guitartrek, you've probably already tried raising your playbuck buffers, but I thought I'd mention it. Since putting Hollywood Strings on SSD, I can recall only one glitch, and that was immediately solved when I raised my buffer size from 64 to 128.

Also, I'm wondering if bad RAM might be your problem. There are several free memory test programs available online.

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

Konrad - your system is very powerful - I think much more then the recommended specs that EW states for HS.  Seems your system would be ideal for this type of library

Mel -  I'll test the RAM just to make sure.  However, I don't have any strange crashes that are usually the result of hardware like bad RAM, so I don't think RAM is a problem.

Cliff - My buffer sizes:
ASIO Buffer size: 512 samples
Playback I/O 1000kb
Record I/O 256kb

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. 

The other thing that occurred to me is that I noticed my Trilian module was set to streaming (by default).  That was never a problem before, but maybe with the use of the Play, it is forcing Trilian to do a little streaming.
 
Thanks for your help

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
 

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.

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

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!

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.

I'm the same with BFD - you take a HUGE performance hit when running 24 bit samples, so I switch them off and just run 16 bit and yeah, I can't tell any difference whatsoever.

The reason I've installed the 24 bit EW stuff is down to the lower level of detail required in quiet passages. Orchestral music has the greatest dynamic range of all and 16 bit would be just a bit too close to the noise floor during ppp passages

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