Issues with East West Play and X2a

If you go into your settings in Play there are a number of areas that can have an impact.  Under the Streaming tab the Maximum voices has a major impact.  When you have exceeded the number of samples shown it will dump the oldest from memory in order to load the newest one.  You indicate that you are have about 75 tracks.  If you have it set to the default of 256 you can see where you would use that many samples very quickly as each note and velocity range for each note will use a sample.   You could try increasing the max voice setting to see if that helps but there may be trade offs for the rest of the system.  I believe that would apply to all instances of Play you have active but I am not sure. 

Overload setting can also come into play as well.

Play is one of the most demanding on my system that I use,  I use most of the libraries they have including HW strings.  Pretty much all except the new brass one.  I have found the best way, for me anyways, is to not use the Ambience/reverb until I am ready to freeze the track.  I usually work on 1 track at a time and freeze it when I have it where I want it and then work on the next track so there isn't that great a load on the system at any time.

Another method/trick I use is to rough out the project using the TTS-1 and then convert 1 track at a time to Play and do the detailed editing/keyswitch assignments.  

Play is far more demanding on the system the GPO , Miroslav or any of the Kontakt libraries but the results are usually superior using Play compaed to the others as well.

lorneyb2 - Thanks for the suggestions - I'll take a look.  That's probably causing the streaming issues, as I have never changed anything so it probably is still at the default 256.

Bristol - well the fact that you also get the long save time at least proves it is "normal" for the combination of Sonar / Play.  I still don't "get it" though.  Like I said, I'm using roughly the same amount of midi data as I was with GPO and those projects saved in a split second.  What in the world is it doing?  I mean 15 seconds of writing to disc?  That's a ton more data than the midi data and settings that would be used in a Play project.  I'm going to ask about this on the EW forum.

As for the no-glitching - you have 4x the amount of RAM than me - did you change the Max voices in the Streaming Tab?

guitartrek

As for the no-glitching - you have 4x the amount of RAM than me - did you change the Max voices in the Streaming Tab?

Geno, I'll check what the setting is next time I'm at my DAW. Unfortunately I'm back at work today following a week off

Have you got all the different mic positions loaded? That consumes an absolute ton of RAM

I tend to stick with just the close mics for composing

I have an 8-core PC and 12 GBs of RAM and Hollywood Strings is barely usable (note drop-outs, glitches, etc.).

konradh


I have an 8-core PC and 12 GBs of RAM and Hollywood Strings is barely usable (note drop-outs, glitches, etc.).

Hey Konrad & GuitarTrek,
 
I was wondering what your settings are, both inside play, and your audio buffers ?.
 
I got HS & HB in January, have only had time for a wee bit of a play around, but on the whole it works a lot better than I expected - due to reading about so many people having 'glitching' etc.
 
There are a few settings in Play that I tweaked up well before I got BS & HB, due to running the EWQL Platinum orchestra with 3 mic positions loaded, there's some mention of them by other poster above.
 
The other thing I was wondering, is whether HDD speed is an issue here, as Melmyers alludes to here, streaming all those samples from disk is very intensive and if the HDD can't keep up, it will glitch !.
 
@Guitartrek - sound like your glitching is likely due to HDD not keeping up. Could be helped by tweaking the Play settings, and maybe increasing your audio buffer size too.
The reason I say that it seems like the HDD not keeping up with the demands of streaming, is because when you play through the parts of your project that "glitch first time around", some of that data will be cached by Windows - so next time you play the project, there is already more of the samples available directly from RAM, and therefore less demand for the HDD.
 
Like I say, haven't had much time to play about with HS & HB, but enough when I first loaded them up to know that it's working well enough to be very usable here.
I'm only running 7200 RPM disk for samples (dedicated sample drive) - no SSD here (yet).
 
I'll try and jot down my Play settings when I get a chance and post them up here so you can compare.
 
Hope you can get things running nicely.
 
Cheers - Cliff

guitartrek


I think you're right about the Hard Drive not keeping up.  All the symptoms point to that.  Thing is that it looks like everything is loaded and there is plenty of memory left - 1.5gb to 2gb free memory (according to Play).  Play doesn't look like it is streaming.  My Play engine setting is at the default Medium - haven't tried changing that yet. 
 

That sounds like Play is only loading the attack samples and is only fully loading the entire sample once it is needed. This minimizes the total number of samples that are stored in memory. Very similar to what Gigasampler used to do.
 
I use SD2 and Ra, which are both Play instruments. It's a great engine for detailed work, but I'll agree that it can be touchy to get working properly. Have you updated you Play engine lately?
Regards,
Dan
 

guitartrek


dcumpian - You may be right - I wish I could force it to load everthing right away. But according to the "loaded samples" in Play looks like it has already loaded everything. My version is 3.0.40 which is pretty new. I think there is one newer, but it was the mac or something.

I still don't "get" why the Sonar Save time should be so long? The project files are not big - should take way less than a second to save a 6 Meg project file.

dcumpian is right, though I don't know exactly how much of the sample it loads.
 
You can actually force all the samples to load at startup, but it depends on which instruments you're using, how may you might be able to load. It's doubtful you'd have enough memory for very much.
 
You have to change the setting for each instrument, by first selecting it in the Play UI to make it the current instrument.
From the Play "Main Menu" drop down, hover over "Current Instrument" and uncheck "Stream From Disk".
You'll get presented with a prompt dialog that tells you how much memory it needs to load the samples, and ask if you want to continue.
 
OK, I'm going from memory here, but you have EWQL SO Gold which is 16 bit samples (I think).
It looks like with the platinum version, I can't actually select the 16 bit samples. So I'm stuck with loding 24bit which should be about 1.5 times the size of the equivalent 16bit.
 
Take the 50 piece string section, only wants 553 MB on the platinum (1 mic pos), so probably about 370 Mb on gold if it is actually 16 bit.
 
However, take the individual string section KS masters, they all want about 2 GB or more each.
If I load up the EWQL SO 11 Violins KS Master, that want 2.5 GB, so 16 bit should be about 1.7 GB.
The other violins and strings need similar amounts of memory too.
 
Take a look at the Play "Settings" menu, under the streaming tab.
Those are the global settings for number of simultaneous voices, and "Engine Level". Setting those determines how much memory is allocated to streamin buffers in the play engine, but the trade off is ... project load time :-)
 
So the more voices ad higher you set the engine level, the more memory play allocates to sample streaming buffers, and the longer it takes to load the project.
 
Mine are set to maximum values, 2048 voices, Engine Level = High, and that uses 1 GB of ram.
 
If you check out the Play 3 manual, it's on about page 30 and on.
 
It definitely seems the long save time is Play related, my projects take longer saving if they have large play libraries loaded.
 
I've had a bit more of a play around with HS & HB, seem to work reasonably well here, so long as you don't get carried away with the heavy patches in HS. It's definitely the biggest hog, and I'd have to be careful about what and how I used it during tracking to avoid any glitching. You can't up the ASIO buffers too much before introducing too much latency to play anything live into it, that's for sure.
 
Seems quite manageable enough for me to use, but I recon a SSD would be the one to make a difference for HS.
 
Let us know how you get on with things.
 
Cheers - Cliff

Cliff - Thanks a lot.  That makes sense.  I certainly don't use every note / sample of an instrument in my project.  I'm only using certain notes / articulations that the project calls for, so yes it would be a waste to load everything into memory.   So the long load time is accounted for by only loading the "attack" samples.

What would be REALLY COOL is if you had an SAMPLE ANALYZATION function in Sonar / Play where Play could "analyze" the midi data and keyswitches, maybe even velocities, and then only load what is needed for the project.  Just a thought.

However seems like the use of SSD's will basically fix everything in the future for these large sample libraries.  I'm not there yet - my laptop only supports one drive, and I need 750gb and SSD's at that size are either non-existent or way too expensive at this point.

Bristol - I have Superior Drummer 2 which comes with 16bit and 24bit.  I used to use all 24bit samples, until Danny Danzi imformed me that there is no audible difference between the two so I started using the 16bit only, and load times are much faster.  I cannot tell any difference!  Of course inside Sonar for summing and mixing 24bit DOES make a difference.

I can't wait until everthing is SSD - then I'll upgrade to HS and HB with all the mics.  Until then I'm using SO gold with 16bit and only one set of mics.

Bristol_Jonesey

It looks like with the platinum version, I can't actually select the 16 bit samples. So I'm stuck with loding 24bit which should be about 1.5 times the size of the equivalent 16bit.

Yes, that's correct.

There is only one difference between Platinum & Platinum Plus in that the Plus version contains 2 sets of discs - 16bit & 24bit

I've never got round to installing the 16 bit version, but it was such a fantastic deal for Platinum Plus I couldn't resist it!

Ahh Bristol, I too have the Platinum Plus ... looks like I've done the same as you :-)
 
And, I have to say I've very happy with it too !.
 
Cheers - Cliff

Sorry if it's been mentioned already.....

It's most likely because you have everything on a single HD. Have you tried loading everything into RAM? When you load an instrument in PLAY, go to the dropdown options menu and deselect "Stream From Disk". This will load the patch directly into RAM, and will do so when you open the project from then on. It takes a little longer to load initially, but they won't be steaming from the HD. Works like a charm!