# East west play on mac catalina



## martindou (Jan 1, 2021)

hI Guys,

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

im running Mac Catalina i7 Macbook 2015......just moved from PC.
Added my East West Libraries.
Spitfire and NI work perfectly in Cubase and Ableton.
East West Play cuts out on long legato passages.
Tried reinstall.Scrubbed the library data.
Downloaded directly for East West too.
Nothing helps..on PC it worked fine ???
Dunno what to do...anyone any ideas.
The Midicontrollers both work but cut out the length.
Soundcard is Appolo Twin UA....maybe a core audio problem ???
Midi....midi driver ??? I use a KORG TAKTILE TRITON and a little AP32

MARTIN


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## gst98 (Jan 1, 2021)

This isn't really a play issue, nor catalina. Which patches are you using? and where are you playing the samples from.

This is usually happening because you are streaming the samples, and hollywood patches can be 10 times larger than anyone else's legato patches. Its cutting out because it can't load the samples in time , or your CPU can't process that many voices, so you need to disable "stream from disk" in play drop down menu. But these issues can be helped by using an SSD or the smaller patches with a single mic. As a result you need plenty of RAM and a CPU to go with it. 

Otherwise, get in contact with EW support, they have some of the best support around.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jan 1, 2021)

Submit a support ticket. I’m on Catalina, 2013 MB Pro i7. It has nothing to do with steaming, as I’ve never encountered this....even with demanding projects using Legatos from HS Gold.

kind of sounds like an interface thing. Have you tried just using the onboard audio to see if it happens?

Are you running the samples from an external SSD?


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## gst98 (Jan 1, 2021)

Jeremy Spencer said:


> It has nothing to do with steaming, as I’ve never encountered this


Confirmed by EW support that is infact to do with streaming and overall CPU usage when I encountered these issues.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jan 1, 2021)

gst98 said:


> Confirmed by EW support that is infact to do with streaming and overall CPU usage when I encountered these issues.



Interesting. Don’t know why I’ve never experienced this. Maybe it’s when using the powerful legato patches? I don’t use these.


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## gst98 (Jan 1, 2021)

Jeremy Spencer said:


> Interesting. Don’t know why I’ve never experienced this. Maybe it’s when using the powerful legato patches? I don’t use these.



Im using diamond, so the 24-bit can’t be helping. But it was worst using multiple mics on powerful patches. It’s not just the legatos that were bad, but if you used powerful sustains and played 3 or 4 parts chords where the voice count gets very high.

I could get it to happen in a fresh project with 1 or 2 instrument tracks, but turning off sample streaming helped a lot. But it didn’t fix the problem entirely, which is why support said it was not just a problem with streaming but that my CPU wasn’t powerful enough. 

I wasn’t really sure what to think because I’m on a 2020 10 core iMac which has the highest single core performance of anything Apple make (other than m1) and the multi-core really isn’t much higher on the Mac Pro. Even happened using in built SSD. Makes me think that the powerful patches still aren’t that feasible on new hardware. 

Strange thing is it didn’t always happen. Sometimes I could get away with more than others.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jan 1, 2021)

Weird! I’m only using Gold, so that’s probably why I’ve never encountered this. You definitely have a capable Mac.


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## jbuhler (Jan 1, 2021)

gst98 said:


> Im using diamond, so the 24-bit can’t be helping. But it was worst using multiple mics on powerful patches. It’s not just the legatos that were bad, but if you used powerful sustains and played 3 or 4 parts chords where the voice count gets very high.
> 
> I could get it to happen in a fresh project with 1 or 2 instrument tracks, but turning off sample streaming helped a lot. But it didn’t fix the problem entirely, which is why support said it was not just a problem with streaming but that my CPU wasn’t powerful enough.
> 
> ...


How much RAM do you have and what sort of buffer are you using? I‘m wondering because I have this same machine and I have been tempted by HS.


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## T-LeffoH (Jan 1, 2021)

Are you exceeding voice threshold at all?

If you're exceeding the threshold, Play will automatically drop out voices.

Whenever I load a new Play instrument into my template, I'll generally increase this to a higher number and I recall doing this on almost all my Hollywood Strings legato patches.


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## gst98 (Jan 2, 2021)

jbuhler said:


> How much RAM do you have and what sort of buffer are you using? I‘m wondering because I have this same machine and I have been tempted by HS.


80gb. usually 256 but I've tried it on tha max settings and it made very little difference. It's really just the most extreme of the powerful patches which are 10gb per mic position (this is slur+port+bc legato in 1 patch). And unsurprisingly trying to play with multiple mic positions at that size still isn't feasible. Especially streaming. The mistake I made when I first started using HWO was looking at the memory readout on the GUI, and thinking that with 3 mics up, 5gb loaded into RAM was a big patch. And then one day I looked at the settings and realised that was while streaming, and I was in fact playing 30gb of samples from disk.

So I just use the lighter patches which can still be 2gb per legato mic pos. I doubt there is much of an audible difference, and I rarely use portamento and bc legato so I don't always need those loaded.

edit: just tried loading 30gb of violin legato mics into RAM and it was playing back very smoothly.



T-LeffoH said:


> Are you exceeding voice threshold at all?
> 
> If you're exceeding the threshold, Play will automatically drop out voices.
> 
> Whenever I load a new Play instrument into my template, I'll generally increase this to a higher number and I recall doing this on almost all my Hollywood Strings legato patches.


Yes, forgot to say there is a setting in Play to increase maximum voice count that helps out.


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jan 2, 2021)

gst98 said:


> 80gb. usually 256 but I've tried it on tha max settings and it made very little difference. It's really just the most extreme of the powerful patches which are 10gb per mic position (this is slur+port+bc legato in 1 patch). And unsurprisingly trying to play with multiple mic positions at that size still isn't feasible. Especially streaming. The mistake I made when I first started using HWO was looking at the memory readout on the GUI, and thinking that with 3 mics up, 5gb loaded into RAM was a big patch. And then one day I looked at the settings and realised that was while streaming, and I was in fact playing 30gb of samples from disk.
> 
> So I just use the lighter patches which can still be 2gb per legato mic pos. I doubt there is much of an audible difference, and I rarely use portamento and bc legato so I don't always need those loaded.
> 
> ...



Although I use Gold, I can easily use legatos from several sections in unison without issue...alongside several other HS/HB tracks and BCCSO, etc. And this is with only 16GB. Sounds like you have something else going on with your system.


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