# Kontakt and LOTS of RAM (i.e. 64-128 GB) Mac vs. PC



## Colin O'Malley (May 8, 2014)

Guys, 

For years I've been using a Mac Pro with 4 PC slaves. Troels and others have ditched slaves in favor of one MONSTER PC. Troels loads everything into RAM, no DFD. He has 128GB on his PC. There have been few hiccoughs with Kontakt updates (like 5.3.0 wouldn't work too well), but he is able to access the majority of that RAM in Kontakt. 

Craig Sharmat is the only composer I know personally who has moved to a new Mac Pro with 64gigs of ram. I've always heard that the Mac OS has some inherent limit of around 32 gigs per app. I have 32 in my current, older Mac Pro but can't test beyond that  I'm not sure if this is true or not, but Craig seems to hit a wall somewhere around 32 or slightly above in the new Mac Pro. He is not able to access the full 64GB seamlessly. He's tried VEPRO, Kontakt memory server, various buffer preload sizes. Loading all into RAM seems to yield the best performance, but still there is a limit. 

It would be very painful for me to switch to a PC as my main workstation. It's not a dig, it's just a matter of what I'm used to. With the result above I'm currently planning to run a new Mac Pro with one slave PC. However if I was able to match the RAM usage guys are getting on the PC side I could get a 128gig chip from OWC and be fine with only the Mac Pro. 

Here's my question: outside of what I've mentioned above, can anybody think of anything else to try on the Mac to get around this theoretical 32 gig limit? It may well be an NI thing vs. Mac OS related, in which case we're just waiting for updates. I'm finding it very hard to narrow down because there aren't a lot of guys running massive templates on new mac pros yet. I definitely need to access 64-128 gigs smoothly to be able to run what I need on a single computer. 

Thanks!!

Colin


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## The Darris (May 8, 2014)

Firstly, have you tested other sampler players like PLAY and VSL's player to test the limits? If you are able to get past the 32 gig mark then I would say it is a Kontakt issue. If you can't test that out, I would contact NI about it, I'm sure you have at least one kontact that you can get in touch with there. (terrible pun). They might be able to test out the issues you have with the RAM limits and see about getting a fix to Kontakt if that is indeed the case with MAC. 

Myself and my brother-in-law, who is a computer IT guy, feel that having one machine with the appropriate amount of RAM would be the way to go as you limit the latency on your system, even if it is negligible from slave to master, it still has latency issues regardless. The problem with one machine is that you will most likely spend the same amount of money on its components that you would to build two-three machines. Also, you would be putting a huge load on the processors with it being all in one. Tweaking your system in how to use the CPU would be crucial, imo, and Troel's probably knows this as well.

Final thoughts, go with what works for you and your workflow. I would stay with MAC if I were you because that is the system you learned how to use to do your professional job. I would only switch if the pros outweigh the cons of switching to PC. 

Sorry if my post was long and tedious and didn't seem helpful but my hopes was to provide some outside perspective on your situation. Good luck, I look forward to reading what you decide to do.

Cheers,

Chris


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## samphony (May 8, 2014)

Colin,

I'll see what I can find. Although I'm using SSD streaming I'll try to see if I hit a ceiling. Otherwise give me input how to test that for you. I'll also ask one of the logic team members if this is a known issue to them.

Best
Sam


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## Daryl (May 8, 2014)

Colin, unless you slim your template down to something very small, I double that when writing orchestral much you could actually fit everything into RAM. I presume that this idea is to make streaming problems a thing of the past? Surely using SSD should get round this problem?

FWIW although I don't use the same libraries that you d, I've slimmed my RAM down from 48GB to 32GB and am mostly using around 16GB. I guess if I was using multi microphone libraries that would quadruple, but even with my current template I don't think 128|GB would be enough to fit into RAM.

I also think that unless your preferred sequencer is cross platform, the theoretical convenience of running everything from RAM would be outweighed by the inconvenience of learning another sequencer. Sure, in the long ruin you will find the new sequencer is probably much better than the old one, but sometimes when you have to make a living using a tool, it is netter to use a tool that you know well, even if theoretically it is not the best one for the job.

D


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## Sovereign (May 8, 2014)

There should be no reason Mavericks is limited to 32 gigs. With 64-bit it should be able to access all the ram available. I'll be adding another 32 gigs soon to my new Mac Pro, for a total of 64 gigs and I'll do some testing as well.


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## gaz (May 8, 2014)

I just received my new Mac Pro (6-Core, 64GB) as a slave for my iMac (2011, 32GB). I truly hope there isn't issue with going over 32GB. Even if there was a 32GB limit per app, surely running two instances of VEP would solve that? I've been busy with other things so I'm still in the process of slowly setting up my system and template so I haven't had chance to test things out fully yet.

Colin - could you elaborate on what issues Craig was experiencing, and what spec his Mac Pro is?

Sovereign - I can't wait to hear your test results.

-Gari


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## Sovereign (May 16, 2014)

Ok, I have 64 gigs installed atm, but am wondering how to test this. Could Craig chime in and let us know exactly how he ran into this barrier?


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## rpaillot (May 16, 2014)

I just did a small test with Cubase 7.5 on OSX and I could load up to 60 gb ( didnt test further)without any crash.

The problem is after : Kontakt loading times : when I hit the 35-40 gb of ram it seems to be much longer.
For instance when I load a 2 gb piano in an empty session, it only takes 10 seconds to load while it took nearly 90 seconds when I approached the 40 gb bar.

Note that I wasnt loading anything else when I loaded the piano and every other samples were already loaded. So it's not a hard disk congestion.

The worst was Play which was even slower to load Hollywood strings.


Also, when I tried to play the samples after the 60 gb were loaded, there was some clicks and pops, wasnt really workable.

I should add I did this test by loading 5 kontakt instances ( yeah, 60 gb in just 5 kontakt , by loading every mics and articulations I could find :D ) so its not a good example of how we should do.
Better performance can be achieved by using VEP or spread the patchs in more kontakt.

But to sum up, I don't think it's a workable solution to load up to 64 gb of ram in a single computer.
The maximum you can do imo is 35 gb. After, you'll have a slow computer, unresponsive, not really snappy.

I wonder how PC reacts with the same test. Maybe it's OSX the culprit...


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## EastWest Lurker (May 16, 2014)

Let me see what one of my Apple contacts says about this.


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## Dracarys (Jul 15, 2014)

128gb on one system? It must be dual cpu PC with ECC ram. Aren't the clock speeds lower on those, and then there's that synchronization of cores.
I haven't seen any 16gb ram sticks around. If Haswell-E has a cpu and mobo that support 128gb of ram, I'm definitely upgrading. Only thing is I'm going to miss the low cas latency with DDR3. DDR3 with a cas of 7 is just as good as DDR4 at 3200, and the price for that is going to be absurd for the next few years.

I see no reason why one system with 128gb of ram, a couple of ssds mixed with pcie ssds, and Ve Pro, shouldn't run flawlessly.


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## Carbs (Jul 15, 2014)

EastWest Lurker @ Fri May 16 said:


> Let me see what one of my Apple contacts says about this.



What's the rub.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jul 15, 2014)

This is an interesting discussion, but I don't follow the "32GB limit" bit. I have an 8 core 2.4Ghz MacPro with 64GB of RAM. Latest Mavericks OSX, VEP, Kontakt 5.3.1, etc I use it as a sample slave for Cubase, which runs on a current MBP. I run Cubase on Windows 8.1 under Bootcamp. 

9-11 VEP instances load up about 48GB of samples when my template loads(~400 tracks). This steadily rises to 54-56GB as I work, which after the OS and other stuff is accounted for maxes out the machine. It does not swap to disk. CPU at idle is around 175-200%, with around 600 threads active. It was very important to set VEP to use 1 thread per instance.

Kontakt/VEP can access all 64GB of RAM, and does so. I do not have the memory server enabled. The documentation is extremely vague on what it does and if it is even necessary above 4GB of RAM. I would love to know if it is useful and when.

I do presently have an issue that my woodwind instance seems to go offline after a while. VEP doesn't crash, Cubase doesn't crash, but that instance goes non-responsive. Other instances still work. 

I am figuring that I need to reduce the number of instances. I started with default of 8 MIDI ports per instance, and figure I need to go to 16, reduce the number of instances, and possibly try the memory server. If that doesn't work, I'll add a 32GB PC slave and put BWW there.


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## clarkus (Jul 15, 2014)

Just curious - how do you solve the "Woodwinds non-responsive issue?" And is this a problem with BWW?

Also glad to hear you are running a PC as slave to a Mac, as this is one of the more cost-effective solutions & I may need some help going down that road. 

A few people here are mentioning VE Pro, but I think it may not be getting enough attention, given the topic of this thread. It's become the standard for a music-house I know in NYC for the work they do in-house. As most people here likely know, it was rolled out by VSL to make it possible to work with large templates, keeping the active instruments accessible & active with the least possible drain on resources.

I'm not a Vienna rep. Just reporting the news.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jul 15, 2014)

A single Hollywood Strings patch which takes up 1.6 Gigs of ram with streaming takes up 8.7 Gigs without streaming. I'm not sure how someone could load up an entire orchestral template with just 128GB. Load up all sections of the strings and that would already be over 40GB. Just my 2 cents


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## Dracarys (Jul 15, 2014)

Gerhard Westphalen @ Tue Jul 15 said:


> A single Hollywood Strings patch which takes up 1.6 Gigs of ram with streaming takes up 8.7 Gigs without streaming. I'm not sure how someone could load up an entire orchestral template with just 128GB. Load up all sections of the strings and that would already be over 40GB. Just my 2 cents



I have hollywood strings on an internal ssd, is that streaming? Would not streaming be on the same drive as my OS/DAW?

Depends what you're writing, if it's conventional orchestra those strings are going to be re-used and re-used in different sections. If it's a theme it won't be any longer than 3-5 mins. And usually guys write in multiple short cue's to avoid catastrophic changes made by the director.


Thanks


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jul 15, 2014)

Streaming is just loading part into ram and reading the rest off the hard drive, whatever hard drive its on. Mine is also on an internal SSD. When you turn streaming off it just load the entire samples into ram.

I don't get what you're saying about how it depends on what you're writing. It doesn't matter the length. If you load the instrument entirely to ram that's how much it takes up.


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## gsilbers (Jul 15, 2014)

as i remember, on macs if you going that big on ram you have to use 8gig ram sticks and you cannot match with others. could it be something like this that has the issue? 

im about to get 64gig of ram to try out the same thing; everything on one computer. 
i thought i was testing the limits... until i saw this thread =) 128gb!~


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jul 15, 2014)

clarkus @ Tue Jul 15 said:


> Just curious - how do you solve the "Woodwinds non-responsive issue?" And is this a problem with BWW?
> 
> Also glad to hear you are running a PC as slave to a Mac, as this is one of the more cost-effective solutions & I may need some help going down that road.
> .



Couple of things. First, my DAW for orchestral things is Cubase, running on Windows 8.1 under Bootcamp. So it is actually the opposite - it is a big Mac slave controlled by a PC. Why? I travel a lot and need my DAW to live on laptop. My big sample pool is on my biggest computer. Cubase runs on Windows for two reasons: 1) it is the "native" platform - always the way to run if given a choice - software always has better QA coverage on the native platform. 2) VST3 has a much better MIDI implementation for lots of ports than OSX. 

I haven't even looked at the woodwind thing yet, but I have no sense that it is a problem with BWW. BWW works and sounds great. I suspect that I have too many VEP instances and the BWW ones just happen to be starved for resource since they are last loaded...

I have a feeling that I'm about to learn some things about Kontakt and memory management along the way. Not a big surprise, just work that has to be done.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jul 15, 2014)

rpaillot @ Fri May 16 said:


> Better performance can be achieved by using VEP or spread the patchs in more kontakt.
> 
> But to sum up, I don't think it's a workable solution to load up to 64 gb of ram in a single computer.
> The maximum you can do imo is 35 gb. After, you'll have a slow computer, unresponsive, not really snappy.
> ...



I think your first line is the key... Better performance using VEP. The base OSX instance behaves normally, even with 56GB of samples loaded. Stays responsive, windows open and close normally, etc. It takes a few min to load the template, but that's fine. I normally just preserve the instances in VEP, and the DAW just has to reconnect. This means that nothing is re-loading. I just leave the slave on all the time. VEP is magic. Highly recommended.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jul 15, 2014)

gsilbers @ Tue Jul 15 said:


> as i remember, on macs if you going that big on ram you have to use 8gig ram sticks and you cannot match with others. could it be something like this that has the issue?
> 
> im about to get 64gig of ram to try out the same thing; everything on one computer.
> i thought i was testing the limits... until i saw this thread =) 128gb!~



If you put the wrong RAM in a MacPro, it won't even boot, so that is not what's happening. The memory for the 2010-era MacPros is ECC memory and does have to match - order from OtherWorldComputing and you will be fine. They know the right stuff.


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## gsilbers (Jul 15, 2014)

niversen @ Tue Jul 15 said:


> gsilbers @ Tue Jul 15 said:
> 
> 
> > as i remember, on macs if you going that big on ram you have to use 8gig ram sticks and you cannot match with others. could it be something like this that has the issue?
> ...


not the wrong ram. MIXED ram. didnt know it only affected pre 2010. mine is 2009. 
OWC is a bit expensive. i got my 48gb from http://www.datamemorysystems.com/
was about $100 cheaper and its working great.


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## JohnG (Jul 15, 2014)

Gerhard Westphalen @ 15th July 2014 said:


> A single Hollywood Strings patch which takes up 1.6 Gigs of ram with streaming takes up 8.7 Gigs without streaming. I'm not sure how someone could load up an entire orchestral template with just 128GB. Load up all sections of the strings and that would already be over 40GB. Just my 2 cents



Which patch is that size? I just loaded an HS "long powerful system RR keyswitch" violin (1 mic position) and, depending on how it's measured, that took up at most 233 MB.

I haven't added it up for a while, but in aggregate, with five slaves and a DAW master, my total RAM is about 85 GB for all my computers. Mind you, that's the aggregate amount of _physical_ RAM, not how much is actually loaded. I have some headroom on each computer.

I also have a separate ProTools rig, but even throwing that in it's a lot less than 100 GB of RAM for the whole orchestral footprint, guitars, choirs, synths -- all of it.

I have streaming switched on -- not everything is loaded into RAM.


[note: I have received free products from East West]


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## studioj (Jul 15, 2014)

I have been working with 64 GB of RAM for a few years now on my 12 core mac pro and I haven't had any memory issues. I work with memory server on. Perhaps it is quality or proper matching of RAM as mentioned before? I always get my RAM from OWC. having 64 is mostly about headroom for me as I rarely load it beyond 42 or so. New Mac Pro for me in August. i also have a PC slave with 64 GB that I mostly use for strings (HWS / spitfire).


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Jul 15, 2014)

JohnG: I used the "1st Violins Leg BC + Slur Ni" patch. In Play it says 1131 MB. I didn't subtract the memory for just running play but that's only about 200MB (1.6GB - 200 MB = 1.4GB for the patch). The difference without streaming is still 7GB. I'm just pointing out that it would take a lot of ram to run it all in memory.


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## JohnG (Jul 15, 2014)

I agree it would take "a lot" to put all samples in memory, but it matters whether it's 1.5 GB for a patch or 230 MB, even if we're talking about having streaming turned on. 

If someone is trying to figure this out, accuracy is important, or one could exaggerate the size of the problem.

I think it's quite an interesting idea.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Jul 15, 2014)

clarkus @ Tue Jul 15 said:


> Just curious - how do you solve the "Woodwinds non-responsive issue?" And is this a problem with BWW?



Turned out to be very easy - last few times, I let Cubase request all the VI-Frames as it loaded the project. This time, I used the same Metaframe template on which the underlying Cubase template is based to pre-load all the samples before Cubase connected. I poked it in all kinds of ways while the project was playing and it was fine.

Once the Cubase instances connected, I didn't have any further problems, which is good, because I didn't really want to chase it today. It is easy for me to keep doing this. It is still using about 56GB of RAM when the whole thing is loaded, so put me in the camp of not having issues with a template well over 32GB on OSX. 

I am using VEP, as mentioned with twelve instances. The system is currently registering 59.64GB used out of 64GB, so either my template is right there against a pretty high utilization, or Kontakt is very smart in the background.


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## geronimo (Jul 22, 2014)

Just for reference because I don't have such a configuration ...

The format plug-in does not he has a role and impact on the CPU mobilisation in using multiple instances of KONTAKT ? I read in the June 2014 SoundOnSound edition a user more less known had found it .
He thought we could open more instances of KONTAKT from Cubase on a PC (VST format) equivalence Audio Unit .
This is an Alan Myerson's interview with additional interesting about Tom Holkenborg.


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