, but I can't seem to make everything play nice when trying to run it on one machine.  I am trying to run on VEPro 64; one instance woodwinds, one instance brass.  Then on VEPro 32bit, EW Choirs, EWQLSO percussion, EW Tuned Percussion, EW Harp.  Even just connection to the 2nd instance of BRASS launched the CPU into 70-80%.  Strangely this in no way reflected Logic's meter or even VEPro's meter.  I only could find this out by viewing Activity Montor (and I have a meter in the upper menu).  Cubase and DP both report it more accurately.  I did have better luck on getting rid of spikes by switching to one thread per instance.

I wonder then if I should just run it as standalone and one massive instance.

Chris

Hello Marnix

Your figures are interesting.

Is your project made with the libs I own ?

Can you send it to me so I test it on my configuration ?

Best

Cyril

Hello Cyril,

No, my template contains only patches from our large DVD collections...

But if you want to, you can send me yours and I will test how long your template takes to load here!

Best, Marnix

Hello Marnix

Thanks for your answer.

I have post you on your mail the files

My VSL LIB is on a Raid 0 of 3 x 64 GB SSD 6 gb/s using the RocketRaid card 640 6 gb/s

Best 

Cyril