# OPUS, Kontakt, Sine and Play 6 Ram Problem



## José Herring (Jun 7, 2021)

Hello Ladies and Gents,

So odd problem started happening a few days ago. Not sure if it's always been happening and I just noticed a few days ago, but when I load up my template I think one of these plugins is misreporting ram usage or tying up a bunch of ram when loading up. Then after a few minutes of my template just sitting there the ram usage goes down to about 1/2. I've dutifully checked the ram usage in each of these sampler/players and there's no telling which one is the culprit as the usage doesn't change at all. 

Specifically when I load up my template it takes up all of the 128 gigs I have. Then after about 2 to 3 minutes the ram usage is down to 50% of that. I didn't change a thing in those few minutes. 

The new guy on the block is of course Opus but I can't really tell if it's Opus because the ram usage doesn't change. 30 gigs of Opus loads up a start and stays that way when I watch my ram usage meter on my windows 10 machine go from 100% down to 50% in two minutes. 

Maybe Opus does a self partial purge function but I can't figure it out. 

Anybody else with a similar problem?


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## Rasoul Morteza (Jun 7, 2021)

If you're on Windows you can check the amount of cached memory vs in-use vs modified to help better understand what's going on, as perhaps it's poor memory management by one of your samplers/host. Kontakt had a big issue which I reported early Sep 2020 (currently fixed), have you updated your Kontakt since then?

Also if you're on Cubase and you're running some of those as VST3, maybe it has something to do with VST3 suspension which you can toggle in preferences. Hard to tell...


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## José Herring (Jun 7, 2021)

Rasoul Morteza said:


> If you're on Windows you can check the amount of cached memory vs in-use vs modified to help better understand what's going on, as perhaps it's poor memory management by one of your samplers/host. Kontakt had a big issue which I reported early Sep 2020 (currently fixed), have you updated your Kontakt since then?
> 
> Also if you're on Cubase and you're running some of those as VST3, maybe it has something to do with VST3 suspension which you can toggle in preferences. Hard to tell...


great. How do I check the cached memory vs. modified vs inuse? Seems complicated.

I will check my Kontakt and see if it is up to date. I maybe be still using some older version 5 in my template as well. Might be time to change it to Kontakt 6.


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## Rasoul Morteza (Jun 7, 2021)




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## José Herring (Jun 7, 2021)

Rasoul Morteza said:


>


Okay interesting. So it loads up all the samples in Ram then it swaps 50 gigs over to the Cache memory. That's why my ram usage drops by nearly 50% after a few minutes. Even after a few minutes it's still transferring data to the cache. Would it be worth upgrading the ram to 256 gigs?

edit: It has now transferred almost exactly 50% of total ram memory to the catch. Apparently this is a Windows 10 feature. Curious.


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## Tralen (Jun 7, 2021)

Having cached data in memory is fine, in fact, it is beneficial to performance, because it is data that won't have to be accessed from disk when it is needed. Also, the RAM cache won't compromise your overall memory availability, as it has lower priority than active processes. If something needs the room, the cache will be reduced.

Any modern OS will try to keep the RAM fully in use, to improve performance. As the saying goes: "unused RAM is useless RAM".

I would only be worried if the paging was growing. That is the sign that your RAM is not enough and the data has to be unloaded to disk. Having a healthy RAM cache is a sign that you have more RAM than you use and not the opposite, as it only exists in surplus.


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## Rasoul Morteza (Jun 7, 2021)

José Herring said:


> Okay interesting. So it loads up all the samples in Ram then it swaps 50 gigs over to the Cache memory. That's why my ram usage drops by nearly 50% after a few minutes. Even after a few minutes it's still transferring data to the cache. Would it be worth upgrading the ram to 256 gigs?
> 
> edit: It has now transferred almost exactly 50% of total ram memory to the catch. Apparently this is a Windows 10 feature. Curious.


I don't believe that's unexpected behavior. I don't know how big your template is but caching will surely speed things up. The only issue is where the samplers or the host fails to properly release memory when it has to, for instance upon purging patches or disabling tracks (in which case your memory amount isn't the issue).

256 GB? Sure if you need it  I just don't see it being practical reaching those levels without the project falling apart from a stability or even processing point of view. There are people who do it but their setups are carefully configured, but even they sometimes succumb to audio software shitcoding.


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