How to Increase VI Performance FOR FREE

[HCMarkus]

I added this to another topic a few days back, but feel it bears repeating.

RAM is in the range of one or two orders of magnitude faster than the memory chips used in SSDs, be they SATA or PCIe attached. The speed disparity is obviously even greater between RAM and spinning disks. As such, having enough RAM and using it to the fullest are critical to system performance.

Do this:

Take a look at your preferences for sample-based VIs (Kontakt, Ivory, Omnisphere, etc) and maximize the amount of RAM used to pre-load samples. This will allow your system to serve samples more efficiently.

As explained at https://impactsoundworks.com/optimizing ... low-part-2:

By default, Kontakt loads only a small portion of each sample into RAM. The rest is kept on the hard drive and streamed via “DFD” (direct-from-disk). DFD settings can be changed to adjust this ratio. More memory will allow you to (a) load more samples simultaneously, and/or (b) conserve CPU by loading more of the sample into RAM! In fact, with enough RAM (16, 32, 64gb or more) it is even possible to disable DFD entirely for a big performance gain.

When we were running 32 bit systems, it was advantageous to preload the smallest possible portion of samples to conserve precious RAM space. Now, at 64 bits (and assuming adequate RAM), we are best served by maximizing preload, thus minimizing drive calls.

Edit: changed title to emphasize this is a no-cost upgrade!

[Shooshie]

Wow, I didn't even think of that. Great idea!

[Gravity Jim]

Super Hot Pro Tip.

[HCMarkus]

Thanks guys. Bumping this to make sure everybody sees it.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Cool! Thank you!

[Gravity Jim]

HC - are you seeing 240 KB as the maximum pre-load size on Kontakt?

[dix]

File this under: Duh! I'm not sure why this didn't occur to me sooner.

I've never felt the need for more than 24gb of RAM in my MP, but this would change that notion. With Kontakt's smart-loading scheme I wouldn't think upping the buffer would change load times much either. ....would it?

240kb is the max Pre-load Buffer setting I'm seeing btw.

[HCMarkus]

HC - are you seeing 240 KB as the maximum pre-load size on Kontakt?

Range is 6.00 to 240.00 on my rig. I have maxed it out. If you have oodles of RAM and don't use too many VI's, you could disable streaming from disk...

I haven't noticed terribly long load times Dix.

[dix]

Has anyone tried applying these adjustments to real world scenarios? I'm not seeing the improvements I expected on the rudimentary stress-tests I've created. Whether I have the override/default preload buffer size at 60kb or 240kb - which dramatically increases the RAM used, Kontakt and DP's CPU crap out and start glitching at more or less the same point.

[philbrown]

I just bought a Mac pro that already had 64 gig of ram loaded. My previous one had 20 gig. So I had the question lately - how much RAM is overkill? So your post is timely for me HC, although I don't use Kontakt very often myself. Not sure if there are any settings in the Spectrasonics plugs that would affect this...

[googles]

OK, I found this that may be of interest to Spectrasonics users:

https://support.spectrasonics.net/manua ... index.html

[midilance]

Thank you.

[mhschmieder]

This has been very helpful. It makes me realize that I should probably immediately upgrade my new 2017 iMac to max allowed memory, and not fret so much about having given up internal SATA drives and internal PCI3 SSDs.

I'm thinking that with max memory, and setting Kontakt and other players properly for streaming from memory, it won't make such a big difference if the samples are on a somewhat slower external drive, once a session is loaded.

[dix]

It makes me realize that I should probably immediately upgrade my new 2017 iMac to max allowed memory,

Buying more memory was my first though too, but as I say above, I'm not seeing any performance improvement over streaming from a SATA III SSD by increasing the preload buffer size.

[frankf]

Another way to use extra RAM: When I was using a MP 3,1 with 32 gb RAM, running 64 bit DP I created a RAM disk to run current projects' movies from. I automated its creation and copying of the QT file to it upon boot using Keyboard Maestro. The result was a very noticeable speed boost. Since upgrading to MP 6,1 and SSDs I've no need for a RAM disk solution, but it was a great help to my scoring workflow.


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[HCMarkus]

Great idea Frank. We have lots of RAM now... why not use it?

As far as impact of maximizing RAM pre-load on DP performance, I haven't tried to quantify, but my impression has been more efficient operation when using smaller buffers.