EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

Hi, all. A thread in the VSL Forum prompted me to check here for the 
current wisdom regarding actual RAM usage with a G5. I'm about to go into 
debt for a new G5, but since the consensus seems to be that due to 
limitations in OSX and/or Logic, 3.5 Gb is the largest amount of RAM any 
one application can address. With the monstrous size of many of the current 
sample libraries, of course, even that isn't enough. So I'm prepared to buy 
a PC on which to run Kontakt as a second, independent sampler to be able to 
get more instruments running at once.

One of the VSL team claims that EXS actually maxes out at 2 Gb of RAM, but 
another poster claims that this was an OSX limitation that was raised to 4 
Gb with the release of version 10.3. I hadn't previously heard anything 
about this. Can anybody confirm or refute this with regards to EXS?

The fact that the OSX limitation seems to be for each program, not system 
wide, would open up the possibility of using multiple sample hosts on one 
system and utilizing additional RAM. There was a major buzz a few months 
ago when Evan Evans discovered that Logic could be opened multiple times, 
but the excitement died down when stability and latency issues cropped up.

But what about running Kontakt, as a standalone program,  simultaneously 
with Logic? Assuming that each program can address 3.5 Gb, and you can find 
a good way to get MIDI from Logic to Kontakt, you could in theory take 
advantage of up to 7 Gb of sample RAM and still have a gig left over for 
the OS, Logic and such. This would be fantastic, as it would eliminate the 
need for a second computer. That is, until 7 Gb also isn't enough!

Any experiences or suggestions welcome.

Sean McCoy
Oregon Sound Recording