32 bit how much RAM

[wildey]

HI , I am trying to search through the forum but to no avail, I will be using unfortuantely it seems 32 bit operating system, an amd dual core, the most ram I can get is apparently 3gb ram that is that the os will recognize, I am planning "hopefully" on buying the vienna special edition standard and hopefully expanding with further dvd collections, Does anyone have any idea for a 32 bit system how mcuh ram would be required I would like to have perhaps 7 instruments going at once, but to be honest it doesn't sound hopeful for me, I guess I could buy a new OS but it is just adding up, with internal harddrives and ram and the samples themselves, does any one have any idea , If this system would be able to do much,

[nick.halliwell]

We must stop meeting like this...

I don't think you'll have any real trouble with 7 instruments. In fact, as I think I said to you in another thread, it's mainly people who're using really big collections loading masses of articulations who're going to run into RAM issues and those people mainly seem to use VE3 and multiple machines, I think. Although I do have most of the big collections, I tend to use them more sparingly in individual tracks, so I rarely have more than 16 instruments going at once, either as individual VI instances or all together inside Vienna Ensemble. The latter works well and seems to offer slightly better performance, incidentally, so it's well worth considering - you'll get VE2 (the non-network version) free when you buy the SE and register it.

As I think I said last time, I'd suggest you go for 4Gb RAM for now, I'd imagine Windows would recognise at least most of that. It should give you plenty of scope to get started with the SE. One of the great things about the SE is that it offers you the basic articulations you need, the really essential ones, and thus it's nowhere near as memory-hungry as the full DVD collections. For instance, with the SE, for a violin section, you might load up a matrix with the performance legato, then perhaps have one shorter articulation (e.g. staccato) and maybe an alternative (tremolo, or portamento... depends on your needs for that piece) and this'll get you a long way. Obviously you're not going to get the level of detail you'd have with the full Orchestral Strings sets where you could load up all sorts of alternatives, for instance there are different performance legato articulations for playing at various speeds... all sorts of things. So with our example, you've only got 3 articulations loaded for your violin section and that's not going to take a huge amount of your RAM because of the clever way that it works.

I don't imagine I've got access to much more RAM than you're talking about on my current system and, for instance, on the piece I'm working on right now, I've got Bassi, Celli, Violas, First Violins (Appassionata) and Second Violins (Orchestral Strings) and each of those probably uses an average of 9 articulations (matrices of 3x3 mostly), then I've also got Horns, Oboe, probably another 3-4 articulations each, a percussion set and timpani... So that's... 9 individual instruments mostly fairly fully loaded? And my system's probably not even halfway to maxing out. In fact personally I've found that the first limit I tend to come up against is having enough RTAS voices to handle all the I/O (which is a ProTools-only thing you don't need to worry about).

So honestly, for what it sounds as though you're trying to do, I don't think you need to worry too much. One of the great things about the VSL system is that it's modular and you can add to it as your needs (and hopefully bank balance) increase.

Hope that helps - I should point out that I'm not an expert on things like RAM usage, Christian from VSL is the man to talk to about that sort of thing. But seriously, I really don't think you've got anything to worry about at this stage. Remember that only a very small number of people here are currently working with 64-bit, the vast majority of us are still in 32-bit land.

Nick

[wildey]

Thanks so much, it has been a dream to get Vienna special edition, I love the way it sounds, can't wait!!!!!!!!! thanks for all your help, this makes it relaly clear to me :)