Very slow loading - small project with VIs

[cleamon]

Posted this as a techlink, but hoping someone here can help:

I have a very small project that has 3 instances of a particular VI (Ample Guitar G) in it.
When I load the project, it takes nearly 2 minutes to get to a point where I can work.
If I disable the VI tracks in the TO window, save, quit, load, it loads very quickly.... then I can re-enable the VI tracks and get working quickly.
Obviously, if I print the VI tracks to audio and disable the VI, then it loads very quickly but defeats the advantages of using MIDI.
If I load the VI in its host application, it loads very quickly.
(btw, the host uses the vst and I'm using the au version in DP, but I've tried using
the vst in DP as well - same problem).

During this wait time, the cpu is barely registering, no network activity and a very small amount of disk activity. DP appears as "not responding" which is expected during this phase. (beach ball)

I have plenty of memory for this very small project - typically 8GB free AFTER loading.

When I start DP from scratch, it takes about 131/386 MB (real/virtual)
After the project is fully loaded (after playing through once in case more samples are loaded), DP's memory is sitting at about 1.65/1.72 GB (real/virtual)
If I watch the memory usage while the project loads, I see it jump to around 500 MB within a few seconds, then over the next 2 minutes slowly increases to its max at 1.65 GB
Again, this happens virtually instantly if I load the VI AFTER the project loads.

I understand that when a project loads, DP is multi-tasking and doing several things at once, but if the project WITHOUT VIs loads in 10 seconds, and each VI takes 5 seconds afterwards, that's a long way from 2 minutes (10+5+5+5 = 25).

Why does it take DP so long to instantiate this VI during load, but not so long when I add it in the first place?
Am I missing a magic setting somewhere?

[Shooshie]

I don't know how large your VI's are, but a project that loads 1.65GB into RAM is very large. It takes a while to load that much stuff into RAM. It's not just copying from drive to drive; it's reading, then collating, writing, following algorithms... there's a lot to do with that much data.

VIs are a drag for loading. If you want to speed it up, get Flash drives with USB 3.0 or get SSD storage.

Shooshie

[MIDI Life Crisis]

+1 about SSD. Game changer.

[cleamon]

I don't know how large your VI's are, but a project that loads 1.65GB into RAM is very large. It takes a while to load that much stuff into RAM. It's not just copying from drive to drive; it's reading, then collating, writing, following algorithms... there's a lot to do with that much data.

VIs are a drag for loading. If you want to speed it up, get Flash drives with USB 3.0 or get SSD storage.

Shooshie

The issue is that loading manually is very fast (almost instantly, same memory load), loading with the project is very slow. I created this same setup (same MIDI tracks, same VIs) with another DAW (very popular, but less loved), and I don't see this behavior.