EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

I'll be using Logic and EXS24 for the first time with the release of Logic 6.  I have a Dual GIG G4 with 1.5 GIG Ram and two 80 GIG hard drives. I have about 50 GIG worth of Sample CD-ROMs and will be using the  Vienna Symphonic Library 
 EXS24 Edition Complete Orchestral Package when it's released next month. I was wondering if I should partition the two 80 GIG hard drives and if so what is the best way to set them up for EXS24? 
  
 Thanks 
 Mike

Mike Newman wrote:
> I'll be using Logic and EXS24 for the first time with the release of
> Logic 6.  I have a Dual GIG G4 with 1.5 GIG Ram and two 80 GIG hard
> drives. I have about 50 GIG worth of Sample CD-ROMs and will be using
> the  Vienna Symphonic Library EXS24 Edition Complete Orchestral
> Package when it's released next month.

LUCKY!!! ;-)

> I was wondering if I should partition the two 80 GIG hard drives and
> if so what is the best way to set them up for EXS24?

Here's the deal: partitioning a drive is not really going to help you 
(as far as I know/have been able to tell by playing around) when it 
comes to playing samples/bounding audio.  In fact, partitioning a drive 
could exasperate the problem.

What you want to do is make sure that each part of your workflow that 
requires harddrive access has it's own drive (and, ideally, it's own 
bus, though that's not really as important with reasonably low-bandwidth 
samples).

The average EXS24 setup has three parts that require drive access. 
There's the part that runs the OS and loads the actual Logic and EXS24 
software.  There's the part that loads samples.  Then there's the part 
the loads/writes/ the song.

It sounds as though you have two internal 80Gig drives, right?  Here's 
what you should do.  Install Logic on the same drive that has your 
operating system on it.  Install all your samples onto the other drive. 
  Then buy a fast firewire drive, plug it into you computer, and save 
your  song files there.

You could, if space is a problem, put your samples on the firewire drive 
and your songs on the second internal 80Gig.  The important thing here 
is that the song file and the sample files are not on the same bus (that 
is to say, you would not want both on firewire drives or both on 
internal drives.  You want to split them between them so that they can 
read/write asynchronously).

I think that the reasons for this are fairly obvious, but if you would 
like clarification, please ask.

Also, others here may have better suggestions.  I've never worked with a 
sample library over a Gig, so your mileage may vary.

Cheers,
-Josh Emmons

On 2/28/03 17:59, "Joshua S Emmons" <skia@...> wrote:

> Mike Newman wrote:
>> > I'll be using Logic and EXS24 for the first time with the release of
>> > Logic 6.  I have a Dual GIG G4 with 1.5 GIG Ram and two 80 GIG hard
>> > drives. I have about 50 GIG worth of Sample CD-ROMs and will be using
>> > the  Vienna Symphonic Library EXS24 Edition Complete Orchestral
>> > Package when it's released next month.


What I will suggest you is to put your system on one partition !
If you want to have faster (especialy read) disk access you MUST buy a Raid
0 card (a few $) to put your 2x80 GB

The VSL will be using 250 MB !


Best regards
 
Cyril Blanc
France

The box said "Use Windows 95 or better" so I got a Macintosh




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

Josh Emmons wrote: 

>
> Mike Newman wrote:
> > I'll be using Logic and EXS24 for the first time with the release of
> > Logic 6.  I have a Dual GIG G4 with 1.5 GIG Ram and two 80 GIG hard
> > drives. I have about 50 GIG worth of Sample CD-ROMs and will be using
> > the  Vienna Symphonic Library EXS24 Edition Complete Orchestral
> > Package when it's released next month.
>
> Here's the deal: partitioning a drive is not really going to help you 
> (as far as I know/have been able to tell by playing around) when it 
> comes to playing samples/bounding audio.  In fact, partitioning a drive 
> could exasperate the problem.


If you have only one drive I would definitely partition it and put all audio
files and samples together in an audio partition. On PC  you would format this
partition to the largest cluster size available --64kb in Win2k and XP for
example. This partition can then be defragged in seconds and will perform
better than a single system partition formatted with small cluster sizes and
with the audio and apps and system spread all over it. 

>
> What you want to do is make sure that each part of your workflow that 
> requires harddrive access has it's own drive (and, ideally, it's own 
> bus, though that's not really as important with reasonably low-bandwidth 
> samples).


These are good principles  to follow -- if you have a RAID card you could put
streaming samples on the RAID array, audio files on an audio drive and the
system and Logic on the system drive.

>
> The average EXS24 setup has three parts that require drive access. 
> There's the part that runs the OS and loads the actual Logic and EXS24 
> software.  There's the part that loads samples.  Then there's the part 
> the loads/writes/ the song.


>
> It sounds as though you have two internal 80Gig drives, right?  Here's 
> what you should do.  Install Logic on the same drive that has your 
> operating system on it.  Install all your samples onto the other drive. 
>   Then buy a fast firewire drive, plug it into you computer, and save 
> your  song files there.


Unless by song files you mean the audio files for the song I think you are
mistaken here. The song file (often less than a MB) resides in RAM and only
gets written to disk when you save. It places no demands on drive performance.
The audio files that you are streaming from disk -- including bounced or frozen
tracks as well as recorded audio inputs -- they will benefit from a separate
drive, preferably on a separate channel.

Regards,
Murray