@postivemu said:

Thank you very much for your quick reply, Paul and Cyril.

Yes, replacing the internal hard drive with an SSD would be much better but a much more complicated process with an iMac. Though my mid 2010 iMac is older, the processor is a quad core i7 and so it is fast and powerful. I have also filled the 32 GB ram so I am invested in this computer for my studio. By the way I am using VSL Pro with Digital Performer 8.07.

1. My plan is to load all of my VSL samples (approximately 300 GBs) into the 500 GB FireWire SSD. How should I tell VSL Pro to look for the samples on the SSD instead of my internal HD where the samples currently reside?

2. Also - my understanding of how the VSL samples load is that only part of the samples load initially and that the remainder of the samples load from the hard drive via streaming. Is that correct? If so, can I assume that the new FireWire SSD will accomplish that somewhat more quickly for me?

3. Finally - as I read more about SSD drives and their advantages, I am learning about their fast seek times and how that can be more important than the overall speed of the SSD vs an rpm drive. What are your thoughts regarding the importance of seek times as it affects loading and streaming the vsl samples?

The samples will load less fast if you put them on the FW800 drive

Put you system on the FW disk and put a SSD in your IMAC and put the samples on the SSD

OK - here's the update on what happened when I installed my VSL samples (approximately 300 gigs) on an external SSD (Oyen Digital's Minipro 512 GB) via Firewire 800 on my mid 2010 iMac (27 inch screen with i7 quad core processor and 32 GB ram with USB 2.0 and Firewire 800).

A little background - using my internal 7200 rpm HD, it took an average of 20 -25 minutes to load a DP file which contained an orchestra of virtual instruments including Dimension Strings. In addition, it took 5-10 more minutes of playing the piece through for all of the samples to finish loading via streaming. So a total of close to 30 minutes before I could really begin working on an orchestral piece like this. By the way - The Dimension Strings are what really added significant loading time in my opinion.

After moving the VSL samples over to the new external SSD and telling VSL's Directory Manager to look for them there, I opened the DP file. In 5 minutes, it was loaded.  Furthermore, in less than a minute of playing the piece, the remainder of the samples had finished streaming.  A huge improvement.

In addition, Paul at VSL advised me that once I had the Firewire 800 SSD installed, I should reduce the Default Preload on the  VSL Instruments Pro Player from 32768 to 16384. Upon doing that, the VSL samples loaded even faster, taking only about 2 minutes to load and only a minute or so of playing the piece for the remainder of the samples to load.

So now that I have added the SSD via Firewire 800, I have gone from a 30 minute loading process to a mere 3 minutes. So for anyone else in the VSL family who has an old iMac and does not want to figure out how to break open their iMac and replace the internal HD with an internal SSD, this is the solution until you upgrade your Mac. It is working beautifully for me.

I just got a 500 GB SSD drive. I've put all my Dimensions instruments and Appassionata instruments on that drive. I've updated the location of the files in the Directory Manager. What setting is recommended in "Preload Size"? Some of my instruments are on a fast (7500 RPM) hard drive and some are on the SSD. Does this affect the way I set things in the Directory Manager Preload?

Thanks

Paul R

@Paul said:

Hi, 

"Streaming samples" means that a certain part of the sample is loaded into RAM, and after this small part has been played, the rest is streamed from your harddrive. 

As SSD drives have a much faster access time, you can minimze this Pre-Load value accordingly, and load a shorter part of the sample into RAM. This works great with VI PRO. 

For VSL samples, this means that you can also load up to 10 times MORE samples with SSD drives, in comparison with "normal" fast drives. 

You can find this "Preload Size" setting in the Directory Manager, once you have installed VI PRO. 

Best, 
Paul

Sounds like you have things working nicely.

I still have problems with load times and slow response in VEP 6 to the point where I think the software has crashed. In any event it stalls.

Some of my libraries reside on one RAID hard drive ( 4TB, 7500 RPM).

The rest (Dimension libraries and Appassionata libraries) are on a 500 GB external SSD. Both are connected to a MacBook Pro with 16 GB RAM, and with a 2.2 GHz Intel core i7 processor.

My test case is to load up Jay Bacal's rendering of Alan Silvestrie's music from Cast Away. There are a couple of woodwinds and a full DImension string section. When I open the Server Project (.vesp) provided by Jay, VEP 6 software bogs down around 37% of the load and there appears to a problem with memory. My cursor becomes very slow to respond, and I eventually force VEP to quit as it stops responding.

I've lowered the Preload Settings in te Directory manager for the SSD drive instruments. No difference.

I should also mention that when I restart the Directory Manager, the preload settings are sometimes back to Default and I have to load the new preset (lower preload settings). On other occasions the Directory Manager opens and I see the preload settings in the right hand column where I expect to see them.

So that's my story. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Maybe the problem is my computer, and not the drives.

Hi Paul,

I´d try loading a big preset like the Violin Solo Preset Level 2, with different Preload Settings, and then see how low you can go with your setup (play a few notes). 

The Directory Manager shouldn´t lose the Preload Settings, though. Can you find out in which cases this happens?

Best,
Paul

Hi Paul

The pre-load buffer size is not anymore saved on my MacPro and on my Macbook Pro

So when I load my big templates it stop loading a 90% and I have 4 GB of VM

any idea ?

 

Best

 

Cyril

I've just added a 500 GB external SSD drive to my setup. Now I have my VSL instruments split between this and a 4TB RAID hard drive (7500 rpm). I elected to put my Dimension libraries on the SSD, the rest of my instruments are on the RAID. Both drives are connected by THUNDERBOLT to a MacBook Pro that has 16 GB of RAM and a 2.2 Ghz Intel core i7 processor. I thought I had enough speed and memory to work trouble free, and yet... Oh, and yes I have lowered the preload settings in the directory manager and updated the location of my files. As a test case, I have tried loading up Jay Bacal's rendering of Alan Silvestri's Cast Away music from the film Cast Away final credits. All goes well with opening Jay's vesp. file in VEP 6. The, things start to get slow and eventually stop. VEP shows the project file as 37% loaded and stalls. There is no discernible difference in speed since adding the SSD by the way. So, I'm stuck. Does this stall or crash happen in VEP because of my computer setup? Surely my drives are rast enough. I am using Digital Performe 9 and my operating system is SIERRA on this laptop. Any advice? Is there some setting or configuration preference I've missed? All help will be appreciated greatly. Paul R

Thanks, Paul

I'm doing tests re Preload settings as you suggest.

The Directory Manager does not preserve the Preload Settings however. I have tried repeatedly and every time I launch the Directory Manager, the Preload column is blank for all libraries. Can you suggest something else to try?

Thanks

@Paul said:

Hi Paul,

I´d try loading a big preset like the Violin Solo Preset Level 2, with different Preload Settings, and then see how low you can go with your setup (play a few notes). 

The Directory Manager shouldn´t lose the Preload Settings, though. Can you find out in which cases this happens?

Best,
Paul

I moved some more libraries over to the SSD drive and updated their location in the DM. But the Directory Manager has me stumped, but maybe it is working in a way I don't expect. I set the PRELOAD for libraries on my SSD drive at a low number (2048) and then I set the preload size for the libraries on my thunderbolt fast hard drive - a higher number (4096). I'm just using guess work. I think the default size is 16384. I read that in one of my manuals. I have saved my preset and then I close the Directory Manager. If I reopen it, the preload values are not displayed. MAybe this is normal? I can load my preload settings preset and the correct numbers are displayed in the right hand column. If I quit and reopen the DM the numbers are gone. Maybe they are saved in the background? So I tested the VEP by loading in the Cast Away rendering I used before, that Jay Bacal programmed. Lots of Dimension strings and a couple of solo instruments. Load time was vastly improved (about 5 minutes) and VEP didn't hang like it did before. This makes me think that the preload settings were working, even though not visible in the directory manager. All this to say that I'm really happy to see the sped up load time, but would love to know about my DM situation. FINALLY, the preload numbers seem to be fine. The only problem noted is that the solo oboe doesn't play immediately after a few bars of rests. It pops in late and then plays normally. I wonder if this is because I have the preload number too low, or if the buffer setting (512) in Digital Performer is the culprit. More experimentation continues...but things have improved significantly!!! Any comments or suggestions or clarifications will be gratefully received.

Hi,

We checked on all our computers, no trouble with the Preload time on any system. The value should be displayed in the Directory Manager. 

Please stick to the default value 16384 for all non-SSD drives. 

Will do more tests tomorrow. 

Best, 
Paul

As a fellow DP user, I thought I should mention something I have found. I am running DP's buffer at 256 and not experiencing any issues. My experiments with various DP buffer sizes and VSL preload sizes with Vienna Instrument Pro lead me to believe that there is little if any correlation. I believe that the reason your oboe did not play immediately was because the remainder of the samples still needed to be streamed. Once they loaded you were set. A slightly larger preload size may solve that specific issue. In any event, I do not think that DP's buffer setting was related to that in any way. I hope that is of some help/use to you.

Very helpful info. Thanks. I agree with your comment about streaming. I'm going to set the preload size higher for the oboe Thanks again.

Hello Cyril, 

The latest Directory Manager is always installed with the latest Vienna Instruments / PRO. 

Additional software is not planned, but thanks for the input. 

Best, 
Paul

To be sure, I re-downloaded VEP6 to be sure I was using the most recent Directory Manager. No change at my end. I am wondering if there might be some .plist preference I need to delete. Sometimes that can be an issue I think on a Mac. I'm travelling today so won't be able to try things out until later tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks for sleuthing this at your end. I'm sure this will get figured out.

Paul R

Hello Paul, 

The Directory Manager is NOT installed with Vienna Ensemble PRO 6. 

It is installed with Vienna INSTRUMENTS and Vienna Instruments PRO. 

Best,
Paul

Hi Paul That was a typo on my part. I did re-download the VIP software, not VEP6. sorry for any confusion. Paul R

Hi, 

Try to delete "com.vsl.vsldirs1.plist" in /Library/Preferences. Does that help?

Best, 
Paul

Hi Paul

No. Unfortunately it didn't change anything. And....I'm now on my main computer, not on my laptop (which I've been using for the past 5 weeks). I was hoping that I would get a different result by changing computers. I'm now on an iMac with 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7 processor. And I have 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory. Not sure that's pertinent, but I thought I'd pass it along.

Interesting that running the Directory Manager after deleting the preferences did not create a new .plist file. Does that surprise you at all?

I also have a com.vsl.vsldirs1.plist.lockfile in my preferences but it seems to be unimportant. It was last modified in 2012. I think I'd be safe to remove it, don't you?

Further, after running the Directory Manager I ran VEP6 and then Digital Performer 9 and tried to load up the big file I've been using. VEP hung at 89% loaded and I had to force it to quit. Just not sure what to do next.

 

 

@Paul said:

Hi, 

Try to delete "com.vsl.vsldirs1.plist" in /Library/Preferences. Does that help?

Best, 
Paul