EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

Following a posting on osxaudio regarding problems with EXS, I decided 
to do a test of EXS' polyphony:

a) I call up three instruments: Malmsjo piano, Wizoo piano, Peter 
Ewers' symphonic organ (all because they have individual samples for 
every key, and they're stereo), and gave them 48-notes of polyphony

b) I made a 48-note chord that lasted 4 bars (quantized so all notes 
fall on beat 1, bar 1), and cycled the first 5 bars

c) copied the chord to all three instruments, and hit play (that's 144 
notes, if you're counting!)

d) after hitting start and stop a few times, with time in between, not 
fast, I started to get drop-outs in 1 out of 3 of the instruments

e) eventually, I would hear drop-outs even on a single solo-ed 
instrument

f) I went to the virtual memory panel, changed a few settings (slower 
drive, hard-disk activity less) and hit the 'apply' button

g) Logic crashed

h) I repeated this after re-booting, just to be sure, and exactly the 
same things happened (crash)

My questions are: what about the 1,000 voices from the G5 unveiling? 
How about just 150, without drop-outs/crackles? Is this related to my 
use of the factory drive, as opposed to using another, audio-dedicated 
drive? Can anyone confirm any of this?

Here's my setup: G5 Dual/2gig ram + Panther + Logic 6.3.1 + internal 
160 gig factory drive.

Thanks for any feedback!

Ned


http://www.nedfx.com

    Ned Bouhalassa

n e d @ n e d f x . c o m

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ned Bouhalassa wrote:
> Following a posting on osxaudio regarding problems with EXS, I decided 
> to do a test of EXS' polyphony:
> 
[snip]
> 
> My questions are: what about the 1,000 voices from the G5 unveiling? 
> How about just 150, without drop-outs/crackles? Is this related to my 
> use of the factory drive, as opposed to using another, audio-dedicated 
> drive? Can anyone confirm any of this?
> 
> Here's my setup: G5 Dual/2gig ram + Panther + Logic 6.3.1 + internal 
> 160 gig factory drive.
> 
> Thanks for any feedback!

This is probably no help to you at all, Ned, but I haven't used my EXS24 
at all after having it for about a year. Occasionally I fire it up, play 
with it for a few minutes til I get totally disgusted with the 
drop-outs, missing notes and barely 6 voices of polyphony, then put it 
away again. (Obviously, I need to properly sort out what the problem(s) 
is/are, but I haven't got around to it.)

G4 733MHz, 1.5GB RAM, OS 9.2.2, separate 80GB HD for audio, Logic 
Platinum 5.5 (I've tried it with many different amounts of RAM 
allocated), virtual sample memory on.

So I've got way less idea than you have about how to get 150 voices out 
of it.

Ned,

Even more disturbing (and in addition to my "exs crashes..." thread) is that this occurs 
under even less strain.

My test involved a six note chord performed on three EXS instruments with many 
combinations of the factory installed EXS samples. These should not by any means tax 
the virtual memory system as they are all very small samples. These still crashed my 
system at a usage of merely 18 voices of total polyphony.

I also tried this with an external Firewire drive, and the same problem occurs.

I am sure that this problem occurs well below yourr 150 voice limit, nevermind 1000. 
If you tried scaling down your test, you will most likely see the same results. Keep an 
eye on your "could not get data in time" counter in the virtual memory settings panel 
and you'll see it immediately start to rise.

There is something severely wrong here and I hope we can find a solution very soon.

M

> Following a posting on osxaudio regarding problems with EXS, I decided 
> to do a test of EXS' polyphony:
> 
> a) I call up three instruments: Malmsjo piano, Wizoo piano, Peter 
> Ewers' symphonic organ (all because they have individual samples for 
> every key, and they're stereo), and gave them 48-notes of polyphony
> 
> b) I made a 48-note chord that lasted 4 bars (quantized so all notes 
> fall on beat 1, bar 1), and cycled the first 5 bars
> 
> c) copied the chord to all three instruments, and hit play (that's 144 
> notes, if you're counting!)
> 
> d) after hitting start and stop a few times, with time in between, not 
> fast, I started to get drop-outs in 1 out of 3 of the instruments
> 
> e) eventually, I would hear drop-outs even on a single solo-ed 
> instrument
> 
> f) I went to the virtual memory panel, changed a few settings (slower 
> drive, hard-disk activity less) and hit the 'apply' button
> 
> g) Logic crashed
> 
> h) I repeated this after re-booting, just to be sure, and exactly the 
> same things happened (crash)
> 
> My questions are: what about the 1,000 voices from the G5 unveiling? 
> How about just 150, without drop-outs/crackles? Is this related to my 
> use of the factory drive, as opposed to using another, audio-dedicated 
> drive? Can anyone confirm any of this?
> 
> Here's my setup: G5 Dual/2gig ram + Panther + Logic 6.3.1 + internal 
> 160 gig factory drive.
> 
> Thanks for any feedback!
> 
> Ned
> 
> 
> http://www.nedfx.com
> 
>     Ned Bouhalassa
> 
> n e d @ n e d f x . c o m

Ned wrote:
>My questions are: what about the 1,000 voices from the G5 unveiling?
>How about just 150, without drop-outs/crackles? Is this related to my
>use of the factory drive, as opposed to using another, audio-dedicated
>drive? Can anyone confirm any of this?

There's a thread on the VSL forum that might interest you:
http://235.deatech.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1541

This guy is getting 35 EXS24 instances of VSL instruments!!
He's done a few tweaks it seems - you could mail him and ask for advice.

Regards - Colin

Thanks for the URL, Colin. I made the changes he suggested, using the 
Terminal. I'll see if it makes any difference. Please note that using 
35 EXS instances is not the difficult part. The question is could he 
have each play 3 notes at exactly the same time?

That said, one can put a little perspective on this 'problem' and ask: 
is it musical to have 100+ notes playing at 'exactly the same time'? 
That's not what happens in real life acoustic situations (mseconds 
differences are common), but then again... some of us are pretty anal 
and geeky, right?!!

M's comment about problems with 18 notes is rather more bizarre. I'll 
do more tests tonight...

Ned

On 03-10-27, at 15:53, Colin Shapiro wrote:
> There's a thread on the VSL forum that might interest you:
> http://235.deatech.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1541
>
> This guy is getting 35 EXS24 instances of VSL instruments!!
> He's done a few tweaks it seems - you could mail him and ask for 
> advice.
>

http://www.nedfx.com

    Ned Bouhalassa

n e d @ n e d f x . c o m


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ned Bouhalassa wrote: 
>
> Following a posting on osxaudio regarding problems with EXS, I decided 
> to do a test of EXS' polyphony:
>
> My questions are: what about the 1,000 voices from the G5 unveiling? 
> How about just 150, without drop-outs/crackles? Is this related to my 
> use of the factory drive, as opposed to using another, audio-dedicated 
> drive? Can anyone confirm any of this?
>
> Here's my setup: G5 Dual/2gig ram + Panther + Logic 6.3.1 + internal 
> 160 gig factory drive.


Hi Ned,

1000 voices could only be achieved  with DFD off. Samples loaded into RAM in 32
bit mode would be the most efficient way for the EXS24 to operate in terms of
CPU cycles consumed per voice.

The maximum number of streamed voices would probably be obtained with a setup
where you had many drives operating in parallel with the instrument audio files
distributed over the set of drives -- whether in RAID 0 or just distributed
across the set. 

A bunch of SCSI or SATA controllers with multiple drives attached would be the
ultimate solution -- whatever is most CPU efficient. All samples streamed from
disk must be converted to 32 bit format and this consumes CPU so there are CPU
limits associated with disk streaming.

Such a setup would definitely deliver more voices than your single sample drive
setup but would chew CPU cycles ( esp with Software RAID controllers)  are and
would eventually overload the PCI bus.

The people who are getting terrible disk streaming performance -- your sample
drive should be defragged, your samples should be in the fastest section (first
partition)  of a dedicated sample/audio drive which is preferably at least 7200
rpm. If there is a choice of cluster size when formatting you may get better
performance with larger cluster sizes (I have no evidence on this wrt Macs).

In recent tests on a P4 2.4 PC with the EXS24 (and also with the freeware Sfz
sf2 player) and the free Maestro grand piano (gig format converted to SF2 and
EXS24 using CDExtract) I am getting over 60 sustaining voices (pedal down,
every note playing a different audio file, no repitching of samples) from a
Seagate Barracuda ATA 5 120 gig drive without clicks or pops. 

Regards,
Murray

Murray,

I have read time and time again that it's really not a good idea or 
necessary to defragment drives when using OS X. As well, you should 
know that the factory drive that comes with G5s spins at 7200 rpm, so 
that's not the issue.

Thanks for your detailed info and tips!

Ned

On 03-10-27, at 21:56, Murray McDowall wrote:
> The people who are getting terrible disk streaming performance -- your 
> sample
> drive should be defragged, your samples should be in the fastest 
> section (first
> partition)  of a dedicated sample/audio drive which is preferably at 
> least 7200
> rpm.


> http://www.nedfx.com

    Ned Bouhalassa

n e d @ n e d f x . c o m


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This problem appears to be a G5 and possibly only dual 2 GHz G5 related.
Apart from those on this list reporting this problem I know a few others
with the same problem, all with dual 2Ghz macs.

It is not related to audio drivers as we all seem to have different audio
cards. RME, MOTU, Built in Mac Audio.
It is not related to disk speed or fragmentation.
My Samples are all on a separate 160GB SATA drive. As I have only had the
computer for only 3 weeks I know it is not fragmented yet.

As a few of us have noted the problem seems to be related to having virtual
memory enabled. Also, like Ned, Logic would crash when trying to turn
virtual memory off in EXS24. I had to trash my Logic preferences.

I had a job on the weekend creating a convincing orchestral score. Very
difficult with no streaming of samples.

I will send an email to emagic and hope they respond.

Matt

> I have read time and time again that it's really not a good idea or
> necessary to defragment drives when using OS X. As well, you should
> know that the factory drive that comes with G5s spins at 7200 rpm, so
> that's not the issue.
> 
> Thanks for your detailed info and tips!
> 
> Ned
> 
> On 03-10-27, at 21:56, Murray McDowall wrote:
>> The people who are getting terrible disk streaming performance -- your
>> sample
>> drive should be defragged, your samples should be in the fastest
>> section (first
>> partition)  of a dedicated sample/audio drive which is preferably at
>> least 7200
>> rpm.

At 07:30 AM 10/28/03 -0500, you wrote: 
>
> Murray,
>
> I have read time and time again that it's really not a good idea or 
> necessary to defragment drives when using OS X. 


If you have large monolithic instrument files eg a 1 GB gig file for a piano
you will find that it is much more likely to play back a lot of voices without
clicks if it is not fragmented. Same goes for a large folder full of AIF or wav
files that comprise one instrument. 

I recently had this experience: Using WinXP / NTFS and CDExtract I created an
SF2 file out of the Maestro Piano. This played back in sfz with a lot of clicks
at first so I analysed the drive and got a report of 40 + fragments for that 1
GB file. I defragged the partition. No clicks. The performance of the drive
heads chasing around that file will be pretty much the same with any OS. It may
not be desirable to defrag your system drive but if you have a samples drive I
found it made a hell of a difference.

>
> As well, you should 
> know that the factory drive that comes with G5s spins at 7200 rpm, so 
> that's not the issue.


A G5 would come from the factory with 1 drive -- No?
Anyone desiring good sample playback performance might expect better results
loading their samples on a second dedicated drive than with the system drive. I
assumed that this is what you were doing. 

Good luck with the 1000 voices ;-)

Regards,
Murray

Matt <simmphonic@...>wrote: 
>
> This problem appears to be a G5 and possibly only dual 2 GHz G5 related.
> Apart from those on this list reporting this problem I know a few others
> with the same problem, all with dual 2Ghz macs.
>
> As a few of us have noted the problem seems to be related to having virtual
> memory enabled. Also, like Ned, Logic would crash when trying to turn
> virtual memory off in EXS24. I had to trash my Logic preferences.
>
> I had a job on the weekend creating a convincing orchestral score. Very
> difficult with no streaming of samples.


Actually there are a bunch of threads on KVR in the FXPansion forum

http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=326321
http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=326321

about problems people are having with the new BFD drum sample instrument on
G5s. This beast has 9 GB of drum samples and a streaming engine which performs
OK on the developer's G4 1.2 Dual but apparently runs like a dog on the G5 Dual
2K machines some of his customers have.

This suggests rather strongly that Apple have screwed up royally -- no doubt
there will be a fix in due course.

Regards,
Murray

Murray,

I checked the thread you refer to, and all I see mentioned are dual 
800s and a 1ghz Powerbook... No mention of a dual G5 except by someone 
who says the are thinking of buying one in 3 months...

Ned

On 03-10-28, at 08:44, Murray McDowall wrote:
> Actually there are a bunch of threads on KVR in the FXPansion forum
>
> http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=326321
> http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=326321
>
> about problems people are having with the new BFD drum sample 
> instrument on
> G5s. This beast has 9 GB of drum samples and a streaming engine which 
> performs
> OK on the developer's G4 1.2 Dual but apparently runs like a dog on 
> the G5 Dual
> 2K machines some of his customers have.http://www.nedfx.com

    Ned Bouhalassa

n e d @ n e d f x . c o m


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Murray,

Although I appreciate your feedback, you're using a PC. I would think 
that given that this 'problem' seems to be occuring with the latest 
generation of Macs (G5), reports from other G5/Panther/Logic 6.3.1 
users would be more pertinent.

Thanks,

Ned

On 03-10-28, at 08:23, Murray McDowall wrote:
> I recently had this experience: Using WinXP / NTFS and CDExtract I 
> created an
> SF2 file out of the Maestro Piano...


> http://www.nedfx.com

    Ned Bouhalassa

n e d @ n e d f x . c o m


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

At 09:05 AM 10/28/03 -0500, you wrote: 
>
> Murray,
>
> I checked the thread you refer to, and all I see mentioned are dual 
> 800s and a 1ghz Powerbook... No mention of a dual G5 except by someone 
> who says the are thinking of buying one in 3 months...


Ned,  my apologies -- you are quite correct.  I have been reading all the
threads on the BFD on cubase.net and KVR because I am interested in it myself
on PC. The impression I formed was the one I posted just before. 

In fact, in the thread at the URL below,  there is a good report from a Dual G5
owner -- his report on BFD performance is similar to the one from the guy who
is using it with a P4 2.4. 

Some of the complainants in the earlier threads seem rather optimistic --
running a monster like that on a Powerbook seems to be asking for trouble. 

http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28392

Regards,
Murray

Hi all,

Just received a message from support at emagic.

> please deactivate VSM in the EXS24 options-> virtual memory. This has the
> result that the streaming is deactivated and Logic loads the samples in the
> RAM, since there seem to be some "fleabites" concerning audio streaming.
> 
> Unfortunately we can currently provide no other solution or workaround.

So emagic are aware of the problem.

Matt

I have taken three courses of action to make emagic aware of this problem.

Firstly, I have contacted the US telephone support line. Unfortunately the support 
individual to whom I spoke was unaware of any of these problems and could not 
provide a solution.

Secondly, I have emailed US support with this issue and have made them aware that 
there are many users suffering the exact same problems.

Third, I have emailed Emagic.de and have already received a response. They are aware 
of this problem and, as stated by others on this thread, they are working on a 
solution. Their exact words to me where "we are currently establishing how far we can 
optimise Virtual Memory for the G5" (translated). The temporary solution is to disable 
Virtual Memory.

I expect I will be receiving an email from Emagic USA shortly and that all their support 
personnel will soon be aware of this problem. Although I would still urge anyone with 
these problems to send them a message. And to clarify: this is not a configuration 
issue, but an issue with Virtual Memory streaming on the G5.

Good luck to us all. We'll be waiting anxiously for an update.
M

> So emagic are aware of the problem.
> 
> Matt

Thanks for all you've done!!

Ned

On 03-10-28, at 11:40, rogaine535 wrote:

> I have taken three courses of action to make emagic aware of this 
> problem.
>
> Firstly, I have contacted the US telephone support line. Unfortunately 
> the support
> individual to whom I spoke was unaware of any of these problems and 
> could not
> provide a solution.
>
> Secondly, I have emailed US support with this issue and have made them 
> aware that
> there are many users suffering the exact same problems.
>
> Third, I have emailed Emagic.de and have already received a response. 
> They are aware
> of this problem and, as stated by others on this thread, they are 
> working on a
> solution. Their exact words to me where "we are currently establishing 
> how far we can
> optimise Virtual Memory for the G5" (translated). The temporary 
> solution is to disable
> Virtual Memory.
>
> I expect I will be receiving an email from Emagic USA shortly and that 
> all their support
> personnel will soon be aware of this problem. Although I would still 
> urge anyone with
> these problems to send them a message. And to clarify: this is not a 
> configuration
> issue, but an issue with Virtual Memory streaming on the G5.
>
> Good luck to us all. We'll be waiting anxiously for an update.
> M
>
>
> > So emagic are aware of the problem.
> >
> > Matt
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
>
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> <image.tiff>
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>
http://www.nedfx.com

    Ned Bouhalassa

n e d @ n e d f x . c o m


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>From: Colin Shapiro <musos@...>
>Subject: Re: Disturbing test regarding EXS polyphony
>
>Ned wrote:
>>My questions are: what about the 1,000 voices from the G5 unveiling?
>>How about just 150, without drop-outs/crackles? Is this related to my
>>use of the factory drive, as opposed to using another, audio-dedicated
>>drive? Can anyone confirm any of this?
>
>There's a thread on the VSL forum that might interest you:
>http://235.deatech.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1541
>
>This guy is getting 35 EXS24 instances of VSL instruments!!
>He's done a few tweaks it seems - you could mail him and ask for advice.

What's impressive about the tweaks isn't the number of instruments, 
it's that it lets you load lots of big instruments. Evan's tweaks 
open up the memory and number of open files restrictions. But that 
won't help Ned.

Getting 150 voices streaming from a hard drive is very much related 
to the hard drive performance. You also want to experiment with the 
disk streaming settings.

I put the VSL on a fresh Firewire drive, and I'm getting 180 stereo 
voices. Getting 150 *stereo* voices is still very good, but you 
should be able to get more than 150 mono voices.

Note that the 1000-voice polyphony was using RAM-based samples, not 
streaming them off a disk.
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434

From: Murray McDowall <murraymc@...>

>In recent tests on a P4 2.4 PC with the EXS24 (and also with the freeware Sfz
>sf2 player) and the free Maestro grand piano (gig format converted to SF2 and
>EXS24 using CDExtract) I am getting over 60 sustaining voices (pedal down,
>every note playing a different audio file, no repitching of samples) from a
>Seagate Barracuda ATA 5 120 gig drive without clicks or pops.

That's totally malodorous. I've never used the EXS24 on a PC, but I'm 
running six times that many voices on a dual gig G4. If your 60 
voices are stereo, I'm still getting three times as many.

People complain about the present version of GigaStudio being long in 
the tooth and only getting 160 voices. Something is rotten in 
Australia.
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434

From: Matt Jones <simmphonic@...>

>Just received a message from support at emagic.
>
>>  please deactivate VSM in the EXS24 options-> virtual memory. This has the
>>  result that the streaming is deactivated and Logic loads the samples in the
>>  RAM, since there seem to be some "fleabites" concerning audio streaming.
>>
>>  Unfortunately we can currently provide no other solution or workaround.
>
>So emagic are aware of the problem.

I'm sure this person realizes that for users of large streaming 
libraries, that's like telling someone to put a brick under the gas 
pedal to stop the car from going over 3 miles per hour as a 
workaround for a problem with wheels falling off at speeds over 5 
MPH! My hunch is that other people at Emagic are working frantically 
to solve the problem!

Ah, the bleeding edge. I just installed Panther and like it a lot, 
but actually doing work in it is still a few months off. My PT system 
won't run on it yet, Logic is still growing into it, etc. OS 9 is 
still very much alive!
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434

> Ah, the bleeding edge. I just installed Panther and like it a lot,
> but actually doing work in it is still a few months off. My PT system
> won't run on it yet, Logic is still growing into it, etc. OS 9 is
> still very much alive!


OS 9 is dead on my machine. My old OS9 drive is now sitting on my couch till
I can figure out what to do with it (eBay?) Everything I need to have
working is working off my Jaguar drive, and I've started a separate Panther
Drive (7200 RPM 120GB w/8 MB cache boot drive... Speedy!) with some things
that are working namely:

Logic
DP4.11
Ableton Live 3
Numerology
Absynth
A few random Plug Ins (AU)
Spark 

And Shadowbane kicks ass in Panther! Panther's handling of Open GL makes it
look and feel so much better than Jaguar, and Panther's improved networking
makes gameplay smoother... It's the only video game I play and it's
breathtaking!

NO MORE OS 9- good riddance!

Eddie
IMS

PS- all the regular stuff AddressBook, iSight, iSync, iTunes etc... Seem to
be working brilliantly...

I wrote:

>  > Ah, the bleeding edge. I just installed Panther and like it a lot,
>>  but actually doing work in it is still a few months off. My PT system
>>  won't run on it yet, Logic is still growing into it, etc. OS 9 is
>  > still very much alive!

From: Eddie Sullivan <esullivan@...>

>OS 9 is dead on my machine.
  etc. etc. etc.

Please Eddie, lots of people are running OS X very happily. But for 
your post to be anything other than a religious knee-jerk reaction, 
you have to respond to what I said. I promise that you're not running 
a Pro Tools MIX system, and you're not trying to run a large 
streaming orchestral sample library (VSL) with over three dozen 
EXS24s going at once.
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434

Nick Batzdorf wrote: 
>
>   From: Murray McDowall <murraymc@...>
>
> >In recent tests on a P4 2.4 PC with the EXS24 (and also with the freeware
> Sfz
> >sf2 player) and the free Maestro grand piano (gig format converted to SF2
> and
> >EXS24 using CDExtract) I am getting over 60 sustaining voices (pedal down,
> >every note playing a different audio file, no repitching of samples) from a
> >Seagate Barracuda ATA 5 120 gig drive without clicks or pops.
>
> That's totally malodorous. I've never used the EXS24 on a PC, but I'm 
> running six times that many voices on a dual gig G4. If your 60 
> voices are stereo, I'm still getting three times as many.
>
> People complain about the present version of GigaStudio being long in 
> the tooth and only getting 160 voices. Something is rotten in 
> Australia.


Sir! How_dare_you besmirch the honour of my country. Australia demands
satisfaction! 
Expect whistling sounds overhead imminently.

Seriously -- we had better clarify what a voice is in this context. I am
talking stereo voices and different files for every voice. All these streaming
samplers cache the files already used so if you have an instrument which pitch
shifts the same sample to create three notes then only one file is streamed. 

I very much doubt you are getting a genuine 180 stereo voices -- each involving
a unique continous unlooped file streaming up from a single 7200 ATA drive.

The test I was reporting was performed with long unlooped samples (eg 30 second
long piano notes) and with an instrument which has a one note: one or more
samples mapping. Program some very big chords or play a gliss on the white
notes on your 88 note controller with the pedal down -- that will give you 52
voices and then add some black notes to go further.

You cannot simply count up total numbers of voices for parts that stop and
start, replay the same note, share the same file for more than one note or have
notes which use looped sections.

Following these rules I am having no trouble saturating the EXS24 limit of 64
stereo voices for a single instance with all voices sounding continuously for
several bars or until all the samples finish with no clicks and no information
dropped (BTW you need to open the Virtual Memory panel to see whether any
information was dropped -- the EXS24 will just stop playing some notes if it
can't keep up with the disk access and there will usually be no audible clicks
when this is happening).

Adding further EXS instances I can get more voices but there seems to be a
limit of around 80 voices from this Seagate Barracyuda ATA 5 -- a drive which
is certainly not the fastest available  either in seek time or sustained read
speed. I would expect get better performance again with 64kB clusters rather
than the 16 kb currently. 

With Kontakt, the EXS24 or evenb the freebie SFZ  the buffer settings for
DFD/virtual memory make a big difference to the number of voices you can
successfully stream continously. 

Whether or not the instrument is selected in the Mixer/Arrange page affects the
size of the audio buffer Logic uses for that instrument so there is another
variable. Your soundcard's ASIO/Core Audio  buffer size is yet another
variable.

Regards,
Murray

On 29/10/03 18:09, "Nick Batzdorf" <recording@...> wrote:

>> From: Colin Shapiro <musos@...>
>> Subject: Re: Disturbing test regarding EXS polyphony
>> 
>> Ned wrote:
>>> My questions are: what about the 1,000 voices from the G5 unveiling?
>>> How about just 150, without drop-outs/crackles? Is this related to my
>>> use of the factory drive, as opposed to using another, audio-dedicated
>>> drive? Can anyone confirm any of this?
>> 
>> There's a thread on the VSL forum that might interest you:
>> http://235.deatech.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1541
>> 
>> This guy is getting 35 EXS24 instances of VSL instruments!!
>> He's done a few tweaks it seems - you could mail him and ask for advice.
> 
> What's impressive about the tweaks isn't the number of instruments,
> it's that it lets you load lots of big instruments. Evan's tweaks
> open up the memory and number of open files restrictions. But that
> won't help Ned.
> 
> Getting 150 voices streaming from a hard drive is very much related
> to the hard drive performance. You also want to experiment with the
> disk streaming settings.
> 
> I put the VSL on a fresh Firewire drive, and I'm getting 180 stereo
> voices. Getting 150 *stereo* voices is still very good, but you
> should be able to get more than 150 mono voices.
> 
> Note that the 1000-voice polyphony was using RAM-based samples, not
> streaming them off a disk.
If you can afford buy another internal SATA disk(same disk, same speed) ,
make a Raid 0 of your 2 internal disk , buid a partition for your samples,
another for the system and/or other apps, use exsmanager to fix your samples

A raid 0 is about 1.7 faster in read and write operation.

Best regards
 
Cyril Blanc
France

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Spam mails are directly going to trash

On 10/29/03 4:52 PM, "Nick Batzdorf" <recording@...> wrote:

> I wrote:
> 
>>> Ah, the bleeding edge. I just installed Panther and like it a lot,
>>>  but actually doing work in it is still a few months off. My PT system
>>>  won't run on it yet, Logic is still growing into it, etc. OS 9 is
>>> still very much alive!
> 
> From: Eddie Sullivan <esullivan@...>
> 
>> OS 9 is dead on my machine.
> etc. etc. etc.
> 
> Please Eddie, lots of people are running OS X very happily. But for
> your post to be anything other than a religious knee-jerk reaction,

It wasn't a religious knee jerk reaction, it was my personal experience.


> you have to respond to what I said. I promise that you're not running
> a Pro Tools MIX system, and you're not trying to run a large
> streaming orchestral sample library (VSL) with over three dozen
> EXS24s going at once.

You didn't specify what PT system you had. Of course if you are going to use
older technology on a new operating system there are going to be issues. If
I needed to run a large orchestral sample library, I would instinctively
know that I was going to need more processing power than a MIX system. You
sound like a good candidate for upgrading to an HD card and maybe adding an
Accel process card. Doing what you want to do is going to be rough going
regardless of the OS or the machine. OSX and Panther are much more stable
than OS9 and the issue of your sampling needs has nothing to do with that.
Let me know if you wish to upgrade, I can actually help you with the
hardware and software.

Eddie 
IMS

>Something is rotten in
>  > Australia.

From: Murray McDowall <murraymc@...>

>Sir! How_dare_you besmirch the honour of my country. Australia demands
>satisfaction!
>Expect whistling sounds overhead imminently.

Well, I do like to watch the Strine Owpin tennis tournament, if 
that's any consolation...

>Seriously -- we had better clarify what a voice is in this context. I am
>talking stereo voices and different files for every voice. All these streaming
>samplers cache the files already used so if you have an instrument which pitch
>shifts the same sample to create three notes then only one file is streamed.
>
>I very much doubt you are getting a genuine 180 stereo voices -- 
>each involving
>a unique continous unlooped file streaming up from a single 7200 ATA drive.

Good point. I'll load different programs and try it again when I get a chance.

>Whether or not the instrument is selected in the Mixer/Arrange page 
>affects the
>size of the audio buffer Logic uses for that instrument so there is another
>variable. Your soundcard's ASIO/Core Audio  buffer size is yet another
>variable.

I'm using the 512K Digidesign StreamManager, not the 128K one (which 
doesn't work).
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434

From: Eddie Sullivan <esullivan@...>

>  >> You didn't specify what PT system you had. Of course if you are 
>going to use
>  >> older technology on a new operating system there are going to be 
>issues. If
>>>  I needed to run a large orchestral sample library, I would instinctively
>  >> know that I was going to need more processing power than a MIX system.

Me:

>  > Of course, the EXS24s run on the host computer, not the MIX system.

ES

>Now I'm really confused, how is OS 9 helping you again???

I have a complicated system  with lots of software that's working 
really well. Until Panther, OS X hasn't provided any real reason for 
me - and most musicians, I should add - to move over. Panther does 
offer some advantages for what I'm doing, though, because of the way 
it deals with memory. You can load a lot more VSL into it than on OS 
9.

But the dust hasn't settled with Panther yet.

>Do you think that the ESB TDM software can help you? You can upgrade your
>Didgidesign hardware and use ESB TDM to allow the ESX24 to take advantage of
>the DSP on board. This may give you the power you are looking for.
>See http://www.digidesign.com/news/details.cfm?story_id=483

I've been using ESB with my MIX system for years, dude. It's great. 
If you search the archives, last week I posted what the differences 
are between EXS24s running on DAE and DTDM channels (I'm not trying 
to be arrogant, I just don't want to post it again). They both run 
native, though.

>  > And by the way, HD systems aren't running on Panther yet either!
>
>We are testing this here- official support from Digi is literally days
>away...
>See http://www.digidesign.com/news/details.cfm?story_id=537&localonly=N

 From that release it looks like MIX hardware will also run on 
Panther. I'm  confused about whether Phase 3 of their testing applies 
to MIX systems on Panther or just on G5s.

Me:

>I just feel that this isn't the time to invest in more
>>  computers, because machines that do the job seem to be right around
>>  the corner. Hopefully the G5 will be that machine, but 64-bit Athlon
>>  processors may be another alternative.

ES

>We're still talking about your dilemma with the EXS24? The EXS24 doesn't
>work on Windoze...

Right, I should have explained that the VSL runs on GigaStudio as 
well as EXS24, and the East-West/Quantum Leap Symphony Orchestra runs 
on a dedicated version of Kompakt, which is bisexual on Windows and 
Mac. I also have a GigaStudio machine.

By the way, I'm not sure whether the EXS24 MK II made it to windows? 
The original one certainly did, though.

>We are in a business that is always changing, I look to the forums here for
>insight and am available to help anytime... I'm no genius, a lot of this
>because it is so new is still a bit subjective..

Yup, and different people use these toys in different ways.
-- 

Nick Batzdorf
818/905-9101, cell 590-9101, fax 905-5434

ES:
>We're still talking about your dilemma with the EXS24? The EXS24 
>doesn't work on Windoze...

You're right, it works on Windows.

Nick Batzdorf [mailto:recording@...]:
>Right, I should have explained that the VSL runs on GigaStudio as 
>well as EXS24, and the East-West/Quantum Leap Symphony Orchestra runs 
>on a dedicated version of Kompakt, which is bisexual on Windows and 
>Mac. I also have a GigaStudio machine.
>By the way, I'm not sure whether the EXS24 MK II made it to windows? 
>The original one certainly did, though.

MkII made it to Windows too.

Herbert Boland
www.zepmusic.com

> MkII made it to Windows too.
> 
> Herbert Boland
> www.zepmusic.com

Yeah I still haven't ported to Mac yet as I'm going to forklift to 
G5, Cinema Display, and Logic (with plugins) all at the same time.  
I've got quit a bit invested in my Intel machine and LAWP 5.5 works 
beautifully for what I do (which is writing music at home).  I don't 
run a business or have clients, so this is still perfect.  EXS24mkII 
is an essential part of my setup. Emagic/Apple has not released 
anything for my needs that makes me feel the urgency to upgrade right 
away.  I'm going to let Logic 6.3.1 on G5 sit for a while and 
probably upgrade when the next major version is released.

Besides, by running Windowblinds with an OS X Jaguar skin, Quicktime 
Pro, and iTunes, I practically feel like I'm on a Mac.  lol...yeah 
right. 

:(

Mark [mailto:dfusion2000@...] 
>I've got quit a bit invested in my Intel machine and LAWP 5.5 works 
>beautifully for what I do (which is writing music at home).  I don't 
>run a business or have clients, so this is still perfect.  EXS24mkII 
>is an essential part of my setup. Emagic/Apple has not released 
>anything for my needs that makes me feel the urgency to upgrade right 
>away.

We run a small semi-pro business with clients on medium and low budgets
;-) and 5.5 and EXS on Win is perfect, stable and predictable. Maybe not
cutting-edge but we get jobs done. 

Herbert Boland
www.zepmusic.com