# How much is enough? 16GB vs 32GB (RAM)



## Reaktor (Oct 16, 2015)

Does anyone have insight on how fast large VST-project-template can eat up 16GB? I'm just about to upgrade my DAW from 8GB to 16GB. Eight has worked for me quite well, as I mainly use just legato + staccato patches for instruments, but I have recently started to hit my limits.

I have seen quite a few users to have 32GB in their tech-signature, so just wondering if you guys have any thoughts on neccesity of 32GB on large projects, or if it's just unnecessary head room so that you don't really have to worry of memory limits at all?


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## Lassi Tani (Oct 16, 2015)

Hi! I had 16GB last year 2014, when I had Komplete 9 and EWQL Symphonic Orchestra, but when I bought EWQL Hollywood Strings and OT Berlin Woodwinds, I had to purchase 16GB more, so now I have 32GB, and it's all good for now. E.g. my orchestral template is about 28GB big, mainly because I have about 10-13 patches of each strings section. I don't always need them, but I like a template, that I just can load up, and I don't need to think about missing patches. So 32GB wouldn't be an overkill at all. Actually I've been thinking of upgrading to 64GB or an 32GB slave one day. Some here use even much more :D


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## gbar (Oct 16, 2015)

IMO 32GB is not enough. Next build, I am doing 128G, all SSD. Gotta save up for that.


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## scarred bunny (Oct 16, 2015)

Depends a lot on what libraries you use, and how you approach template building. I take the 'everything and the kitchen sink' approach and try to load as much stuff as possible, which of course eats up your RAM pretty fast. Especially if you're using libraries with multiple mic positions. If you're using more light-weight libraries (like VSL or Sample Modeling for example) and/or only load what you actually need per project, you can get by with less. If you're streaming from SSD:s, you can set the pre-load buffer lower and save some RAM that way. 

I have 32 GB and have no trouble at all using it all up, loading a crap-ton of articulations from the Berlin Series mainly. The first 16 GBs would barely be enough for just the strings. Even with only one mic loaded. 

Lately I've been experimenting with freezing and unloading instruments as needed, rather than always having everything loaded and ready to go in VEP. Seems to work alright so far, and might allow me to squeeze some more life out of my system without resorting to slavery. 

I thought I was shooting for ridiculous overkill with 32 GB when I built this system. Sure, it was a huge step up from the 8 GB I had previously, but a year and couple of library purchases later, it's not really enough anymore. If I were to build a new system today, I would definitely get 64 GB. At least. You ask me, in today's world, life with less than 32 GB is barely worth living.


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## Zhao Shen (Oct 16, 2015)

Purge samples in Kontakt is invaluable. I have 32GB of RAM and with a lot of attention to resource management, I find my CPU to be the bottleneck most of the time.


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## jononotbono (Oct 16, 2015)

I have 16gb and it is no way enough. I will upgrade to 32gb as soon as I can afford it (been buying Libraries and other PC Components like a champ recently). Once I have 32gb I am going to buy or build a new Master computer with a minimum of 64gb of RAM and Slave my current PC. Can never have enough RAM and now, never enough SSDS.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 16, 2015)

Zhao Shen said:


> Purge samples in Kontakt is invaluable.



Quoted for truth. One might not need as much RAM if this was used more often. Especially with SSDs, it's beneficial to just purge the whole instance of Kontakt and just play from there, then only the samples really used will ever be loaded.


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## Reaktor (Oct 16, 2015)

I find it a bit confusing how everyone thinks 32GB is a bare minimum. I'm not saying it's not true, it's just that my current system is only 8GB and as stated I have started hitting limits just while ago. Normal setup for me is around 10-14 instruments with only legatos & staccatos + few solos. Most instrument instances seem to take only around 200-500mb. Say that average is 500mb, so that would let me to load up around 10 patches, which is pretty close to my current state.

I'v been just freezing / unfreezing as necessary. I rarely use advanced articulations, so I don't find it mandatory to have 'em all ready to go 24/7. Still, I'd like to get head for another 8GB, of which I'd most likely fill 4GB with few more instruments and tremolos articulations for existing ones.

My current template consists of CS2 (lite ensemble, 500mb), Albion (hi strings, brasses, winds - legato/staccato, around 2-3GB), CineBrass (800-1GB), few percussion patches (such as Havoc & Apocalypse Elements, totalling ~500-1GB with defined articulations) and few solos (Emotional Cello, Friedlander Violin, totalling around 1GB), so that makes it around 6GB of stuff... and as stated, I have limited articulations from default "everything available" to "most used available".

I'd guess I'll get nice head with even that extra 8GB, but that was the point for asking whether it was overshooting if I'd be shooting from 16 to 32, even though I won't be at current situation (gotta earn those bucks first).


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## scarred bunny (Oct 16, 2015)

Well, bare minimum depends entirely on what you're doing and what your requirements are. Most people don't like having to resort to track freezing. 

If your template consists of only your most used articulations, you can get by with less. Even more so if you're comfortable with freezing and unloading as necessary. Certainly you can good work with just 16 GBs or less. 

I think that to a big extent, having more memory is more a matter of convenience than true necessity. I, for example, don't really *need* to load every articulation; I just find it convenient to do so where possible. I don't *need* to have everything loaded into memory, it's just more convenient than freezing and unfreezing back and forth where possible. Et cetera. More system resources -> fewer workarounds necessary -> fewer interruptions, faster workflow. Something like that would be my line of reasoning. More resources is handy and convenient, but there's usually ways to hack around limitations if you can stand it. I don't like workarounds, but I don't have to resort to them often enough to warrant upgrading anything just yet. Actually I suspect I could do most of what I do even on my old Core 2 / 8 GB system, although I'd probably have to freeze everything except a tiny handful of tracks at a time. Would be doable I guess, but not very fluid or fast. 

If I were you, I'd go straight for 32 GB if I could afford it at all. RAM is fairly cheap these days and there's no downside to having more. But it's not an absolute necessity per se, and you can certainly get by with less if cost is a problem.


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## chimuelo (Oct 16, 2015)

Mario is there a particular video you prefer explaining how and why to Purge using Kontakt.

Thanks

I hate wading through videos with differing opinions and workflow.


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## Zhao Shen (Oct 16, 2015)

Reaktor said:


> I find it a bit confusing how everyone thinks 32GB is a bare minimum.


It depends on what type of work you're doing though. Let's say you're a composer dedicated to hyper-realistic orchestral mockups. I'm guessing you'll need a pretty extensive template pulling from a wide range of specialized orchestral libraries - elements from the Hollywood series, BML, CineSymphony, Berlin series, and more - just to achieve the specific sound you want. At that point it's fairly easy to get above 32GB.



chimuelo said:


> Mario is there a particular video you prefer explaining how and why to Purge using Kontakt.


Purge samples is accessed in the little arrow dropdown menu in each loaded Kontakt instrument. Can't specify exactly where since I'm not on my rig at the moment, but it's right by the memory usage indicator. Once purged, the instrument will unload all of its samples (you'll see RAM usage fall to 0), and as you play live or pre-recorded passages, Kontakt will only load the samples that you use, thus saving a huge amount of memory. After all, if you're consistently playing an ostinato or something, you won't be using about 90% of the keys


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## sleepy hollow (Oct 16, 2015)

chimuelo said:


> a particular video you prefer explaining how and why to Purge using Kontakt.


Why would you need a video? It's probably the most simple feature to be found in Kontakt.










EvilDragon said:


> Especially with SSDs, it's beneficial to just purge the whole instance of Kontakt and just play from there, then only the samples really used will ever be loaded.


Yes, absolutely.


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## EastWest Lurker (Oct 16, 2015)

Bear this in mind also: a man who can lift 200 lbs lifts 100 lbs more effortlessly than one who can only lift 100 lbs. The same is true for computers in regards to RAM in my experience.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 16, 2015)

Zhao Shen said:


> Purge samples is accessed in the little arrow dropdown menu in each loaded Kontakt instrument. Can't specify exactly where since I'm not on my rig at the moment, but it's right by the memory usage indicator. Once purged, the instrument will unload all of its samples (you'll see RAM usage fall to 0), and as you play live or pre-recorded passages, Kontakt will only load the samples that you use, thus saving a huge amount of memory. After all, if you're consistently playing an ostinato or something, you won't be using about 90% of the keys



Yep. Exactly this. However I think Chimuelo won't really benefit from this since most of what he does is live performance with Kontakt (among other things). He'll want things sitting there in RAM most of the time, so that just about any note is ready to go at any time.


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## chimuelo (Oct 16, 2015)

Thanks Gents.
Good to know I wont be needing it.
Whatever max RAM limit is what I use.


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## Darthmorphling (Oct 16, 2015)

chimuelo said:


> Mario is there a particular video you prefer explaining how and why to Purge using Kontakt.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> I hate wading through videos with differing opinions and workflow.



I don't have any videos that explain why, but I recently upgraded from 12GB to 24GB and then also put in an SSD drive. At 12GB, my ram filled up rather quickly loading my spitfire libraries. Now that I have more ram and an SSD drive, my ram footprint is even less then when I had just the 12GB since my entire template is purged. I notice no lag in playing, even with several mic positions loaded.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 16, 2015)

Yeah, everyone's approach is different. I've purged for years quite happily, and yet my template is currently around 30gb in VE pro - that's about 800 tracks all ready to go, including many multis and combinations of instruments (such as LASS A, B and C). I've not come anywhere near my 64gb limit, and not sure I'm likely too now. I think a lot my future expansion will be disabled Cubase tracks - if you jumped in all the way with this method, even your 8gb would go a long way. Personally I don't want to rely on it that much, it doesn't feel solid and reliable enough and even the 3 seconds enabling a track can be irritating, but for stuff that's nice-to-have-but-not-that-commonly-used its very handy.


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## tack (Oct 16, 2015)

My fully purged BML-centric template still takes about 13GB. IMO, 16GB isn't nearly enough if you want to do orchestral work.


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## Przemek K. (Oct 16, 2015)

Well, I was also coming from a old workstation which had only 8 gig ram, but at the end I was pushing it too much.
So, at first I thought 16 gigs would be enough for now and then add more later, but decided to start with 32 gig ram because I got also EW Hollywood Orchestra Diamond. My template is about 28 gig, but I'll be adding another 32 gig ram to my workstation ( already running out of ram). One can never have enough, especially if you want (maybe in the future) libraries with multiple mic positions, very deeply sampled legato transitions and what not. I'd say start with 32 gig and see if that's enough for you now.


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## kunst91 (Oct 16, 2015)

EvilDragon said:


> Quoted for truth. One might not need as much RAM if this was used more often. Especially with SSDs, it's beneficial to just purge the whole instance of Kontakt and just play from there, then only the samples really used will ever be loaded.



When I tried this with Spitfire I got a lot of clicks and pops.


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## JohnG (Oct 16, 2015)

I use 64 GB on my daw, 24 on strings, 24 on brass, and 16 on perc / winds (but may go to 24). RAM is the cheapest way to improve performance, even if one doesn't need all of it.


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## EvilDragon (Oct 16, 2015)

Yep, depends on a lot of factors. Not all SSDs are alike, but then there's also the motherboard, the CPU, the RAM, etc. Some configs will glitch no matter what, others will fly. It's uncanny.


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## JohnG (Oct 16, 2015)

EvilDragon said:


> Some configs will glitch no matter what, others will fly. It's uncanny.



An interesting observation, borne out by my experience 100%.


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## kunst91 (Oct 16, 2015)

Yeah I've had countless headaches trying to get my 32 GB template to work.


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## chimuelo (Oct 16, 2015)

I couldn't agree more.
Years ago a fellow at audioMIDI told me that MSI boards were incredible performers and I was using Intel at the time.
Bought the Military Grade model for the first i7 and definitely had a trouble free experience.
ASRock back then sucked according to friends who enjoy striving for the best performers.
When I heard ASRock had made enough market share to expand into Gamers instead of overclockers for cheap I listened and went with their best Z87. Then started paying attention to them and still use 3 x builds, the original Z87 and 2 x Z97 builds.
You just have to ride out a success until it fails you I suppose.
Back in late 1990s my first build were always Intel, then Supermicro.
Intel boards were mission critical but they outsource now so say goodbye to the endless testing at QC.
That excellent service was slashed long ago.

Look at RAM like this.
L1/L2/L3/L4 cache is the first storage, it's on the CPU, next in the chain is RAM.
Why be restricted, max that sucker out as it's your last customization before the SSDs or in poor folks rigs HDDs.


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## Assa (Oct 16, 2015)

I personally think for an orchestral template that includes all kinds of articulations 32gb are definitely necessary, and that's also what I've got inside of my workstation. I do only purge the samples I don't use frequently (like choir, libraries for layering, some percussion etc.) Another thing I do is to reduce the instrument preload size in kontakt, that saves some ram too (you will need ssd drives to do this though). So with those possibilities I absolutely never felt limited with 32gb ram. Could possibly also live with 24, but 16 are very tight.

Then again, if you don't feel like you need the full orchestral palette (like BWWinds, running a whole kontakt instance full of instruments just to cover one flute for example, and this for 13 wind instruments in total) you really shouldn't worry so much about ram. If you use wind instruments very sparsely and you can live mostly with just staccatos and sustains for the music you do, ram won't be a big problem.

So I really think it depends on what excactly you want do with your template.


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## arielblacksmith (Oct 17, 2015)

Just upgraded from an 8gb (which I was hitting the limit at 20-24 tracks) to 32, my current template (no EW , mostly 8dio and Strezov)is about 26 gb, 

Repeating what has been said, even if you only use 10-14 tracks a project, its pretty nice to have them loaded already, speeds everything up!


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## jononotbono (Oct 17, 2015)

RAM is so cheap compared to what it was. I put 16gb of RAM in a PC build 4 yrs ago and It was around £400 (UK). Hugely expensive (for me). Now, 32gb is about £150. That's amazing and for me, a no brainer to just max out my Motherboard. Still, each to their own and all that Jazz...


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## Reaktor (Oct 17, 2015)

I'm seriously thinking of switching my desktop tower to power laptop and this is why I raised the question. 

I'v been considering this for quite a while, as at my current situation I'd really much like to have my setup be easy to move around. As I'm studying and experiment orchestration with more experienced musicians it would be beneficial to take my project with me and demonstrate / edit stuff live at where ever I happen to be.

It's been taking a while to find suitable laptop, as keypoints have been: 
1) Size or weight (ideal would be 13-14 or under 2kg, not a 17" brick 4kg brick)
2) Enough ram ("how much is enough")
3) ... and as a desktop destroyer I'd prefer to have high end GPU for gaming in near future (GTX 970m)

Just a couple of days ago I found that MSI had upgraded it's high end gaming laptop series to Skylake architecture. It's 15", but still weights only 2kg. Default setup has I7 5700HQ, 16GB of ram, 128 SSD Raid and 1TB HDD, which I would switch to 512GB SSD or use external SSD drive. Laptop has new USB3.1 port, which supposedly enables driving external SSDs at full speed.

As all-arounder it would be more powerful than my current desktop, but even if it is a Skylake based it happens to have *only* two memory slots, meaning it supports maximum of 32GB (supposedly max. memory per slot is 16GB). This is probably normal for all laptops.

In future I could of course build powerhouse again, but I just feel that something like 16GB / 32GB would easily let me to study & work for the next 2-3 years.


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## scarred bunny (Oct 17, 2015)

Doesn't sound like a bad mobile rig from the specs. But if you're shopping for laptops, be sure to do some research into the particular model's real-time performance and latency figures first. It can be pretty hit-and-miss, more so on laptops than desktops. 

If it comes with 16 GB of RAM stock, I'd just start with that and see how well it serves you. If it supports 32 GB, you can always upgrade it later if needed. For starters getting a bigger than 128 GB SSD would be a bigger priority, I would think.


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## NYC Composer (Oct 18, 2015)

I have a 34 gig template over two machines. The biggest fly in my ointment is Play. I wish to hell I could purge samples in Play- it would make my working life a lot simpler.


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## EastWest Lurker (Oct 18, 2015)

NYC Composer said:


> I have a 34 gig template over two machines. The biggest fly in my ointment is Play. I wish to hell I could purge samples in Play- it would make my working life a lot simpler.




I have not tried it but I believe you can, Larry. Here is what was written on the SOL forum:

"The way it works is that PLAY sets a flag on a sample each time that sample plays. And when you hit the Purge button on an instrument (meaning on an open .ewi file) all the unused samples are unloaded from memory.

Therefore, to use this feature you have to start with all samples loaded and then play the track at least once. As each sample is played, PLAY keeps track of those samples it uses. Then and only then, can you click on the Purge button to unload the unused samples.

Note that if you add or change a note, or even if you just change its velocity, there's the risk that the new note will not be sounded the next time you play the piece because the new note was purged. The way to solve that problem is to Reload the samples, Reset the flags (to their "unused" status), replay the whole track, and then Purge the samples again.

Note that it doesn't matter whether you play the track by itself or part of the whole piece. The flags get set either way for every sample played.

The use of the Purge feature works best in a sequencer because it will always play the same notes with the same velocities, therefore, the same samples. Playing from a keyboard, you're more likely to make variations--at least in the velocities--each time you play.

When I updated the PLAY System manual to include the new features of version 1.1, I wrote an extensive description of the Purge feature. If you downloaded the 1.1 upgrade, make sure you check out the new manual which was installed on your hard drive along with the software."


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## handz (Oct 18, 2015)

64 or 128 - you will need a better motherboard but 32 is really a so so solution. I have 24 on current machine and it really is not enough.


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## chimuelo (Oct 18, 2015)

NYC Composer said:


> I have a 34 gig template over two machines. The biggest fly in my ointment is Play. I wish to hell I could purge samples in Play- it would make my working life a lot simpler.



Larry have you tried an M.2 or RAID 0 x 2 SSD's...?

I spent a lot of bread on this stuff just to conclude that I don't need more than 3.6GHz, or Streaming at more than 800MBps/120k Random IOps.

It's okay. I wasted 1500 bucks on the these NVMe M.2s. They are bad ass for games and everything else, but I can't seem to see any better results with anything past 7-800MBps.
I had a Plextor M.2 on a PCI-e 2X, not the direct to CPU 4X speeds, and PLAY did improve, but nothing past 7-800MBps makes a difference with my ASIO stuff.

I use 50% of the RAM installed, 40% of the CPU, and not on all cores even, 40% of my DSP and it's as good as it gets.

Next time I use an all Kontakt build I can use those cheap ass MX-100s from Crucial and be just fine with an i5 CPU too.


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## NYC Composer (Oct 18, 2015)

Jay- thanks for the info. I was totally unaware of it.

However, though a step in the right direction , it sounds completely impractical, and unfortunately is in no way comparable to the purge feature in Kontakt, which is one simple command and a save. 

I hold out hope that eventually Play will catch up and match the excellence of the sampled material.


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## NYC Composer (Oct 18, 2015)

Chim- nope, just standard Crucials and Samsungs, but that's not my bottleneck. I just can't fit the number of Play samples into my template that I'd like, even though I purge all my Kontakt stuff. I use EWLQSO perc, HS and HB Gold and Symphonic Choirs in my template, and along with other stuff I use, like Omni, Vienna Winds, etc, I'm constantly on the bleeding edge of RAM. I find Play does not like to be stressed to the limit either, as I get little freezes in the GUI and various other weirdness. I suspect part of that is Play's traditional dislike of OSX as well, but I also suspect that a practical purge approach would (and hopefully will someday) address this.

A PC slave would solve most of this as well, but I find my system unwieldy enough with two computers.


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## Kejero (Oct 19, 2015)

I've got 64GB RAM and I'd honestly feel a little safer with 128GB (although I couldn't justify the extra cost, not just the RAM alone, but also a motherboard to support it -- options are limited). Then again, I've had a few heavy projects where I was hovering around 60GB, and it would seem other problems start popping up in these projects that would probably only get worse the more instruments I'd load. Cubase noticably gets more unstable with bigger projects, and unfortunately the Windows log events are rarely of any help (well there's only one culprit I've identified, which I'm not ready to kick out of my template just yet). But my point is, above 64GB I'd probably seriously consider slaves for loading more samples, giving my DAW some breathing space.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 19, 2015)

IMO when most people say "purged" these days they mean the Kontakt version of purged, which - crucially - allows for on-the-fly streaming on playback (and is one-click to initially set). Most libraries on good systems with SSDs seem to play back completely normally - what an incredible age we live in. So whilst Play technically does have a purge feature, it's massively less useful than Kontakt's. 

When folks first discover the wonders of Kontakt's purge, they tend to over-estimate the RAM savings (I know I did) - typically its about a third in my experience. So it's a very useful tool for those on a RAM budget, but not as useful as Cubase's disable tracks - if you're feeling brave enough to jump in there, anyway. That really does save pretty much the entire RAM load.


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## tack (Oct 19, 2015)

Guy Rowland said:


> So it's a very useful tool for those on a RAM budget, but not as useful as Cubase's disable tracks - if you're feeling brave enough to jump in there, anyway. That really does save pretty much the entire RAM load.


The most extreme version of this would be to have one Kontakt instance per instrument. Then you could enable/disable individual instruments as you need them. But now you've got a second problem: the proliferation of Kontakt instances will in turn eat up memory. IIRC it's about 60MB per Kontakt instance.

My template now has one Kontakt instance per instrument family (more or less), with some of my less used groups disabled at the track level. But this isn't as lean as it might be. For example, my strings group has a second instance of each section which I sometimes use, but not always, so it's wasteful to have those always loaded.

I'm looking at a blended/hybrid approach where the core instruments I commonly use are routed to shared Kontakt instances, and then the things I use on demand will be done put into separate Kontakt instances whose tracks are disabled by default. I just need to think about the the routing and presentation aspect of this, since I really do want that (e.g.) second Mural V2 patch right below my primary V2 patch in the track view in my DAW, even though my primary V2 patch is hosted in the same Kontakt instance as my primary V1, Vla, Vc, etc. patches.

I am pretty sure it's all perfectly doable (in Reaper at least), I just need to completely change how I'm currently doing my routing and thoroughly gut my current template.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 19, 2015)

Is that 50mb disabled, Tack? Didn't think it was anything like that high. Unfornately one of the glitchiest parts of disable / enable is multiple outputs, it sort of guides you down the 1 instrument / 1 instance route.


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## Darthmorphling (Oct 19, 2015)

tack said:


> I'm looking at a blended/hybrid approach where the core instruments I commonly use are routed to shared Kontakt instances, and then the things I use on demand will be done put into separate Kontakt instances whose tracks are disabled by default. I just need to think about the the routing and presentation aspect of this, since I really do want that (e.g.) second Mural V2 patch right below my primary V2 patch in the track view in my DAW, even though my primary V2 patch is hosted in the same Kontakt instance as my primary V1, Vla, Vc, etc. patches.
> 
> I am pretty sure it's all perfectly doable (in Reaper at least), I just need to completely change how I'm currently doing my routing and thoroughly gut my current template.



The SWS extensions have two actions that will work for you. See the attached picture. You can set them for either keystrokes or assign a button. Then in the TCP, simply have your main Mural V2 patch and your alternate Mural V2 patch together. Have one routed to the main Kontakt instance, and the alternate routed to the alternate one that has been set offline.

I have to say that by doing this you aren't really saving any resources though. Kontakt doesn't load the samples twice if they are in the same instance. Of course you may know this already and have reasons so the actions will do what you need.


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## Darthmorphling (Oct 19, 2015)

Guy Rowland said:


> Is that 50mb disabled, Tack? Didn't think it was anything like that high. Unfornately one of the glitchiest parts of disable / enable is multiple outputs, it sort of guides you down the 1 instrument / 1 instance route.



In your DAW does disabling the Kontakt instance disable the entire track? In the Reaper method I described above, it simply disables Kontakt and keeps the track enabled with all routing intact.


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## Darthmorphling (Oct 19, 2015)

I found another action in Reaper that toggles the FX offline/online

search for "toggle FX"


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 19, 2015)

Darthmorphling said:


> In your DAW does disabling the Kontakt instance disable the entire track? In the Reaper method I described above, it simply disables Kontakt and keeps the track enabled with all routing intact.



It disables the entire track. Routing etc is all preserved when re-enabled (in theory).

I'm away from base at the mo, curious to know what ram is used in a disabled Kontakt instance in Cubase. Definitely something of course, just not sure what.


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## JCmusik08 (Oct 19, 2015)

I run 16gb ram on a laptop and its defintely enough memory for simple pieces. You can't run an overkill template on it, but you can get work done. However if your computer supports 32gb (mine doesnt), then go for the 32! Ram is cheaper than ever


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## Reaktor (Oct 19, 2015)

Darthmorphling said:


> I found another action in Reaper that toggles the FX offline/online
> 
> search for "toggle FX"



Nice to see some low-end DAW users. By that don't take me wrong, I was really surprised by how far Reaper has gone as minor competitor. I actually chose it to be the platform for introducing young musicians to DAW recording (as its easy to recommend by the way they sell it).

How is it working for you as midi composing DAW? It seemed a bit messy to me, as most configurations / settings seemed like they were shot with shotgun all over and separate midi pianoroll seemed a little out of place (as it wasn't integrated with main window).

I'v used Cubase and Cakewalk (way back before it became Sonar), but my poison for over 10 years has been FL Studio. Back then it was a bang-for-buck thing, and FL was great for loop-biaised structuring. I just grew accustomed to it, even if it is part of those "minor competitors" against professional DAWs.

FL's main problem has been how it handles midi, especially the modwheel. It's really irritating that there is no out-of-the-box solution for pairing MW to active track. Best I have discovered is probably by using midiout plugin to map all those kontakts & patches.


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## Darthmorphling (Oct 19, 2015)

Reaper's midi works quite well for me. I'm sure there are things I am missing that it could do better, but so far I haven't come across anything I need that it can't do.


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## scarred bunny (Oct 20, 2015)

"Reaper is good", and other treasonous statements: 

Over the years Reaper has evloved from my least favorite application in the known universe into something really great. I still find the default behavior pretty awkward in many ways, so I've had to spend a lot of time customizing the crap out of it to bend it to my will where appropriate (and you can change and customize basically anything and everything). But I'm finding more and more that it's actually really good and fast in use. Even the midi side of things, which is the most common complaint that I've seen - I think the multi-track piano roll is really great, and so far I don't think I've found anything that I needed but couldn't figure out how to do. It also has a few special tricks up its sleeve that I haven't seen elsewhere. 

Also, in terms of resource use, it's so efficient it's almost scary. With truly excellent implementations of track freeze / offline FX to further conserve resources when needed. I can't get it to play nice with VEP, but I'm not sure I really need that anymore... and VEP does introduce its own set of complications. If anyone is concerned about resource efficiency, Reaper is a pretty strong candidate for that reason alone. 

I'm still relatively new to it, so we'll see how this works out in the long run. But so far, and I never thought I'd say this: I have barely touched Cubase in about a month and half now. And to be honest, so far I haven't missed it very much.


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## tack (Oct 20, 2015)

Darthmorphling said:


> I have to say that by doing this you aren't really saving any resources though. Kontakt doesn't load the samples twice if they are in the same instance. Of course you may know this already and have reasons so the actions will do what you need.


I know that the _samples _aren't loaded twice, yeah, but the memory usage story doesn't end at samples. Indeed, a fully purged Mural V1 Legato patch uses about 250MB for every instance loaded. When you have a lot of these duplicate or seldom used patches, it really adds up in your template.



Guy Rowland said:


> Is that 50mb disabled, Tack? Didn't think it was anything like that high. Unfornately one of the glitchiest parts of disable / enable is multiple outputs, it sort of guides you down the 1 instrument / 1 instance route.


No it's ~50MB loaded bare. Of course if disabled the memory consumption is quite low. (Not really measurable in Reaper.) My only point was that if you want to go with a Kontakt instance per instrument, you pay a ~50MB hit for each instrument when you enable it, as opposed to amortizing that cost over multiple patches in a shared Kontakt instance.

That's why a hybrid approach makes sense. Use shared Kontakt instances for all the instruments you always want loaded and ready, but move the lesser used patches to dedicated Kontakt instances that are by default disabled.


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## tack (Oct 20, 2015)

Darthmorphling said:


> I found another action in Reaper that toggles the FX offline/online


Yeah this the action I use, and have it bound to a shortcut key (^F).


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## Darthmorphling (Oct 20, 2015)

tack said:


> I know that the _samples _aren't loaded twice, yeah, but the memory usage story doesn't end at samples. Indeed, a fully purged Mural V1 Legato patch uses about 250MB for every instance loaded. When you have a lot of these duplicate or seldom used patches, it really adds up in your template.
> 
> 
> No it's ~50MB loaded bare. Of course if disabled the memory consumption is quite low. (Not really measurable in Reaper.) My only point was that if you want to go with a Kontakt instance per instrument, you pay a ~50MB hit for each instrument when you enable it, as opposed to amortizing that cost over multiple patches in a shared Kontakt instance.
> ...



This is something I didn't realize. Just tested using Albion 1 and one purged instance of the Lo Strings and there was about 150MB still used according to Reaper's performance meter. Thanks for the tip! I will take that into account when I test out Cubase. Couldn't resist the deal Musician's Friends is having.


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## tack (Oct 20, 2015)

Darthmorphling said:


> This is something I didn't realize. Just tested using Albion 1 and one purged instance of the Lo Strings and there was about 150MB still used according to Reaper's performance meter.


On the other hand, it occurs to me that if the duplicate instances of the patches aren't in the same Kontakt instance, then the samples _will_ be loaded twice. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.


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## Guy Rowland (Oct 20, 2015)

tack said:


> No it's ~50MB loaded bare. Of course if disabled the memory consumption is quite low. (Not really measurable in Reaper.) My only point was that if you want to go with a Kontakt instance per instrument, you pay a ~50MB hit for each instrument when you enable it, as opposed to amortizing that cost over multiple patches in a shared Kontakt instance.
> 
> That's why a hybrid approach makes sense. Use shared Kontakt instances for all the instruments you always want loaded and ready, but move the lesser used patches to dedicated Kontakt instances that are by default disabled.



Ah gotya. Still. If you're talking 1,000 odd tracks, you may well only use about 50 = 2.5gb. Add on your in-use RAM and it's still staggeringly low really. I think other considerations come into play - that wait for your real bread and butter stuff is a little tedious, and more than that, the fact it's still a little flaky and unpredictable is reason to not bet the whole farm on it just yet.

Incidentally, do a test on ram sharing across different instances. I have a hazy recollection of testing this a few years ago and being very surprised to discover that, in fact, they do share RAM.


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## Darthmorphling (Oct 20, 2015)

tack said:


> On the other hand, it occurs to me that if the duplicate instances of the patches aren't in the same Kontakt instance, then the samples _will_ be loaded twice. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.



I think you are better off the way you are doing it. Look at the attached picture. Admittedly I used Albion for this, but the percentages should be the same. If you have multiple patches in that extra instance, and it is offline, I think your savings are much higher.

1 track fully purged 302MB
1 track offline 108MB
Savings 65ish %

2 patches purged same instance 382MB
same patches offline 114 MB
savings 70ish %

Two instances each with 1 patch
One instance purged, but online.
One instance offline 339MB
2 patches purged same instance 382MB
Savings 22ish %


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## tack (Oct 20, 2015)

Guy Rowland said:


> Incidentally, do a test on ram sharing across different instances. I have a hazy recollection of testing this a few years ago and being very surprised to discover that, in fact, they do share RAM.


Just tested. Indeed, the samples are shared across separate Kontakt instances, but only when those instances are running within the same process. When running in separate processes (such as with Reaper's VST bridging mode) then the samples are duplicated in memory, each in their separate processes.

It'd have been cool to see Kontakt using shared memory here. I haven't been super happy with Kontakt's stability and it regularly enough (a couple times a week) causes Reaper to self destruct. I've been mulling over the idea of forcing all VSTs into separate processes via Reaper's bridging to at least contain Kontakt crashes.

I guess I just need to pick my poison.


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## evilantal (Oct 26, 2015)

chimuelo said:


> Thanks Gents.
> Good to know I wont be needing it.
> Whatever max RAM limit is what I use.



I think you actually would benefit, because you're also using super fast M2 SSD's. I think you could get by with loading just samples you use on the fly even in a live environment.
Just try it, purge all samples in Kontakt and try to play through a set.


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## Reaktor (Oct 26, 2015)

I'm actually having a bit of trouble on choosing correct laptop. Initially I was graving for MSI GS60 6QE. Basically it's a thin Skylake with powerful CPU & GPU (purely for entertainment). I was already going to order it, but about a week ago I noticed that MSI was going to release MSI GS40 6QE, which has exactly same specs as GS60, except it's an inch smaller and weights only 1.6kg (3.52 pounds).

GS40 seem to be extremely portable. I'm still waiting for reviews to land, because I want to make sure that it doesn't have heating problems which most thin sub 15" powerhouses have.

Now, the question is: Model which is currently being shipped in Finland has only 8gb of DDR4. Both GS40 and GS60 have only two(!) SO-DIMM slots. Even though Skylake supports 16gb in one slot, giving max 32gb, it looks like only 2x16 kit is available from Corsair and to my eye it seems to have terrible latency (15-15-15-36) values compared to most competing smaller kits (such as 2x8). Basically there ain't kits available to go for 32gb max.

Number magic, such as being theoratically able to drive 12 000 MB/s doesn't tell me anything. Could someone confirm how much of a difference would 8-8-8-16 make vs 15-15-15-36? How noticable is it in real usage? Which one makes most difference, amount of RAM or how fast it performs?

I'm wondering if it would be an option to use just 16GB and run samples directly from M.2 SSD , which is capable of reading speeds of over 2000MB/s (basically 3-4 x faster than SATA3 SSD).

If 16GB would be my limit due to hardware restrictions, I wonder how far could I get with "only" 16GB and save Kontakt patches as purged (simply load samples as needed). For an example Albion One Sordino Legato is somewhere around ~400-700MB with four articulations and 4 mics... I guess I could easily purge and enable stuff from fly without even noticing loading of articulations / mics (most likely dropping memory requirement to atleast half)?


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## jononotbono (Nov 7, 2015)

I just loaded up a Strings Legato Patch in Spitfire Albion One. The patch loaded 1.45gb of RAM for this one patch - with all 4 Mic Positions turned on (My samples are on a Samsung 850 Evo SSD). I then Purged all Samples and played the same thing I played whilst not being Purged. It used 5.65mb of RAM. HUGE difference. Purging Samples is definitely the way forward if you don't have masses of RAM and have an SSD!


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## tack (Nov 7, 2015)

jononotbono said:


> It used 5.65mb of RAM. HUGE difference. Purging Samples is definitely the way forward if you don't have masses of RAM and have an SSD!


Are you sure you're measuring that right? I find that Spitfire's legato patches tend to use up a few hundred MB even fully purged. I just checked now and the Albion ONE Strings legato patch, fully purged, is using 280MB on my system.


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## jononotbono (Nov 7, 2015)

I just played something all 4 Mic Positions, just a short and basic String melody of about 7 notes and it's saying 11.28mb after purging (Strings Legato.nki). 1.45gb of RAM before purging. I have Kontakt 5 Instrument Preload Buffer Size set to 6kb (thanks Evil Dragon for that advice).


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## tack (Nov 7, 2015)

jononotbono said:


> I just played something all 4 Mic Positions, just a short and basic String melody of about 7 notes and it's saying 11.28mb after purging (Strings Legato.nki).


Ah you're measuring it by the Memory field in the Kontakt instrument. That just tells you memory used by samples, but the NKI can (and does) use memory beyond that. Use your DAW or OS's memory meter to get the full picture.


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## jononotbono (Nov 8, 2015)

tack said:


> Ah you're measuring it by the Memory field in the Kontakt instrument. That just tells you memory used by samples, but the NKI can (and does) use memory beyond that. Use your DAW or OS's memory meter to get the full picture.



Ok, yes I shall check in task manager. I would have thought the Kontakt Memory Field would just represent how much RAM is being used in Samples and anything else would mainly be CPU? Surely an empty instance of Kontakt or an instance of Kontakt with a Purged Sample Library wouldn't use much RAM? I'm intrigued now and will have a look when in the Music Lab later.

Oh, and this still doesn't change my opinion. The more RAM the better. At least a Terabyte.


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## tack (Nov 8, 2015)

jononotbono said:


> Surely an empty instance of Kontakt or an instance of Kontakt with a Purged Sample Library wouldn't use much RAM? I'm intrigued now and will have a look when in the Music Lab later.


Someone like @EvilDragon would know the details better, but some NKIs use quite a lot of ram outside samples. The Spitfire multipatches in particular, with many articulations and mic positions, have a high number of groups, which use a surprising amount of memory (NI has a lot of room for improvement there).


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## jononotbono (Nov 8, 2015)

tack said:


> Someone like @EvilDragon would know the details better, but some NKIs use quite a lot of ram outside samples. The Spitfire multipatches in particular, with many articulations and mic positions, have a high number of groups, which use a surprising amount of memory (NI has a lot of room for improvement there).


 I actually didn't realise this. I apologise for my ignorance haha!


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