[SOLVED] Unloading a Synth Does Not Reduce RAM Usage?

Hi Bit!
 

bitflipper
After removing the UVI instrument from your template and closing out of SONAR, does it still eat lots of RAM when you start a new project?

Actually, I didn't remove UVI Workstation, I just "emptied out" the preset being used within UVI Workstation, replacing it with an empty preset ... and that immediately decreased RAM usage by about 2GB on the spot.
 
Let me rephrase what I think the problem is ... normally when a freeze a synth in a project, in the Synth Rack the synth's freeze button stays lit, the synth's name gets parentheses around it, the associated tracks render, and the associated tracks' freeze buttons light up.  That is with actual MIDI data in the associated tracks.
 
In my current case, the project is basically an empty template if you will, with no audio or MIDI data yet.  I press the UVI Workstation's freeze button and nothing happens.  I now postulate that since there's no data to freeze, the operation is therefore precluded, and hence doesn't occur, leaving the synth in memory without any error messages.  Now that I've said that, I realize I could probably enter one dummy note into the associated MIDI track, and then freeze.  I bet it would work and release the memory.
 
I don't think it's a memory leak issue.  I once had a horrible memory leak problem while setting up VSL preset and matrices, which involved a lot of saving, closing, re-loading matrices and such.  Eventually my memory was full and I had to restart!  Not too long ago, lo and behold - VSL released a fix for "improper memory management" and the problem hasn't occurred since.
 
Hey, by the way, thank you for all your excellent and well thought out posts and explanations over the years.  I find them most useful!  You have a real  talent for that.
 
Pete

Freezing a synth processes the MIDI track and produces an audio clip.  You don't have a MIDI clip, so a 'freeze' didn't actually happen.
 
I happen to have a project in front of me with an Addictive Drums track that has MIDI clips and an ST3 Bass synth with no MIDI yet.
 
When I 'freeze' the AD track, it processes, lights the 'freeze' indicator, and unloads some memory.
 
When I try to 'freeze' the ST3 track, the 'freeze' indicator doesn't change and there is no change in memory used by the Sonar process.
 
 
 

Bit & BobF -
 
I just tried inserting a dummy MIDI note into the UVI Workstation's MIDI track - and freeze worked and immediately unloaded 2GB from memory.
 
So I guess there's no clean way to accomplish my intent of lowering project load time by 6 minutes and reducing RAM usage?  If the consensus is no, and I either have to clear the huge preset until I'm actually working on that part or add a dummy note to the MIDI track and freeze, I will mark this as solved later today.

BobF
If you undock the Browser, or dock it in the multidock, you'll see power buttons for each synth.  Clicking these to turn off the synths will free up memory even for synths that have no MIDI.

HI BobF!  I didn't see this post prior to writing my last response.  Very nice!  Thank you - I like this one!

FYI, disconnecting synths, bypassing FX racks (an option available in the FX context menu) and turning off ProChannels is how the freeze function frees up resources.