I can confirm that loading the first instance (standalone!) takes more than 5 minutes on my system. The "Scanning licenses" prompt only appears for 1-2 seconds, then apparently nothing happens for about 5 minutes (the dock icon even stops bouncing, without displaying the little black wedge to show that the application is running!), and then finally the GUI appears.

Syncrosoft license control center 5.0.3b, PowerMac G5 quad, 4.5 GB RAM, Mac OS 10.4.5, Vienna key directly plugged into one of the rear USB ports.

Julian, Plowman et al,

Seven minutes here.

Hey all,

Julian, thanks for following up with Maya on this thread...I got busy and didn't have time to explain what you just did.

I just followed Maya's instructions with the directory manager (some small differences that I'll change right now to follow the instructions completely, like having a custom folder on the internal drive...and making sure, again, that the server and the daemon processes are down when I delete and add again).

Mine just took about 6.5 minutes to load.

Maya: is there perhaps something we need to be doing with the actual allocation of the library itself???

I mean, I have the library distributed amongst 4 external firewire drives (3 connected to a Firewire PCI expansion card, and the other coming in via daisy chain to another drive into my main firewire bus in the G5 tower...)...all firewire 800.

and amongst those drives, I have each "cube" of the library in a different folder, and within those folders, a subdirectory for each instrument that contains all of the .dat files. should we all look into consolidating?

what is your file allocation..and I believe that you may have said at one point that your dongle is connected to the back of an Apple Cinema Display (just like mine), correct?

Since you obviously aren't experiencing the slow load times that we are, I'm wondering what exactly is different between our setups.

Josh
PS...so far, I'm experimenting with all this in Standalone mode.

ok...an update for load times...

1)I've tried to consolidate my .dat files...

so, on each hard drive, all of the .dat files are in the same folder


2) I realized I didn't get the MOST up-to-date VI app or Syncrosoft App, so I upgraded

3)made sure daemon and server were not running...redid the directory manager...there are (because of the consolidation described above) only 4 folders...made sure my custom folder was on my internal harddrive.

4)in License Control Center...went to "Help-License Database Update"...then quit the app.

5)my USB ViennaKey WAS in the back of my Cinema Display, but, I plugged it into the back of my tower.

...still about 6 minutes to load

...now, I had a few other programs running (iChat, Safari, Quicktime, activity monitor, and my digidesign coreaudio manager), but I don't think they really should have affected any load times I'd have.

I can't think of anything I can do to streamline...again, what do you have, Maya??

Any thoughts anyone.

Sorry for the long post...these are a total pain in the butt to read, but I know a lot of us have been dealing with long load times.

Josh

sorry, I meant to ask this in the last post...

in the Syncrosoft Center:

does everyone out there have a "Collection" for each "Cube" of the VI???

I've got 10 collections...that look like this:

-Collection
--Vienna Instrument
--Orchestra Violins/Violas

-Collection
--Vienna Instrument
--Chanber Strings

-Collection
--Vienna Instrument
--Solo Strings

-Collection
--Vienna Instrument
--Orchestra Celli/Bassi

-Collection
--Vienna Instrument
--Woodwind I

-Collection
--Vienna Instrument
--Woodwind II


...and so forth.

the reason I ask, is that, perhaps having them all in separate collections is what makes loading so slow..??...although, I suspect that doing all in 1 'collection' would disable the ability to spread licenses over multiple dongles.

Josh

@Maya said:

Hi Julian,

loading times which exceed 60 seconds for the 1st instance of the Vienna Instrument are not normal.

I have the complete Symphonic Cube installed on a G5 2.5 Dual/4GB RAM and on a iMac G5 1.8/2GB RAM (using FW 400 harddrives) here and my loading times are:

1st instance of VI: 30 to max. 60 seconds
other instances: 1-2 seconds


Best,

M a y a

The issue appears to be all respondents so far are reporting 1st instance start times of around 7 minutes regardless of whether it's standalone or in a host (can someone report how times compare on the PC platform)

I'm guessing here but is the issue a Syncrosoft problem? and is Maya able to achieve 30 second load times if his system bypasses the licence scanning process? (in-house system no licence required?)

Only a guess but I'd be delighted to achieve a 30 second boot time - 7 minutes to boot a plug-in, and that is without loading any sample RAM, is a little hard to accept.

Maya can you put a little light on this issue?

Thanks

Julian

PS in answer to Josh my licences also show up as separate collections which is what I would expect given that they have different registration numbers.

Maya is on vacation at the moment.
What I can tell you is, that Maya (and all other Mac testers in our company) are testing under "real world conditions" that means with the original released versions.

best
Herb

Thanks Herb, Looking forward to hear more on this...kind of a major useability issue.


josh

Over 7 minutes for first launch here too. In Logic or standalone. What are all of us doing wrong?

@JJRoach said:

...now, I had a few other programs running (iChat, Safari, Quicktime, activity monitor, and my digidesign coreaudio manager), but I don't think they really should have affected any load times I'd have.

I can't think of anything I can do to streamline...again, what do you have, Maya??

Hi,

I suggest to try the following

1) before inserting the first VI, switch from <Digidesign Core Audio Driver> to <Built in Audio> in <Hardware and Drivers> in Logic.
Try what happens now when you load the 1st instance of the Vienna
Instrument

2) try the following either with Digidesign or Built in Audio Driver:
Delete all your content from the Directory Manager - so there aren´t any licenses which need to be scanned, the 1st Vienna Instrument should open very fast now, like any other application would.

M a y a

Ps.: I am on vacation and at the risk of getting killed by my bf I will look at the forum from time to time. Otherwise Marnix will take care of your questions.

Switched to Built in Audio in Logic; Load time still 7 minutes 4 seconds. I use PCI 424 (MOTU) usually. Any other ideas?

i cleared the directories in directory manager and load was 15 seconds before "checking licences" came on then it was open 3 seconds after that (this is the standalone and also an au in logic) of course no programmes are available but it opens in about 20 seconds.

Julian

What happens after you reload directories?

Takes 7 minutes again!

Julian

Any other suggestions from the VSL folks?

@Maya said:

Hi Julian,


Obviously the scanning of the licenses takes for too long in your case.
I ´d suggest to remove all folders from your Directory Manager and to add them again. Before doing so open the application activity monitor from applications/utilities and choose <quit> for the processes <VSL server> and <vsldaemon> if they are still active.
Check with the button <custom folders> if a folder was created. This folder should be named <Vienna Instruments Custom Data> and saved to your internal harddrive.
In case that this folder is missing, please create one and add it to the Directory Manager too.

It might also help to change the USB slot of your Vienna Key or to un- and replug it.

Best,

M a y a

Hi You all suffering from loading times like me,

what helped me is what Maya propably forgot to mention:

I Installed the custom folder in the following path:

/Library/Application Support/VSL/Vienna Instruments Custom Data !!!

NOT user, NOT anywhere on the Disk. That´s where VI wants to save a MAtrix to by default and maybe? it is scanning there first. MAybe that´s why it takes 7 Minutes?

It helped me

Best

Oliver

@Another User said:

Hi You all suffering from loading times like me,

what helped me is what Maya propably forgot to mention:

I Installed the custom folder in the following path:

/Library/Application Support/VSL/Vienna Instruments Custom Data !!!

NOT user, NOT anywhere on the Disk. That´s where VI wants to save a MAtrix to by default and maybe? it is scanning there first. MAybe that´s why it takes 7 Minutes?

It helped me

Best

Oliver

I tried it in exactly this position and it made no difference.

Julian

I did the same thing as well..

put the custom folder into that folder (/library/appsupport/vsl/custom...)

also, Maya, I did take everything out of the directory manager, and, using CoreAudio, it loaded in about 30 seconds...added the directories back into directory manager, and still using coreaudio (of course, after force-quitting the vsl daemon), took the long time to load.


Josh

At the moment I have only the solo strings of the VI series as well as the Gigastudio and EXS versions of the Horizon Solo strings. . Loading the first instance of VI takes 45-60 seconds, the following instances take about 2-4 seconds. The samples are stored on a SATA RAID 0. I have the paths to the samples saved in Logic 7.2's Project Manager. When first playing back any VI sample there are digital artifacts (pops and crackles). These do not re-occur in subsequent playing. It takes about 1.5 minutes for Logic to open my string quartet template which consists of 48 channels of EXS (Horizon series) and VI samples. I also run Gigastudio on a dedicated Windows machine and load 16 channels of EXS samples in less than 1 minute.

My main computer is a dual processor 2.5 GHz Powermac equipped with 7GB of RAM under OS 10.4.6. I use 4-5 instances of Altiverb concurrently with the VI and EXS samples.

When I launch the Vienna Instruments application for the first time it appears to scan the licences after approx 10 seconds then there appears to be nothig happenning. If you open activity monitor it shows vienna Instruments as "not responding" however if you double click on the app and select "open files and ports" you can see in the next line to bottom it is actually scanning the folders selected in directory manager. It is doing this at a rate of 1 folder every 5 seconds. Thew Symphonic Cube and Appassionata Strings have 86 folders so this is equating to the 7 minute start time a number of us are encountering.

Once this scaniing process is complete the standalone opens. I guess the same process is occuring when the VI's are opened in Logic.

My Vienna Instrument File Structure is disc/Vienna Instruments/01 Solo violin...86 Percussion which is i think the default installation of the Vienna Installer.

hope this info can help find a solution to the elongated boot times

Thanks

julian