purge samples from UVI Workstation instances

[PolimniaMusic]

Hi everybody!
I want to keep my DP templates as lean as possible.
Does anybody know if it is possible to purge samples from UVI Workstation instances, Kontakt- or Opus-style?
The UVI people told another user that it's not necessary with their VIs because they don't weigh much, which may be true for some libraries, but certainly not for others. Any suggestions?

[bayswater]

I don’t understand the issue. If you’re making a template, none of the samples have to be loaded. Even if you want samples loaded into UVI in the template because you use the same samples all the time, you can put UVI into its own chunk, and turn it off in the Chunks window until you use it.

[mikehalloran]

Hi everybody!
I want to keep my DP templates as lean as possible.
Does anybody know if it is possible to purge samples from UVI Workstation instances, Kontakt- or Opus-style?
The UVI people told another user that it's not necessary with their VIs because they don't weigh much, which may be true for some libraries, but certainly not for others. Any suggestions?

Huh?

I don’t understand the issue.
…

Neither do I.

There was a recent thread on template approaches. I recommend reading this and see if it answers any of your questions — or helps you ask a question that makes sense to us.

viewtopic.php?p=608367&hilit=user+templates#p608367

[James Steele]

I'm not sure I'm understanding the issue. You template contains instances of UVI Workstation with instruments preloaded? One thing you could try is disabling the VI track or not assigning it to an output until you need it. Then the VI won't load any instruments.

I may not be understanding correctly, so apologies if this isn't helpful.

[bayswater]

Yes, there are ways to make sure the VIs use minimal resources, and stay out of view, until you need them. I have a template with 6 sampling VIs, each with several parts loaded but they’re in VRacks that are powered off so they just sit there when the project starts up. Some don’t like their VIs in VRacks, but you can just drag them into the main sequence if they are needed, instead of turning them on in the Chunks window

The other consideration is to have multiple templates. I have one that has nothing in it except the Bundles, and another that has only tracks and I/O set up for each of the ports on the audio interface, one with a TrueaPiano in record mode (yes, it still works!!), one with a guitar tuner, one to monitor system audio, one to use Logic as a VI, etc, ad nauseum.

With multiple templates you can have a quick minimal setup for each of the common project types you might do.

[PolimniaMusic]

I apologize if I didn't express myself correctly. Or maybe I am doing all this wrong.

This is what I do: for each sound library, I create Kontakt (or Opus, UVI, Sine, etc.) instances according to the instrument families (i.e., Time Macro Solo Strings longs, Symphobia 2 WW Ensemble clusters... etc.). I load a few MIDI channels with instruments (monitoring the size so the VI doesn't get too big; if it gets too big, I simply create another Kontakt instance). Then, I create MIDI tracks and route them to the MIDI channels on the VIs. Once everything sounds correct, I purge the samples, disable the VIs, and save.

What I am looking for is to avoid having to load instruments every single time—just to choose the best cymbal, timpani, clarinet, etc. Instead, I only have to enable a few VIs, choose whatever works at that particular time, and then disable again whatever I won't use. But I can "listen" without having to "load" each time, which would completely cut my composition flow.

Therefore, samples are not loaded on RAM (because they are all purged), but they still ARE on the VIs (even when they are disabled), so they are ready to go. That's why I want to be able to purge samples from the UVI instances, as I do with Kontakt, etc.

The orchestral template—with most of my libraries on, with everything purged and disabled, no audio recorded, and no MIDI notes, completely empty...—contains about 650 VI instances and about 4,400 MIDI tracks. The file—empty—is bigger than 2 Gb.

Is this wrong? Or inefficient? Or both?
Is there a better way?

[mikehalloran]

There are some basic misconceptions here. Normally, streaming VIs do not load into RAM (Chunks do, OTOH). It all depends on how you are accessing them.

In addition, each instance of most Instruments (VI players) uses one core. There are a few multi-core Instruments including Kontakt but UVI is not one of them. Per UVI Support:

Neither UVI Workstation or Falcon support multi-threading, this means that each plug-in instance will work on a single processor core only.

To balance your load among your Cores, there should be a separate instance for each Instrument and it should load only one VI.

A few years back, when the iMac Pro came out, a British film composer loaded 1,000 VI tracks into a 10 Core iMP with 32GB RAM. Each VI had its own instance and was loaded with a reverb plug-in plus a convo reverb that was known to be CPU intensive. It ran cool and there was no track robbing. Had he loaded, say, ten VIs into ten instances, the project would not have run.

Kontakt is different but you have to pay attention:

Tweak your Multiprocessor support settings. In the Multiprocessor support section you can adjust the number of cores you wish to use with Kontakt. You can select any number of cores to use, from one to the maximum number of cores available on your computer. Please note this setting is different in the standalone version and plug-in version of Kontakt. For example, if you have set 2 cores in the standalone version, this will not change the settings in any of the plug-in versions of Kontakt.

Many users stick to the old way of using a separate instance for each VI, myself included. Kontakt behave like any other this way and I don't have to tweak a function I never use.

If you were using Memory Server in Kontakt, NI recommends that you turn it off. It was designed to overcome the 4GB limit in 32 bit applications.

Things are a bit different in Kontakt World as this article explains.
https://support.native-instruments.com/ ... 20Kontakt.

[PolimniaMusic]

Thank you, all.

[PolimniaMusic]

I looked at the thread you guys suggested about templates.
I am not sure if I get it right, but a template with no VIs loaded?
So, your templates only have MIDI and audio tracks?

What's the purpose of having a template if the VIs are not ready to go, all routed so that you just enable them and play and choose instruments without having to load them?

Even if you work modularly, importing clippings, you still have to re-route the VIs, and most times "remove folder but keeping the tracks," and certainly delete the annoying "copy" word that appears at the end of every track imported. All this takes time...

Maybe what I want to do is not possible with DP.

[bayswater]

I looked at the thread you guys suggested about templates.
I am not sure if I get it right, but a template with no VIs loaded?
So, your templates only have MIDI and audio tracks?

What's the purpose of having a template if the VIs are not ready to go, all routed so that you just enable them and play and choose instruments without having to load them?

Even if you work modularly, importing clippings, you still have to re-route the VIs, and most times "remove folder but keeping the tracks," and certainly delete the annoying "copy" word that appears at the end of every track imported. All this takes time...

Maybe what I want to do is not possible with DP.

Nearly all my templates have VIs ready to go. The exception is “empty” which has only Bundles. Some have them in VI-Racks that have to be “switched on” but all the routing is there, and sometimes the patches are loaded. There is no reason not to have VIs in a template. I rarely use clippings.

[PolimniaMusic]

[/quote]
Nearly all my templates have VIs ready to go. The exception is “empty” which has only Bundles. Some have them in VI-Racks that have to be “switched on” but all the routing is there, and sometimes the patches are loaded. There is no reason not to have VIs in a template. I rarely use clippings.
[/quote]

And does DP handle it well? When you have VIs loaded, are they numerous, or just a few?

[bayswater]

Nearly all my templates have VIs ready to go. The exception is “empty” which has only Bundles. Some have them in VI-Racks that have to be “switched on” but all the routing is there, and sometimes the patches are loaded. There is no reason not to have VIs in a template. I rarely use clippings.
[/quote]

And does DP handle it well? When you have VIs loaded, are they numerous, or just a few?
[/quote]

Yes, all my templates work well. About a dozen with different numbers of tracks, VIs, effect. Obviously those with many VIs (I have one with 6 VIs and about 60 tracks and maybe 40 busses) take longer to start up but the most complicated takes maybe to 20 seconds. But the VIs are V-Racks and not turned until I need them.

[PolimniaMusic]

Got it...
My orchestral template contains about 600 VIs with more than 4,400 MIDI tracks...
Even though all instruments are disabled until I need them, and all samples are purged, it seems that it is too much for the software to handle.

[bayswater]

Got it...
My orchestral template contains about 600 VIs with more than 4,400 MIDI tracks...
Even though all instruments are disabled until I need them, and all samples are purged, it seems that it is too much for the software to handle.

Difficult to understand why a template that large would be useful. In any case it seems unlikely you’d use more than one or two percent of it. Surely a small number of significantly smaller templates, each more suited to a particular application would be easier to set up and manage., particularly as updates and new VIs and effects come along.

[mikehalloran]

Got it...
My orchestral template contains about 600 VIs with more than 4,400 MIDI tracks...
Even though all instruments are disabled until I need them, and all samples are purged, it seems that it is too much for the software to handle.

You began this thread with some basic misconceptions about how things work. Hopefully, that’s been cleared up but that statement tells us there’s more to learn.

Of course, DP can handle this—as can Logic, ProTools and a few other pro level DAWs. This hasn’t always been true. 2017–2019 were watershed years for Mac and Win hardware and software. Apple Silicon’s big improvements are on the video side—audio processing may be faster but that’s all compared to Intel machines released those years.

Without knowing your setup, that’s all that anyone can say. We don’t know what hardware you are using, version of DP nor your macOS.