# Which DAW is best at making VEP unnecessary???



## edhamilton (Jan 9, 2020)

Single machine - 128 ram. Would love to avoid VEP if possible.
And I'm willing to switch DAWS to do so.

Which DAW is best at hosting a really big template internally??

appreciate the input.


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## DANIELE (Jan 10, 2020)

edhamilton said:


> Single machine - 128 ram. Would love to avoid VEP if possible.
> And I'm willing to switch DAWS to do so.
> 
> Which DAW is best at hosting a really big template internally??
> ...



Reaper. I have a huge template and it works very smooth.


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## Ryan Fultz (Jan 10, 2020)

The new way Logic X can be set so it doesn't load tracks that have not had midi data entered yet is extremely effective. 

Took templates I had that sat at 60+ gigs just existing to just over 2. My computer has 72 gigs of ram and I haven't had any issues running whatever I want.


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## Uiroo (Jan 10, 2020)

The really big templates I've seen (Tom Holkenborg and John Paesano for example) are all on Cubase.
My template has 1500 disabled Tracks, but I rarely enable much more than 100.
If you have all 1500 tracks visible, it lags a bit, but that's a very uncomfortable way of working in the first place.

I think it's possible on most DAW's, but I definitely know it works well in Cubase.


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## d.healey (Jan 10, 2020)

None.

For me the advantage of an external plugin host is that my plugins are loaded independently of the DAW.

I don't use VEP I use Carla, but the outcome is the same. I run the external host on the same machine as my DAW. It's just external in the sense that the plugins are outside of the DAW.

There are three problems with loading plugins inside the DAW with your session.
- If the DAW crashes you have to reopen it and wait for all your plugins to load again.
- If you want to change projects you have to wait for all your plugins to reload again.
- Session save time increases the more plugins you load.

With the plugins hosted externally you can switch projects or DAWs without having to reload the plugin setup. For me this is a huge time-saver.

For smaller sessions though I just load the plugins directly in the DAW.

Reaper has another advantage. You can run multiple instances of it if you use the portable install. This means it can be both the DAW for your session and your plugin host.


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## lokotus (Jan 10, 2020)

DANIELE said:


> Reaper. I have a huge template and it works very smooth.


Save time when you load 80 GB Ram VST instruments inside Reaper ? Cubase Save time is so long, I enjoy the Decouple feature or does Reaper has a similar custom made feature for saving fast big projects without freezing or deactivating Instruments ?

Cheers, lokotus


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## NODZ (Jan 10, 2020)

Uiroo said:


> The really big templates I've seen (Tom Holkenborg and John Paesano for example) are all on Cubase.
> My template has 1500 disabled Tracks, but I rarely enable much more than 100.
> If you have all 1500 tracks visible, it lags a bit, but that's a very uncomfortable way of working in the first place.
> 
> I think it's possible on most DAW's, but I definitely know it works well in Cubase.


But Tom´s template relies heavily on VEP as far as I know.

But still - I would give Cubase the call too.  Imo Alex Pfeffer shows a pretty good example of what a template could look like in Cubase in this video: 

 

I also love Reaper, but more on the sound design side.


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## Alex Fraser (Jan 10, 2020)

Yep, Logic's new dynamic loading is a thing of marvel. I totally understand the advantages of VEP but it depends on how large your projects are.

There's the inevitable re-loading when switching between files but in my experience it's a brief respite to have a swig of coffee or a stretch. No bad thing.

I'll qualify this however by saying that I don't run huge track counts.


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## Ashermusic (Jan 10, 2020)

Alex Fraser said:


> Yep, Logic's new dynamic loading is a thing of marvel. I totally understand the advantages of VEP but it depends on how large your projects are. Yes, there's the inevitable re-loading when switching between files but in my experience it's a brief respite to have a swig of coffee or a stretch. No bad thing.



For small templates or under no time constraints, sure. But if you are working on several cues that use a bigger template VE Pro is still the better workflow IMHO.


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## Alex Fraser (Jan 10, 2020)

Ashermusic said:


> For small templates or under no time constraints, sure. But if you are working on several cues that use a bigger template VE Pro is still the better workflow IMHO.


Sure, that's logical.

I guess the devil is in the detail. I'd love to hear from someone who uses a monster Logic template with dynamic plugin loading and get some real world numbers on loading, switching projects etc. If it helps anyone, I might put together a test project and grab my stopwatch. It might make a fun thread.


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## tack (Jan 10, 2020)

d.healey said:


> I don't use VEP I use Carla, but the outcome is the same.


Interesting, I haven't heard of Carla before. How do you loop the audio out of Carla back into Reaper per track? Is there some sort of VST that you can insert on the track in Reaper to facilitate this?


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## d.healey (Jan 10, 2020)

tack said:


> Interesting, I haven't heard of Carla before. How do you loop the audio out of Carla back into Reaper per track? Is there some sort of VST that you can insert on the track in Reaper to facilitate this?


Actually I've been using it with Ardour which provides virtual ports for each track/bus.

I hadn't tried it with Reaper. So I just gave it a go and Reaper makes ports available too. I'm only seeing 16 though but I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way to add more. Mostly I just route stems back into the DAW though so 16 would probably be fine for me anyway.


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## tack (Jan 10, 2020)

d.healey said:


> I hadn't tried it with Reaper. So I just gave it a go and Reaper makes ports available too.


How do you represent Reaper like that in the patchbay? Maybe some Windows vs Linux behavioral difference?


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## d.healey (Jan 10, 2020)

tack said:


> How do you represent Reaper like that in the patchbay? Maybe some Windows vs Linux behavioral difference?


It might be an OS difference, this is what it looks like by default for me, I haven't tried it on Windows.


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## tack (Jan 10, 2020)

d.healey said:


> It might be an OS difference, this is what it looks like by default for me, I haven't tried it on Windows.


Yeah, consequence of using JACK, likely, where introspection of connected applications is possible. Ok, I'll play a bit. Been looking for some free/cheap and lightweight VST hosting option analogous to VEP. Carla _may_ be that. Thanks!


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## Waywyn (Feb 11, 2020)

NODZ said:


> But Tom´s template relies heavily on VEP as far as I know.
> 
> But still - I would give Cubase the call too.  Imo Alex Pfeffer shows a pretty good example of what a template could look like in Cubase in this video:
> 
> ...




Thank you!


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## NODZ (Feb 12, 2020)

Waywyn said:


> Thank you!



No - thank YOU :D I integrated some interesting details of your template into mine, when I was rebuilding it at the beginning of the year.


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## Akarin (Feb 12, 2020)

Having close to 6k disabled tracks in Cubase. It works just fine. Save time is around 5 secs, though.


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## InLight-Tone (Feb 12, 2020)

Akarin said:


> Having close to 6k disabled tracks in Cubase. It works just fine. Save time is around 5 secs, though.


I think at that point going to using presets might be the better option rather than wrestling with that many tracks. Unfortunately Media Bay sucks in the worst way...


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## InLight-Tone (Feb 12, 2020)

Ashermusic said:


> For small templates or under no time constraints, sure. But if you are working on several cues that use a bigger template VE Pro is still the better workflow IMHO.


Jay, I don't know what you're bangin on about as far as time constraints. Even with platter drives, loading another cue won't take more than a minute tops for all samples to load. I recently built a 900+ track template in Logic using mostly individual Kontakt instances and it loads in under 2 seconds. VEP is completely unnecessary...


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## Akarin (Feb 12, 2020)

InLight-Tone said:


> I think at that point going to using presets might be the better option rather than wrestling with that many tracks. Unfortunately Media Bay sucks in the worst way...



It's fine. I have many macros to navigate it quickly. This way, everything is already routed.


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## gst98 (Feb 12, 2020)

InLight-Tone said:


> Jay, I don't know what you're bangin on about as far as time constraints. Even with platter drives, loading another cue won't take more than a minute tops for all samples to load. I recently built a 900+ track template in Logic using mostly individual Kontakt instances and it loads in under 2 seconds. VEP is completely unnecessary...



Under 2 seconds? for 900 kontakt instances?


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## InLight-Tone (Feb 12, 2020)

gst98 said:


> Under 2 seconds? for 900 kontakt instances?


Yes, they are all disabled though by option clicking on the power button. I am saving to an m2 drive so that's a factor. Unfortunately I quickly got to the 1000 track limit preferring most everything in the template as Akarin above, so it's back to Library presets. Also Logic doesn't have extensive Cubase style control over Visibility though it does have Show/Hide groups.


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## Alex Fraser (Feb 12, 2020)

Also worth pointing out:
Loading a Kontakt instance either by enabling a "disabled track" or loading as a Logic patch is *significantly* faster than loading from the Kontakt library panel. At least on my system.







The disabled tracks feature really is a thing of beauty, especially coupled with SSD loading. Each track loads with it's correct routing, colour, articulation mapping, icon etc etc. No more old school multi-timbral nonsense. No workarounds. It's what I always dreamed Logic could be.


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## Waywyn (Feb 12, 2020)

InLight-Tone said:


> I think at that point going to using presets might be the better option rather than wrestling with that many tracks. Unfortunately Media Bay sucks in the worst way...



I agree with you that the Media Bay sucks and to be honest I never use it, but there is no wrestling when it comes to this.

1. You can use folders and sort them the way you want. For example, my STRINGS folder contains a mixture of sketch pad patches and below that there are subfolders with the companies. If I want Berlin Strings or CSS, doesn't matter, everything is right there at hand.

2. This works just with activated tracks but once you got more stuff going, you can simply use the little magnifying glass. You can quickly search for whatever you want and this is faster than loading any presets.

3. Working with the command "show tracks with data" is a timesaver because no matter how many tracks you have, you only see the tracks you used so far.

Making use of justs these three things is essential and pretty easy to work with!


Just curious, but can you elaborate on how presets are the better option than having a setup with 3000 tracks? Wouldn't that make 3000 presets then?


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## InLight-Tone (Feb 12, 2020)

Waywyn said:


> I agree with you that the Media Bay sucks and to be honest I never use it, but there is no wrestling when it comes to this.
> 
> 1. You can use folders and sort them the way you want. For example, my STRINGS folder contains a mixture of sketch pad patches and below that there are subfolders with the companies. If I want Berlin Strings or CSS, doesn't matter, everything is right there at hand.
> 
> ...


It probably isn't better, other than maybe having the big template makes me habitually reach for the same things over and over. 

The one drawback though is the save times, as you activate tracks it gets longer and longer and the file size grows exponentially.

I also didn't like having all those folders in my arrange window and there is no way to hide them.

I did the same in as you when I had Cubase. Unfortunately I switched to Mac and Logic and Logic caps out at 1000 instrument tracks. I have to say though that it is much faster at saving than Cubase, but I had Cubase on Windows so maybe that makes a difference?


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## jonathanwright (Feb 13, 2020)

InLight-Tone said:


> It probably isn't better, other than maybe having the big template *makes me habitually reach for the same things over and over.*



This is a really important point. One thing I've found, is that while large templates are great when I need to work on ongoing projects, they tend to be limiting creatively.

So after many years of endless fiddling, trying to find the 'perfect' template, I'm back to a blank project (with the routing set up though).


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## Alex Fraser (Feb 13, 2020)

jonathanwright said:


> This is a really important point. One thing I've found, is that while large templates are great when I need to work on ongoing projects, they tend to be limiting creatively.
> 
> So after many years of endless fiddling, trying to find the 'perfect' template, I'm back to a blank project (with the routing set up though).


Hey Jonathan - 
If memory serves, you're a Logic user. Have you tried saving your template tracks as patches and adopting a "load as you go" workflow? Would be interested to know your thoughts.
A


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## Waywyn (Feb 13, 2020)

InLight-Tone said:


> It probably isn't better, other than maybe having the big template makes me habitually reach for the same things over and over.
> 
> The one drawback though is the save times, as you activate tracks it gets longer and longer and the file size grows exponentially.
> 
> ...



Sorry, I really don't mean to be nitpicking, but saving time will raise disregarding if you activate more and more tracks of a template, because you have the same amount of active tracks if you start from scratch or use presets!?


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## jonathanwright (Feb 13, 2020)

Alex Fraser said:


> Hey Jonathan -
> If memory serves, you're a Logic user. Have you tried saving your template tracks as patches and adopting a "load as you go" workflow? Would be interested to know your thoughts.
> A



Hey Alex. 

I tend to hop between Logic and Studio One these days. Logic I have set up with a huge amount of instrument presets, as I personally find selecting from the dropdown in an instrument window quicker than using the library.

I use a similar approach in S1, although being able to drag and drop multiple instruments at the same time is a really fast way to work. Better than anything else I've used in that regard.


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## Alex Fraser (Feb 13, 2020)

jonathanwright said:


> Hey Alex.
> 
> I tend to hop between Logic and Studio One these days. Logic I have set up with a huge amount of instrument presets, as I personally find selecting from the dropdown in an instrument window quicker than using the library.
> 
> I use a similar approach in S1, although being able to drag and drop multiple instruments at the same time is a really fast way to work. Better than anything else I've used in that regard.


Ah, that's interesting. I've never really used the drop down menus, will have a play.
Thanks Jonathan!


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## jonathanwright (Feb 13, 2020)

Alex Fraser said:


> Ah, that's interesting. I've never really used the drop down menus, will have a play.
> Thanks Jonathan!



You're welcome!

Here's an example screenshot of how I have mine organised into folders. I used Keyboard Maestro to cycle though and save Kontakt presets to save me a _lot_ of time.


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## Alex Fraser (Feb 13, 2020)

jonathanwright said:


> You're welcome!
> 
> Here's an example screenshot of how I have mine organised into folders. I used Keyboard Maestro to cycle though and save Kontakt presets to save me a _lot_ of time.


<Googles Keyboard Maestro>


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## jonathanwright (Feb 14, 2020)

Alex Fraser said:


> <Googles Keyboard Maestro>



Definitely worth checking out. I have it set up to be a 'Macro Toolbar' of sorts. Plus for keysowtching if I'm not near a controller. It can really save time once you get your head around it.


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## rheudabaga (Feb 14, 2020)

+1 for dynamic loading in Logic. Revolutionary.


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## borisb2 (Feb 14, 2020)

Akarin said:


> Having close to 6k disabled tracks in Cubase. It works just fine. Save time is around 5 secs, though.


Wow.. how big is that scene file? I got already 400MB with only 650 tracks


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## Mishabou (Feb 14, 2020)

I was working on a project with crazy deadlines and we were trying to figure out a way to instantly access our Vi and SFX. Spent a month building and testing different templates using, CB, LPX, DP and PT. We tried with and without VEP pro, Track Presets, Tracks Enable/Disable, etc.

We end up using a template, with no VEP, that includes over 13K instrument tracks (Play and Kontakt) and 50K + custom SFX. The only way to make this work was with PT.

We had every patches from our VI libraries saved as a track presets and simply drag and drop the one(s) we want on the arrangement window, just like S1. It's lightning fast and what i love about this workflow aside from instant access to all my instruments/sounds, is that i start each composition/session with a blank canvas, no endless scrolling and saving is instantaneous.

I believe PT's workspace, where all presets are stored, was built first and foremost for sound editors/designers, a true sound database and in that regards, its search engine and the way it handles metadata is way better than your typical music DAW.


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## composingkeys (Feb 17, 2020)

borisb2 said:


> Wow.. how big is that scene file? I got already 400MB with only 650 tracks


How large in file size are logic projects if you have 600 tracks or so? I wonder how it compares to Cubase.


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## robgb (Feb 18, 2020)

I've used multiple DAWs over the years and I've never found VEP necessary.


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## Ashermusic (Feb 18, 2020)

_Necessary_? No, unless you want too use a slave. Helpful though, even on the same computer no matter which DAW? You betcha.


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## VinRice (Feb 18, 2020)

Track disable is working very well in Logic. And it does is quite intelligently. If you disable a number of tracks in a folder and then disable the whole folder it remembers which ones had been previously individually disabled. This means that when you re-enable the whole folder it only re-enables the ones that had been originally enabled. I thought this was going to be a pain originally but it real-world use, as I found out today, it's actually perfect.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 18, 2020)

Hey, no one (except Jay, in passing, and anyway he doesn't count) mentioned the main reason for VE Pro: so you don't need audio and MIDI interfaces on every slave computer!

It doesn't care whether it's running on the same machine as your DAW or another one on your network. That includes loading instruments, and faster-than-real-time bouncing.

In these days of powerful computers, huge memory access, and SSDs it's not automatically necessary for everyone to have slave computers. But they're not just for overflow, they can be for, say, running older instruments that don't run on the latest OS on your main computer.

Also, VE Pro is worth it just for the plug-ins that are built into it.


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## Ashermusic (Feb 19, 2020)

VinRice said:


> Track disable is working very well in Logic. And it does is quite intelligently. If you disable a number of tracks in a folder and then disable the whole folder it remembers which ones had been previously individually disabled. This means that when you re-enable the whole folder it only re-enables the ones that had been originally enabled. I thought this was going to be a pain originally but it real-world use, as I found out today, it's actually perfect.



I hate it because it is on by default and when I open a new project not from a template, I forget that it's enabled. But yes, it works as intended.


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## DaveBCC (Feb 20, 2020)

Mishabou said:


> I was working on a project with crazy deadlines and we were trying to figure out a way to instantly access our Vi and SFX. Spent a month building and testing different templates using, CB, LPX, DP and PT. We tried with and without VEP pro, Track Presets, Tracks Enable/Disable, etc.
> 
> We end up using a template, with no VEP, that includes over 13K instrument tracks (Play and Kontakt) and 50K + custom SFX. The only way to make this work was with PT.
> 
> ...



As a PT user, and new to sampled instruments, this is interesting to me. Just out of curiosity, how much disk space is required for all those presets? It seems like the track presets for a single articulation are approximately the same size as the kontakt files themselves?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 20, 2020)

DaveBCC said:


> how much disk space is required for all those presets



The size of sample libraries depends on the library, and many of them have multiple mic positions as well as lots and lots of articulations.

For example, the big East West Hollywood Strings library is about 335GB, and their Quantum Leap Pianos is about 280GB. On the other hand, the old VSL Special Edition - a full orchestra - is under 60GB. (VSL's newer libraries are bigger, however.)

But disk space is very cheap these days, so nobody cares. On the contrary, larger libraries have more and longer samples - although of course bigger isn't always better.

What people do still care about is memory use, because samples load into a head-start RAM buffer even though they're streaming off disks. Not too many years ago that was a much bigger concern, because not you'd be lucky to load a couple of GB of samples into RAM. Today some people (not including me) have 128GB installed in their machines.



> It seems like the track presets for a single articulation are approximately the same size as the kontakt files themselves?



Not sure exactly what you mean by track presets, but I believe Kontakt uses some kind of lossless compression scheme in commercial libraries licensed for it. You can also use uncompressed audio files.


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## DaveBCC (Feb 20, 2020)

Nick, thanks for your reply sir. 

The track presets I'm talking about are a feature of Pro Tools (and maybe all other DAWs, don't know), where you can save in this case an Instrument Track pre-loaded with a correctly routed Kontakt instance of some VI articulation, and then in the future just drag that into your DAW sessions anytime you need it, rather than every time having to instantiate a new Instrument Track, load a Kontakt instance, and then load that with your VI.

If I'm understanding Mishabou's post above, it sounds like they have created Pro Tools Track Presets for every instrument articulation in their library. If the Track Presets take up the same amount of disk space as the original sample libraries, you'd be essentially doubling the amount of disk usage. In my case, that would be duplicating about ~800GB. 

It seems like what's being said is that using up this extra disk space is worth it for faster Pro Tools session load and save times, since you only pull into your session those articulations you need, rather than having a giant template pre-loaded with everything.

On the other hand, I could be completely misunderstanding the original post , so I thought I'd ask.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Feb 20, 2020)

Ah. Pro Tools 10, the version I"m frozen on, doesn't have that so I'm behind the curve.

(I use PT for audio knick-knacks and Logic for music.)


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## Mishabou (Feb 20, 2020)

DaveBCC said:


> As a PT user, and new to sampled instruments, this is interesting to me. Just out of curiosity, how much disk space is required for all those presets? It seems like the track presets for a single articulation are approximately the same size as the kontakt files themselves?



I'm not at the studio right now but from memory, it takes very little space. I have that same huge template on my 2015 MBP and PT load time is just a few seconds.


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## DaveBCC (Feb 20, 2020)

Huh ... I am probably doing it wrong. I will continue to investigate.


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## Mishabou (Feb 20, 2020)

DaveBCC said:


> If I'm understanding Mishabou's post above, it sounds like they have created Pro Tools Track Presets for every instrument articulation in their library.



Pro tools Workspace browser allows you to search connected drives when you need to find a file. This is also where you can search for your Track Presets. The Workspace has been completely revamped since PT 11. A friend of mine who is an amazing sound designer ported all his sound libraries from Soundminer and Basehead to PT, over 230K sounds, including lots of presets from various VIs. 

PT opens, closes and save time is instantaneous. No endless scrolling and bloated session as he starts every new session with a blank slate and only drags in the presets, routing, sounds, etc he needs.


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