EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

On Sep 29, 2006, at 4:43 AM, Peter Ostry wrote:

> On 29.09.2006, at 01:38, Sam Estes wrote:
>
> > Okay. My boss and I have an EXTENSIVE collection of exs samples and
> > custom
> > instruments. We have over 1.5 TB of samples, that are somewhere  
> in the
> > neighborhood of over 3 million samples. I was looking at the  
> redmatic
> > samplemanager. Is this something that will work for us (we add
> > about 500
> > samples a week to our library).
Hello Sam,
we designed ExsManager from scratch in order to handle very large  
libraries, and it's as optimized as you can get, and as fast as your  
hardware (read: your disks) will allow. To give you a rough idea,  
analyzing and optimizing the VSL Pro library (>0.4 million files)  
will take about 5 minutes with a dual G5x2 and a simple firewire400  
external drive.

The real problem in managing those many samples might be that that  
currently ExsManager is, exactly as all other OSX apps,  a 32 bit  
application that can only address 4GB of Ram. Ram is used for storing  
data used for analysis, and you might hit the 4GB limit in ExsManager  
with your large number of files.

The suggestion here is simply to "divide and conquer": split your  
library in 3 or 4 sublibraries (read: subfolders) and you'll be fine.

Btw, OSX 10.5 "Leopard"  is 64 bit so I expect this 32 bit limitation  
to go away in the future.

> I would not tell it to take the whole 1.5 TB just to see what
> happens ...
>
> You can tell it exactly what to do. You set a source and a
> destination folder and select the kind of organization you want from
> several options which you ought to understand before you go for the
> big stuff.
>
> You don't have to mess up your instruments while you are learning.
> Just copy a handful and try in a safe place. ExsManager has a lot of
> security built in but as with all tools you can do something good and
> something bad.
>
> I suggest to learn the program slowly, test with duplicated
> instruments in separate folders and observe what it does. If you are
> sure go for a group of real stuff and if you are satisfied increase
> the number you process at once. You don't even have to process. Just
> let it scan and analyze your source folders that will tell you about
> the performance and the condition of your samples.

Peter explained it all very nicely I'd say.

> > Right now we sit for about 3 minutes while our 200+ track
> > template opens with our various EXS libraries sit and load. It's a
> > pain when
> > we are switching between cues, and bouncing out for orchestration.
>
> I find 3 minutes a good time for that scenario
This honestly needs a lot more details before saying "it's quick" or  
"it's slow".
What I can say is that samplemerging your library will greatly  
improve loading time at the cost of more disk space used.
As many VSL users here will be able to tell you,  on the most complex  
Exs VSL instruments the load time ( with streaming enabled) went down  
to one third of the previous time (i.e. if it was originally taking  
10 seconds, after samplemerge it becomes 3 seconds and something).
> Hey, I feel like a sales agent!
> Andrea, where are you? I am not supposed to put everything right.
> Come and talk to your customers ;-)
I'd invite Sam to contact us directly for any additional info or  
question, exactly because we do not want anyone in this list to feel  
like a sales agent, and this applies to me too :-)

Best Regards
Andrea at Redmatica