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Another q about Kontakt purges, Ram, Logic, VE Pro and more

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shnootre

Active Member
Hi all,

Not sure if this is really the right place for this - but the old DAW forum is gone so...

I am trying to control RAM usage... I don't think my specs are in my sig, but they are:

Macbook Pro, 16gb of ram, Yosemite
external SSD (1TB)
sample libs including Spitfire (SCS, SSB), OT (Berlin woods, woods exp a, perc and timp), Soundiron Olympus (full) and Mercury (elements), Broadway Lites, VSL SE (plus a few full libraries) and assorted other stuff.
Logic X, VE Pro 6, Kontakt 5.5.2 (full)

I am transitioning from doing my work in Finale (where I just finished orchestrating an opera AND mastering - to some extent - the vagaries of human playback) to working in Logic. While my RAM situation from within Finale (w/ VE Pro) was manageable, it seems like I'm maxing out quicker in Logic.

I am following the advice here of running a separate VE Pro instance for each instrument in my template. So far, that has me up to about 30 instruments. Most of them are running Kontakt (I haven't upgraded to latest version - too scared so far).

I purge all samples for every Kontakt instance. I notice that while that dramatically decreases the amount of Ram used as indicated in the Kontakt window, the change in OS X's Activity Monitor generally seems negligible.

With 30 instruments loaded, most of them Kontakt instances, Activity Monitor tells me that Vienna Ensemble Pro is using up 10gb of Ram. That seems like far more than the RAM totals of the instruments should add up to. I'm wondering if I'm missing a step.

I am also running several instances (in individual VE Pro instances) of Vienna Instruments 2 - and in those cases I think I'm using too much ram. I don't yet understand their "optimize" feature - and when I unload individual cells from matrices, I don't see the ram number change at all (either within VI Pro or on Activity Monitor). I think I will deal with this by just constructing new, much simpler matrices, stripped down to just the patches I'm using in this particular scene.

I also have a couple of instances of Garritan's Aria Player - just because there are a few sounds, w/ keyswitches, that are well integrated with my projects that originated in Finale (such as the Garritan concert harp that comes with GPO 5 - which has a useful and simple pedal mode, and really sounds quite nice). As far as I can tell, though, there is no way to purge unused samples from an instance of the Aria player.

I have gone through and shut down all the other stuff that was launching on startup. Usually when I fire up my computer, before loading anything, I'm using about 2.3gb of Ram, which seems okay. When I get this Logic session going w/ all the VE pro instances, my RAM total gets up to about 14.6 gb, and sometimes as high as 15. At that height, all kinds of stuff starts going wrong. I find the instances of Kontakt in VE Pro become unresponsive (clicking on their various buttons stop working - notice this particularly with Spitfire instruments).

I'm looking for additional advice on how I can streamline this (other than: get a slave - it's not feasible for me right now).

Thanks!
Click to read more...
 
16 GB is just no longer enough to run a big template, regardless of the host, unless you are only going to use Kontakt with everything purged perhaps.
 
You can't necessarily trust activity monitor for ram usage. In your instance, it could be telling you that the OS has 10GB allocated for VE Pro... this doesn't necessarily mean you are currently using all that ram. Apple changed their algorithms regarding how ram is used and it's difficult to gauge what's actually going on with usage/allocation.

But Jay's right, for your purposes, 16GB may not cut it. I take it you're running the 4-core 15" MBP? I'm running a 2-core 2015 13" w/16GB and have been pretty successful thus far. My bottleneck is CPU, of course. How's your CPU usage look?
 
I get that this isn't ideal, long term, but it's what I have at the moment, and it's close to working for me. Just trying to squeeze a little extra room out of my setup. So Kontakt is the only player w/ a real purge capacity?

CPU usage doesn't seem to be a problem as yet. When I'm running the file, I see the usage go up to 80-90% (whereas when I would playback a full finale score, I'd see it generally hover around 125%!).

Interesting about the RAM usage not necessarily being accurate. Would getting close to the limits result in the kind of Kontakt/VE Pro behavior I describe (i.e. buttons becoming unresponsive?) - playback, in general, has been smooth - even when those problems occur.
 
Also - correct me if I'm wrong, but I see adding a slave to my system as a pretty big expense. Is that right? Like thousands and not hundreds? I don't have thousands. Not to hijack my own thread...
 
shnootre said:
Also - correct me if I'm wrong, but I see adding a slave to my system as a pretty big expense. Is that right? Like thousands and not hundreds? I don't have thousands. Not to hijack my own thread...
Click to expand...


While not optimal, for just under a thousand, you could have a reasonably powerful PC with a goodly amount of RAM.
 
I don't see it mentioned, but have you experimented with reducing the preload buffer size in Kontakt?

Rob
 
Haven't touched the preload buffer - can you say a but more about that? What do I want to try doing to it?
 
shnootre said:
...(whereas when I would playback a full finale score, I'd see it generally hover around 125%!).
Click to expand...

You're seeing 125% in Logic? Have you tried adding an audio track... this really helps with CPU usage during playback. Just add an audio track and click on it during playback.
 
LamaRose said:
You're seeing 125% in Logic? Have you tried adding an audio track... this really helps with CPU usage during playback. Just add an audio track and click on it during playback.
Click to expand...
No - I saw 125% when playing from Finale. Generally around 80% from logic. Adding just a blank audio track?
 
I think Jay was the one that clued me in about the audio track trick last year, which really works... thanks, Jay!
 
Thanks from me too, Jay. I will try it. But that only addresses CPU (which isn't my current problem), right?

I am looking, I guess, for similarly unexpected/non-intuitive tricks to maximize ram usage.
 
shnootre said:
Haven't touched the preload buffer - can you say a but more about that? What do I want to try doing to it?
Click to expand...
k5-preload-jpg.6921


This happens to be the Kontakt 5.6.5 menu, but you should see something similar in your version. Click the override check box, and play with reducing the preload buffer size. You should see a reduction in memory use, but maybe a little higher in CPU use. I've read on other posts that with a SSD (I don't have any SSD's yet), some have been able to reduce it down to 6kB.
The trick would be to find the balance that works best for your template.

Rob
 

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I don't think it's at all necessary to be running a single VEPro instance per instrument, and actually that could be what is causing you problems. An instance per instrumental family is often recommended as the best setup for huge templates. In many cases just a single VEPro instance set to use all (or nearly all) of your cores will be just fine. Might reduce RAM a little but also improve general performance.
 
shnootre said:
Also - correct me if I'm wrong, but I see adding a slave to my system as a pretty big expense. Is that right? Like thousands and not hundreds? I don't have thousands. Not to hijack my own thread...
Click to expand...
PC Slave @1k or Mac Mini 2012 for 1.2k

I have a similar system - 2015 rMBP 16GB 2.2gHz, external SSDs, Logic 10.2.4, K5.5.2, VEPro5... with e.g. BWW, SSB, CS2, CinePerc, and a few extras for a full orchestra basically the machine stutters at over 15GB of ram used even all 16, and everything is painfully slow. With a full orchestra playing :( I also have a lot of auxes set up in my templates with just a few plugs.

However, with hybrid tracks and a mix of random K5 stuff from NI and elsewhere, lots of Toontracks, Albion this that etc etc the machine handles 100 plus tracks fine.
It's the big orch libs that are the RAM killers. Of course you can freeze section by section and bounce to audio but I have come to the conclusion that I can't do unrestrained full orch composing/playback on the rMBP...

By the way recommend to enable all the on/off buttons in the track header to easily disable tracks.

...I don't have my own evidence that VEPro is making life easier on my machine. I should really test with and without. I also have read that Logic handles auxes badly... then there are the settings in K, VEPro.... but I think all these roads are heading to the town of RAM! They glued it. We have to suck it! But it's also why I am seriously considering the trash can even though it is the most over priced nonsense in the universe...
 
Nite Sun said:
I don't think it's at all necessary to be running a single VEPro instance per instrument, and actually that could be what is causing you problems. An instance per instrumental family is often recommended as the best setup for huge templates. In many cases just a single VEPro instance set to use all (or nearly all) of your cores will be just fine. Might reduce RAM a little but also improve general performance.
Click to expand...
I confess this is the way I have done it - just one instance per section. But a lot of folks swear that an instance per instrument gets better results in Logic... do you have any evidence to the contrary?
 
Using Cubase here so can't speak for Logic. But I can't see how it would be any different. Perhaps I am wrong. From what I understand VEPro is optimised to effectively manage multithreading of multiple Kontakt instances. The more instances of vepro you use, the greater the CPU and ram footprint. Plus I think the multithreading handling would be less effective. Having instrumental sections or palettes in different vepro instances is mainly useful for modular style templates IMO and of course for when you go over the audio and midi output limits of vepro. Would be interested to hear if I'm wrong about any of this.
 
mc_deli said:
I confess this is the way I have done it - just one instance per section. But a lot of folks swear that an instance per instrument gets better results in Logic... do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Click to expand...

With Logic Pro, 1 instance of Kontakt or Play with a single instrument, e.g violin 1, with multiple articulations in one VE Pro 6 project connected to 1 server plug-in in Logic, gives you the best overall CPU performance and the RAM hit is negligible.

I will say it one more time and I am out: 16 GB is not enough for a modern orchestral template. It just isn't.
 
Just reporting back - I'm having some success, Jay's comment above notwithstanding. w Kontakt purge on a lot of the tracks, and going for now w/ the 1 instance per channel (based on advice I've seen give Jay give here before) - my machine seems to be doing okay. Activity monitor shows about 14.7gb of ram usage, but I'm having no playback artifacts or stuttering. And I have a LOT of channels at this point. Berlin winds, some VSL and some Spitfire brass, Berlin percussion, VSL solo voices, Olympus choir, Spitfire Chamber Strings, Ilya Efimov guitar, Galaxy piano... All the Kontakts purged, and I'm surviving and getting some results. It sounds pretty good!

The main trouble I seem to have is in Kontakt w/ the Spitfire instruments. They same to freeze up on me and become unresponsive. They still play, but I can't edit stuff like mics, ks setting, etc. Also - sometimes, when running the Spitfire Chamber strings in purge mode, the ambience seems to be stripped from the sound, regardless of mic setting. I'm guess this probably has something to do w/ ram tightness and purge mode?

Clearly, long term, I'm going to want to expand. But since expanding ram is not really simple, I'm trying to get what mileage I can in my current setup. I accept that 16gb is too low, but right now a slave isn't an option, and I've really just gotten this system together (I'm pretty new to doing extensive work w/ sampling - 6 months ago I never dreamed I'd be running out of ram w/ 16gb).
 
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