I stand by 350. I've been argued against before about my figures only to come out winning. For those of you not sure who to listen to, just stay open, and let's wait until we get to the end of this tunnel.

Evan Evans

Thanks for testing that Cyril. however that was wahat I did within the first 5 minutes of my discovery. I quickly outgrew it.

On to MIDI I/O with Logic in Loop Play.

Evan Evans

ok, evan, i removed 2 GB of RAM and fired up my previous song with 50 simultaneous parts going (song with 3.4 GB VM used, 300 MB Real Memory) and tried repeatedly to play it back without luck. i started playback 70 times but never got beyond the 5th bar. so i gave up.

so then i opened my version of the song which wouldn't play a 7th track (same song, only 7 midi parts) and i kept trying to play it back and lo and behold, after the 10th time, it played. you are correct about OSX loading the needed files into RAM.

i was then able to add parts on the remaining tracks, up to 50. which was really great. so i saved the song and reopened it - and couldn't get the thing to playback, even after another 70 attempts. close, reboot, reopen - can't get to play after 70 attempts.

so i removed 12 instruments, leaving 38 (song now 2.88 GB VM, 636 MB Real Mem) and saved as a new song. reopened it and was able to play it back after 25 starts. closed and reopened and it took 43 starts, but i could play it back eventually. closed and reopened, and it took 33 starts.

for the record, all of these songs played back on the first attempt with 4 GB of RAM in the machine. so while i might be inclined to believe your quote above regarding composition - that 5 playbacks will set memory for need - i definitely don't when it comes time to reopen the song and get to work.

there were, of course, several mystery crashes when working on the songs with only 2 GB, too. one when saving. one when adding an instrument (it wasn't a VM issue as the song had 750MB of VM space left and the file was only adding around 80MB). one when screen changing. another that i can't remember the cause.

so i still hold that once you start swapping files, you lose more than you gain.

but if you can get even a second logic to run as merely a giant sampler - giving users another 64 instruments and 3+ GB of sample load before swapping - then 8 GB of RAM might be useful.

and that would mean something big, i think. IMO, 300 instruments spread across 5 logic instances - even if it is possible - will exist as an experiment, not as a real world workflow. disk swapping, especially at that level, is still not desirable.

at least not by me. but keep up the good work - i'm learning something daily again.

as always - best of luck

by the way - is it possible for you to check the VSIZE and RSIZE numbers for your 40 instrument song in TOP? i'd be curious how much disk swapping is really happening there - and how many false starts it takes to play the thing back once you reopen it.

also - have you checked with Oink about environment stuff? he can really save you from anguish and false starts.

8track,

I'm just wondering: are you running Panther?

It seems vm usage has been changed quite dramatically. I know that when I was using Jaguar, my system basically never paged out with 1 GB physical RAM. I wasn't loading massive amounts of samples, not enough to "technically" require a pageout. However, in Panther it starts paging out _long_ before I load enough to even touch the 1 GB physical memory. So, I did some research, and it looks as though Panther now dynamically pages-out processes continually, by priority. Maybe it always did, but I certainly didn't observe it this dramatically before.
It follows, then, that perhaps evan is seeing the dynamic paging out of ram, thus allowing all sample heads to be prioritized and kept in physical memory...? yes, no, possible?

Stupid8track,

Also, lookup "renice" on the internet. I think you'll get that song to play waaay before 70 attempts. And cehckout your vnodes, etc. These hurdles are minor.

And as far as Sample Instrument latency, this can be compensated for if need be. Yes, alittle less than professional, but maybe just fine.

Evan Evans

> as far as Sample Instrument latency, this can be compensated for if need be. Yes, alittle less than professional, but maybe just fine.

Given that you manage to pipe all MIDI streams into the respective Logic instances, you can patch 4x16 channels per Logic through Channel Splitters to 64 EXSs. Since all EXSs would suffer from the environment latency, you would need to resort to mouse input only. No realtime playing from the keyboard anymore.

Christian

[URL=http://uk.geocities.com/christianobermaier/Gearlist.htm]gear list [/URL] studio pics show reel

Yeah, it has always been like this. Many tears have been shed over this issue. It is essentially this what keeps folks from using Logic as an absolute killer VSTi host for realtime on-stage work.

As i mentioned, the IO trick works, but you're not going to get serious mileage out of this.

Christian

[URL=http://uk.geocities.com/christianobermaier/Gearlist.htm]gear list [/URL] studio pics show reel

jbm

yes, i'm on panther (10.3.2). i don't think i've even tried jaguar for heavy EXS VSL use because, at the time, there were all those problems playing multiple instruments and then the open file limits.

evan



so it stands to reason that self prioritization gets geometrically worse with greater swapping. so we are saying the same thing - swapping is bad for streaming. can be used in emergency/desperation, but with limits.

in the end, with the performance hit i see with swapping and the speed with which the samplemerged instruments load, i think most people will choose not to swap just to have everything pre-loaded.



i guess it depends on the instruments, really. in the end, there will be a sample load limit, which can be divided up into instruments as desired by the user. in that respect, what might be 100 to me, could be 250 to you. with the stuff i've been doing, i run out of RAM at 50 or so instruments - but you might consider them to be more than 50 instruments as some are ALL, some are dynamic multi-layered, etc.



not sure it is a piece of cake - it appears to be anything but. and while i think Oink is an environment whiz, so is christian. and what christian says about no one being able to make logic work as a simple VSTi host is correct, from what i've seen. but if anyone can help you with this, it would be christian and Oink. if they can't, beware.



yes, that was quite a good work around - i don't mean to diminish your abilities or your history. both are well established (though that comment about a G5 with EXS/VSL equalling 20+ gigastudios was "just a bit outside") i just don't think this one is going to work out - for a series of reasons. swapping being one of them.



for the record, when i switched to 2 GB RAM, i reset my maxvnodes, maxfiles, and maxfilesperproc settings to 384000, 128000, 96000 respectively upon each reboot. i don't think my trouble was the vnodes.

anyway, i wish you the best of luck and, if anyone can get it done, you can. i just don't think anyone can get it done. IMO, our best hope is still 64 bit OS and 64 bit Logic. until then, 64 instruments and 3.2 GB of sample load is it. and a G5 with 4GB RAM eliminates swapping.

well evan, i am a VERY happy man because you are absolutely correct about OS X and Virtual Memory and disk swapping. i mean, 100 percent. i couldn't have been more wrong. i have finally seen the light.

quickly - i pulled out 2 GB of RAM and tried again to open and play that 50 instrument song and couldn't after 70 attempts to start it. so i rebooted, reset all the maxfiles, launched logic and reset the renice setting to -18, opened the song and still couldn't get it to play after 70 attempts to start it. i have no idea why.

anyway, i put the other 2 GB back in the machine and rebooted and opened the 50 instrument song - played fine, of course. so then i closed it and created a new song with non-samplemerged legato instruments (coming from a different drive to be sure i didn't repeat any). loaded 12 - the 13h gave me the too many open files error. played parts on all 12. then loaded the 50 instrument song.

and after 7 starts, it played. while the 12 instrument song was playing, too. so i opened a 3rd logic instance and added one Violin All instrument before i ran out of Virtual Memory. but i put a part on that and it played too. i could hear them all at the same time as they were all using the same audio driver.

rebooted the machine, reloaded the songs, and all played fine (the 50 instrument song required 7 starts, but so what). in fact, Virtual Memory was more efficient this time and i added 2 more instruments (for a total of 65) and all played.

so you are absolutely correct. i have no idea why i wasn't able to achieve this with only 2 GB of RAM - undoubtedly user error of some kind, or maybe a RAM thing. i don't know. but it works. thank you for your patience and assistance.

now for the REALLY good news (at least for me):

the logic control works as a global controller. using it, when i hit play - ALL logic instances start and stop together, synchornized from the same point in the song. when i use the scrub wheel, i scrub through all the songs together - when i lower the master fader, the volume in all logics lowers, etc.

and since all instances are using the same audio driver and i can hear them all playing back at once, i can just select any track in the arrange window of any of the logics and hit record in the transport (not on the LC, unless i want to record on that channel in all the logics at once) and compose away.

as it turns out, the extra logic's really are just additional AI channels for composing. no environment latency or audio clocking issues or sync issues to worry about.

so now i can set up separate Logic songs, each with a separate VSL section, and when i want to use one, just open a new logic instance and open the song there. then just switch back and forth between arrange windows according to what i want to use. if i want to hear just the violins, i hit play with the mouse on that sections transport. if i want to hear everything and/or see it to picture, i hit play on the logic control. screensets and keycommands will help for navigation.

and, of course, each section can have its own effects, though you might be able to work something magical with wormhole or any of the other audio utilities. me, i'm happy to just compose without trouble and then bounce when done.

anyway, thank you again for all your (continuing) hard work. and thanks for your patience with my ignorance. i am very happy that you were right.

buying more RAM now.

cheers

and, for the record, i didn't run renice on my system with 4 GBs - nor did i change any of the max (files, etc).

and i just rebooted, retested, and all still works well. i think the smart thing to do is just create many duplicate Logics and keep them all in your doc, then create a bunch of VSL template songs based on workflow.

if you want to have a bunch of songs which are sections and then one or two which are general purpose, great (they might need to have a performance on each track at boot to make it easier to help OS X, i don't know). then, whenever you need one, just click open a second logic in the dock and open the desired song/section from within it and let it load in the baçkground, while working on your song.

and don't forget about Expose in Panther - makes navigating between logic instances much easier.

again, evan, thanks for making your point over and over again. apparently, it is just what i needed to hear.

cheers