# PLAY template loading times



## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

Hello folks

I use pretty much exclusively Hollywood Orchestra Diamond and have the latest version of PLAY. I use Cubase 8.
My template is under 20gb - so as far as orchestral templates go it is not huge - and it takes 22 minutes to load!!
I'm using Samsung EVO 500gb SSDs - one for system/os (Windows 7 64bit), the other two as dedicated sample drives. My cpu is a i7 5820. And it's worth noting that I can't find any obvious bottlenecks while the loading happens. CPU is never more than 50% and I have 32gb RAM.

I have a thread about this running over at SoundsOnline forums...

http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=53019

I was about to grudgingly accept that this was just another example of PLAY being a little troublesome, when another user chimes in and says it takes him just 7 minutes to load a 35gb template - and he has an effectively identical system to mine!
What can be going on here?
I've disabled antivirus. I think I've got my active processes down to a reasonably lean amount. I don't think I have any problematic services running.
Any ideas what could be happening?
I wonder if in a previous 'optimise PC for DAW use' I may have disabled a service or something which is actually necessary for this kind of process?!
I really don't know.

Any thoughts on this would be very welcome!
Thanks


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## JohnBMears (Apr 7, 2016)

Is each patch loading with only one mic position, or multiple?


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

Just one mic position.
Like I said, it's a relatively small orchestral template, around 17gb.


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## SomeGuy (Apr 7, 2016)

Is it possible that your TRIM support is not on your SSD? http://mywindowshub.com/check-enable-disable-ssd-trim-support-windows-7-windows-8-1/


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

Yeah, I checked before but I just followed your link and checked again, TRIM is enabled.
Thanks for the suggestions folks.
But please keep 'em coming!


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## Przemek K. (Apr 7, 2016)

You could also, in addition to deactivating your antivirus application, turn off your lan.
Also, PLAY 4.2.2 is the version with the fastest loading times. The newer PLAY incarnations got way worse in regards to loading times. 
It always stays idle like doing nothing and after a few sec it starts loading. I wonder what PLAY is doing withing this first long seconds before it finally gets around to loading samples.
EW should definitely fix this, because it already worked way better before.


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

I too am curious about those initial moments of loading before the actual progress bar begins filling! With me that moment lasts between 1 and 2 minutes. What on earth is PLAY/Cubase/Windows doing during that period?! It's not as if things are locked up due to overactivity - cpu is never over 14% and ssd activity is low.
Baffling!
But as I said there's that chap on the SO forums with an identical system to mine loading a template more than twice the size in less than half the time!
22 minutes to load a template of less than 20gb from SSDs seems ludicrous!


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## Maestro1972 (Apr 7, 2016)

I just loaded my VEPro template, primarily PLAY with a bit of Kontakt and 1 instance of UVI , 34 gigs on a similar set up and it took 17 minutes. I noticed that PLAY seemed to pause loading as Kontakt instruments tried to load. I don't know if this helps but at least now you have another comparison.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Apr 7, 2016)

It does that on my system too. It hangs there for roughly a minute, without any activity on the progress bar, before it loads the samples. Which makes it 5 minutes for a modest bare-bones type HS setup. It always does that - at any point and regardless of whether Kontakt or VI Pro or whatever is loading anything or not. It's kind of ridiculous, but I guess that's just how PLAY is. Having your head caught in a steel trap is worse. But only a little bit.


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## JohnG (Apr 7, 2016)

If you're using Windows 10, be sure to exclude your sample drives from Defender. Also, there are other tips about Windows 10 that many people contributed on this thread: http://vi-control.net/community/threads/windows-10-settings-stuff-you-can-turn-off-for-music.49446/


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

If it's just an idiosyncrasy of PLAY that we all have to deal with 'because that's just how it is' then I could just about put up with it! But it seems some people aren't having these long loading times at all.


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## JohnG (Apr 7, 2016)

and I agree that load time is bonkers. I load my strings PC in such a short time I'm not sure if it's even a minute or two -- never measured it. It's about 16 GB.


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

I'm on Windows 7 and I've disabled Defender.


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

What string library/player is that JohnG?


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## JohnG (Apr 7, 2016)

mix of Hollywood strings, LASS, Spitfire, old EWQLSO strings; some symphobia patches -- a grab-bag of older stuff.

I always put Kontakt last in all my computers. PLAY and Spectrasonics / Zebra --everything else loads first, and Kontakt last.


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

So a 16gb bit of template there, with lots of PLAY stuff in it, loads up in just a couple of minutes?!?!
I don't understand it. My entire template is around 16gb and it takes 22 minutes. :(


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## JohnG (Apr 7, 2016)

something wrong


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## JohnG (Apr 7, 2016)

I do have a very fast SSD setup for strings -- it's a PCIe card -- but not all the libraries are on it and besides, it's now more than five years old, so it's not the latest.

It almost seems like a real problem with your drive or with anti-virus, though you already wrote you turned that off.


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

Yep, antivirus uninstalled, along with Defender and any other lurking security stuff. No change.
My 3 SSDs are Samsung EVO 850s, 500gb each. They are all reading and writing at decent speeds when tested.
I gather they're fairly well respected SSDs for DAWs.
I can't imagine what the problem could be.


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## JohnG (Apr 7, 2016)

I'm totally stumped too. 

I agree that those Samsungs are perfect drives -- although I recently had a disaster with a bad one I had bought from Amazon. It was horrible; kept getting error messages from Pro Tools about disk access time, which of course is exactly what one seeks to improve with an SSD. I sent it back for a replacement and the replacement is perfect -- the main record drive in my Pro tools computer.


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## Ashermusic (Apr 7, 2016)

As I mentioned on the Sol forum:

On my slave PC with Play 4.2.2 my 30 GB VE Pro template, ALL Hollywood Orchestra, no Kontakt, loads in 6-7 minutes from 2 SSDs. With newer versions of Play it took twice as long, something EW is aware of and is working on. So for the new instruments that require a newer version of Play, I have installed that latest on my Mac and use those instruments, plus Kontakt ones, on my Mac while sticking with the older Play version on my slave PC.


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## Przemek K. (Apr 7, 2016)

I'd say its the latest iterations of PLAY (going up from v 4.3) I didn't had this long loading times with version 4.2.2, in fact this version loaded my 30 gig template in about 6-7 min.
So it did work nice, but not in the new versions. Problem is, if you have EW latest products, lets say Hollywood Harp, you will need a newer version of PLAY (above v 4.2.2) so you can load the instrument. Therefore, one is stuck with very long loading times...sadly


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## Ashermusic (Apr 7, 2016)

Przemek K. said:


> I'd say its the latest iterations of PLAY (going up from v 4.3) I didn't had this long loading times with version 4.2.2, in fact this version loaded my 30 gig template in about 6-7 min.
> So it did work nice, but not in the new versions. Problem is, if you have EW latest products, lets say Hollywood Harp, you will need a newer version of PLAY (above v 4.2.2) so you can load the instrument. Therefore, one is stuck with very long loading times...sadly



I beat you to it, Prezmek


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## jamieboo (Apr 7, 2016)

I have Hollywood Orchestra Diamond - so Strings, Brass, Woodwinds, Percussion. And I also picked up Hollywood Solo Harp.
Is Harp the only one that needs PLAY 4.3 or later?
Would it be possible do you think to have two different versions of PLAY on the same machine?
I ask that because when I recently updated PLAY to 4.3.4 I noticed that the one that loaded into Cubase was the earlier version. This was because I had older play_vst_x64.dll's lurking around and Cubase was reading those, even though I'd actually updated PLAY.
So maybe have dll's of both older and later versions - somehow point Orchestra to the older one, and Harp to the newer one. Might that work?


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## Przemek K. (Apr 7, 2016)

Ashermusic said:


> I beat you to it, Prezmek



Ha, you did. Just you wait, I'll improve my timing the next time


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## Ashermusic (Apr 7, 2016)

jamieboo said:


> I have Hollywood Orchestra Diamond - so Strings, Brass, Woodwinds, Percussion. And I also picked up Hollywood Solo Harp.
> Is Harp the only one that needs PLAY 4.3 or later?
> Would it be possible do you think to have two different versions of PLAY on the same machine?
> I ask that because when I recently updated PLAY to 4.3.4 I noticed that the one that loaded into Cubase was the earlier version. This was because I had older play_vst_x64.dll's lurking around and Cubase was reading those, even though I'd actually updated PLAY.
> So maybe have dll's of both older and later versions - somehow point Orchestra to the older one, and Harp to the newer one. Might that work?




The harp, violin, cello and Composer Cloud all need a more recent one. Officially, you can only have 1 version, but I have heard claims of people tricking it.


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## Ashermusic (Apr 7, 2016)

Przemek K. said:


> Ha, you did. Just you wait, I'll improve my timing the next time


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## JohnBMears (Apr 7, 2016)

After some years on a Mac, I finally got my 1st PC Slave two days ago. I am not sure what the deal is but PLAY 4.3.4 is loading patches MUCH faster than PLAY 4.2.2. Maybe it's Windows 10 Pro? Nevertheless, a Multi Output version of PLAY isn't showing up on my PC though, just a single STEREO version. I've uninstalled and re-installed thrice. Any ideas?


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## Ashermusic (Apr 7, 2016)

It may indeed load individual patches faster. The problem is specifically large templates from SSDs and they told me that this update doesn't solve that.


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## JohnBMears (Apr 7, 2016)

Ashermusic said:


> It may indeed load individual patches faster. The problem is specifically large templates from SSDs and they told me that this update doesn't solve that.



Thanks Jay! Any ideas why I am not seeing the Multi Output version of PLAY?


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## acicero (Apr 7, 2016)

I've concluded that PLAY just sucks. I switched to Cinesamples the past month and couldn't be happier. I load the core libraries in about 10 seconds off my SSD.


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## IanW (Apr 8, 2016)

Hi. Although one of those long-time lurkers here, I've never posted before. Music is my hobby, Electronic Engineering is my profession that pays for it!

Regarding the Play load times, I have just run some tests which show some rather revealing results on my system. I am running Win7 Pro (x64) on an Asus Z87 MOBO i7-4770K @ 3.50GHz, 32GB RAM. Loading off a Crucial SSD m500 (IIRC).

My test was to load 5 instances of VEP within VEP Server, and each instance of VEP contained a single instance of Play. Using HS Gold, I loaded the Play instances to contain about 6GB of samples in total (or 8GB total as shown by Windows Task Manager). I think I get nominally the same results loading straight into Cubase 8.0.35.

I went through and successively installed all the versions of Play I had downloaded in the past. Here are the load times:
4.2.2 - 1m 28s
4.2.25 - 1m 9s
4.2.35 - 4m 24s
4.2.38 - 4m 21s
4.3.0 - 4m 22s
4.3.1 - 4m 20s
4.3.4 - 8m 1s
4.2.25 - 1m 12s

There are two very significant step changes. It was noticeable to me that it is the 'init loading' which is stalling (or later versions just displayed as 'Loading'). The actual sample loading bar seems to take roughly the same length of time for all versions.
The last test was just to confirm the earlier result. 

Presumably if not everyone sees similar, then there is some incompatibility going on with something else in my system. However, if the problem is fairly widespread, then hopefully EW will address it very soon.

Ian


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## jamieboo (Apr 8, 2016)

Very interesting test Ian. Thanks for taking the time to do it!
Yes hopefully EW will sort this out soon!
It's just baffling that, over on my thread at the SO forum, someone with an identical system to me can load in a 35gb template in just 7 minutes using the latest PLAY! It's information like this that makes me think that maybe some system/os adjustments could have an impact?!


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## Audio Birdi (Apr 8, 2016)

Thanks for the tests Ian, I did something similar in terms of testing various versions of PLAY and it is an occurring issue for the issues after 4.2.2, which is a pain! Hopefully EW sorts it out the "init loading" issue soon, as well as the slow samples loading from an SSD on Mac OS X. Patience is still needed I guess.


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## jamieboo (Apr 8, 2016)

Probably irrelevant, but since updating to PLAY 4.3.4 Cubase hangs on closing EVERY time. And has to be closed in task manager.
Event Viewer lists PLAY as the faulting module in these cases.


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## lokotus (Apr 8, 2016)

Please EW solve this. I have already sent you my ewi template with a desktop recording showing hollywood strings slow initial loading problem many months ago. I have been having trouble with slow loading times during the last year (VEP64bit on win7) connected to C7 / Cubase 8). This is getting to an impressive waste of time and I will be happy to report any further details needed just to get this solved. Sadly - Currently the "play" engine should be called "wait" engine.
Cheers, Lokotus.


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

lokotus said:


> Please EW solve this. I have already sent you my ewi template with a desktop recording showing hollywood strings slow initial loading problem many months ago. I have been having trouble with slow loading times during the last year (VEP64bit on win7) connected to C7 / Cubase 8). This is getting to an impressive waste of time and I will be happy to report any further details needed infos just to get this solved. Currently the "play" engine should be called "wait". Cheers, Lokotus.



Once again, if you are not using the Composer Cloud, Pro Drummer, or the new Hollywood solo instruments. just use 4.2.2 and the load times are very reasonable.


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## lokotus (Apr 8, 2016)

Ashermusic said:


> Once again, if you are not using the Composer Cloud, Pro Drummer, or the new Hollywood solo instruments. just use 4.2.2 and the load times are very reasonable.


Yep, I have added composer cloud already. Meaning trying to use play 4.2.2 again would not work with my temporary (monthly) composer cloud licenses on the ilok 2 ? (I have other cloud products selected than Pro Drummer or Hollywood Solo)


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

lokotus said:


> Yep, I have added composer cloud already. Meaning trying to use play 4.2.2 again would not work with my temporary (monthly) composer cloud licenses on the ilok 2 ? (I have other cloud products selected than Pro Drummer or Hollywood Solo)



Yep, if you are using the Composer Cloud you're screwed then, until they fix it you are stuck with the longer loading times.


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## jamieboo (Apr 8, 2016)

Jay, can you think what could be going on with the chap over on SO forums with the same system as me and latest version of PLAY who can load a 35gb template in 7 minutes?


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## lokotus (Apr 8, 2016)

Ashermusic said:


> Yep, if you are using the Composer Cloud you're screwed then, until they fix it you are stuck with the longer loading times.


Thanks for the infos, in the meantime I am gonna listen to _*Waiting for Cousteau *_until its fixed...


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

jamieboo said:


> Jay, can you think what could be going on with the chap over on SO forums with the same system as me and latest version of PLAY who can load a 35gb template in 7 minutes?



No I can't. His computer is faster than mine but with newer Play versions, my 30 GB template takes about 14 minutes to load as opposed to half of that with 4.2.2 and EW says that they have NOT yet fixed it, so I have no clue how he is getting those speeds but I sure would like to know.


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## jamieboo (Apr 8, 2016)

Ashermusic said:


> No I can't. His computer is faster than mine but with newer Play versions, my 30 GB template takes about 14 minutes to load as opposed to half of that with 4.2.2 and EW says that they have NOT yet fixed it, so I have no clue how he is getting those speeds but I sure would like to know.



Indeed.
But I would even be happy getting the speeds you're getting: 30gb in 14mins vs my 17gb in 22 mins on a i7 5820, all Samsung EVO SSDs, 32gb RAM!
I'm wondering if there could be something under the hood affecting this? For example some time ago I disabled Superfetch - but in this case would Superfetch actually speed things up?
I'm wondering about other services that are maybe impeding my PLAY loading speeds due to being either on or off.


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

Unfortunately, I know very little about PCs. I run Windows 7 Pro and I never update it. The only thing that ever changes is newest version of VE Pro and Play updates, which for the time being are on hold with that machine. I haven't even tried the latest Play version with it since EW told me it does not resolve the issue.


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## jamieboo (Apr 8, 2016)

Ah, well thanks anyway. 
Would you be able to tell me what is the earliest PLAY version able to run Hollywood Harp? It won't be as nippy as 4.2.2 but it seems it will at least be a good deal faster than 4.3.4.


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

jamieboo said:


> Ah, well thanks anyway.
> Would you be able to tell me what is the earliest PLAY version able to run Hollywood Harp? It won't be as nippy as 4.2.2 but it seems it will at least be a good deal faster than 4.3.4.



Probably the first 4.3, but I think that all subsequent version will be roughly commensurate.


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## jamieboo (Apr 8, 2016)

Possibly, but I'm just going by IanW's test on the previous page that show's 4.3.4 to be roughly doubly as slow as earlier iterations of 4.3. Which also pretty much matches my own recollections.
So I might give 4.3.1 a whirl.
But... Dammit, where can I find a download for 4.3.1?


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

jamieboo said:


> Possibly, but I'm just going by IanW's test on the previous page that show's 4.3.4 to be roughly doubly as slow as earlier iterations of 4.3. Which also pretty much matches my own recollections.
> So I might give 4.3.1 a whirl.
> But... Dammit, where can I find a download for 4.3.1?



I don't believe it for a nanosecond but maybe i will test it here on my Mac because I still have the installer for Play 4.3.1.


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## IanW (Apr 8, 2016)

Jay, are you really saying you do not believe my results or have I mis-interpreted your statement? I can assure you those are the results I measured earlier today, and were completely repeatable. Just because you do not see them on your system, does not mean that is the same on every system. As I stated in my first post on this forum earlier, I am an engineer by profession. I do hardware and software design, and have done for thirty years now. I would therefore ask that you are not so dismissive of my tests.

Thanks, Ian


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

IanW said:


> Jay, are you really saying you do not believe my results or have I mis-interpreted your statement? I can assure you those are the results I measured earlier today, and were completely repeatable. Just because you do not see them on your system, does not mean that is the same on every system. As I stated in my first post on this forum earlier, I am an engineer by profession. I do hardware and software design, and have done for thirty years now. I would therefore ask that you are not so dismissive of my tests.
> 
> Thanks, Ian



I don't doubt you see what you see. I do doubt that it is normal, but I will test it.


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## IanW (Apr 8, 2016)

Fair enough. Your statement didn't quite read that way to me.


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## jamieboo (Apr 8, 2016)

IanW, I don't think Jay was dismissive of your tests, I think he was dismissive of the conclusion I was drawing from them - that regardless of the system 4.3.4 is definitively twice as slow as earlier 4.3's.


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## Ashermusic (Apr 8, 2016)

I just did some testing on my Mac. Now bearing in mind that my PC is faster than my Mac and loads from 2 SSDs rather than just 1 on my Mac:

My smaller Mac VE Pro Hollywood Orchestra template, which is app. 15 GB, in Play 4.3.3 loaded in roughly. 14 minutes

I uninstalled Play 4.3.3, installed Play 4.3.4 and restarted the computer. I then loaded the template and it took roughly 14 minutes again.

(In both cases it crashed btw at the very end of loading so I must either have a corrupted v-frame or the memory usage was an issue.)

So Ian, I have no idea why you see what you see, and I am neither doubting you or faulting you, but here there is no difference between the loading times in 4.3.3 and 4.3.4 on my Mac.


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## IanW (Apr 8, 2016)

Thanks for the report Jay. The step change in load time I saw was between 4.3.1 and 4.3.4. I hadn't downloaded any interim versions so was unable to test them. When EW issue an update that claims to fix any loading issues, I will try again.

Cheers, Ian


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## azeteg (Apr 9, 2016)

Ashermusic said:


> (In both cases it crashed btw at the very end of loading so I must either have a corrupted v-frame or the memory usage was an issue.)



Could you add the crash logs, or send them to me?


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## Ashermusic (Apr 9, 2016)

azeteg said:


> Could you add the crash logs, or send them to me?



Sure, Martin.


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## Pietro (Apr 9, 2016)

Yeah, I'm joining the club of the slow loading guys . The difference appeared to me after installing 4.3.3 (from 4.3.1 I think). The loading progress window sits there at zero for a significant while (like 20+ seconds on some instances) before it starts filling.

Win 10 Pro 64bit.

- Piotr


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## jamieboo (Apr 9, 2016)

Yeah, for me the initial 'Loading' moment - before the progress bar starts filling - lasts between 1 and 2 minutes!


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## mcalis (Aug 4, 2016)

JohnG said:


> If you're using Windows 10, be sure to exclude your sample drives from Defender. Also, there are other tips about Windows 10 that many people contributed on this thread: http://vi-control.net/community/threads/windows-10-settings-stuff-you-can-turn-off-for-music.49446/



@JohnG I would like to thank you for this suggestion. I was having pretty much the same issue as the OP. I too have Samsung EVO 850 drivers (2x500gb, 1x250GB) and the loadings times were reasonable, but not _fast_ like they should be. Adding my sample drives as exclusions to windows defenders brought Hollywood Strings Gold loading times down to mere seconds!

@jamieboo have you checked if your SSD drives are running in AHCI and *not* IDE mode? Are the drives connected to 6Gbps sata ports?

Stats:
Hollywood Strings on Samsung Evo 850 using Cubase 8.5 Pro on Windows 8.1. Prior loading time for "Full Str1 NV NV NV VB RR" was ~1 minute. After having excluded the drive in Windows Defender, the loading time went down to about ~4 seconds.


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## jamieboo (Aug 4, 2016)

Hi Mcalis

Yep, running in AHCI mode on 6Gbps sata ports. And Defender is completely disabled.
EastWest are testing a new version of PLAY right now specifically aimed at reducing load times.
Considering EastWest acknowledged the loading problem as bug within PLAY, I'm amazed you've got your loading times so quick just by excluding drives from Defender! I'm going to have a look at those other Windows 10 tips you linked to though!


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## RCsound (Aug 4, 2016)

The problem is something that differ from system to system.

i'm now testing the same template in Play 4.3.4 with VEP6 in 3 machines and i get 6-7 seconds from *"init > loading all slots > init"* in one machine, 40-50 seconds from the second machine, and 30-40 seconds from the third machine

I load faster the Play template in VEP6 with Play 4.3.4 in the slowest machine than the most powerfull system running Play 4.3.4 + VEP6

same hdds, same PLAY, same host

so what the hell is going here?.


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