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mikehalloran wrote:Yes but only up to a point

Any more than an app can use won’t make a difference.

Really? So how much RAM can DP use? I bought more RAM because DP was so close to using all the installed RAM, but I'm still in the same boat. Including the RAM used by other apps and the OS, I (still) have just 2GB to spare when I open this particular project.

philbrown, I'm referring to the RAM footprint not the file size...but in answer to your question above, autosave in DP doesn't save the undo history.

dix wrote:
philbrown, I'm referring to the RAM footprint not the file size...but in answer to your question above, autosave in DP doesn't save the undo history.

I know but I thought one might affect the other.

Since I'm still getting close to the top of my available RAM, I'm now I'm thinking I could use even more.

It's been a while since I purchased RAM, but it seems to be pretty cheap now. $188 for 2x16gb from OWC. Can anyone tell me if that is a good price?

dix wrote:Since I'm still getting close to the top of my available RAM, I'm now I'm thinking I could use even more.

It's been a while since I purchased RAM, but it seems to be pretty cheap now. $188 for 2x16gb from OWC. Can anyone tell me if that is a good price?

Apparently. I checked a few other vendors and it is better. Some by a little; others by a lot. More importantly, OWC appears to have it in stock.

Well, as predicted more RAM does nothing to decrease save-times (thinking about it now, I can't imagine why it would!).

I'm working on projects that use largish orchestral templates. It's all the VIs that appear do be what slows down Saving. DP 9.51 is handling the template like a champ. Around as well as VEP would I think (though I haven't compared this), but 8-9 second beachballed autosaves every six minutes remains a big distraction when you have your groove on. Is this just price we pay to have so many VIs in a DP project. If so, doesn't that sort of undermine the awesomeness of the new pre-gen scheme? OR is there something wrong with my system?

Deleting the Undo history only shaves off around a second from the save time (same if I use an autosaved version). Disabling the V-Rack shaves it down to zero. I'm running five Kontakts two Plays. Around 50 instruments...not so big really, in terms of modern orchestral templates.

Any suggestions?

Dix, the only way I've found to decresase saving times to be practically instantaneous is by hosting ALL VIs in VE Pro, using it in Decoupled mode.

When I don't use it like that, I agree, 30-40 second saving times with Autosave is an inspiration killer and an annoyance. But that is how long it takes to save some of my heavy projects with lots of VIs without VEP, or with VEP without Decouple mode.

I think you can try it out for free. You'll love it! Just be careful with Decouple mode... It's not hard to mess things up and lose a big chunk of your project!

Thanks. I have VEP and have used it for years, but I was hoping DP 9.5's pre-gen would render it obsolete. It looks like it might except for the long save-times . If I can't figure it out I guess I'll transfer the V-Racked VIs to VEP eventually (a PIA with 50+ instruments on multiple sequences) and see if I get comparable performance. That'd be too bad though. The convenience of having all the VIs in DP is pretty great.

Well, the long save-times defeated me and I migrated the project that was experiencing them to VEP6. Interestingly the project runs about as well offloading the VIs to VEP (same computer. no slave) as it does with DP 9.5's pre-gen. I don't understand how VEP does what it does, but it do.

It's kind of too bad. All that Pre-Gen innovation seems to be stymied by this caveat. As I said before, I'd prefer the convenience of being able to run all the VIs from DP, but 10 second saves is just too distracting. Unless MOTU incorporates a way to decouple the V-Rack like VEP does I think I'll stick with VEP on big projects.

Incidentally, I learned from one of VEP guru Steve Steele's videos that VEP 6 has an autosave feature so there's no real danger of losing settings of decoupled instruments. However, I still find it better to recouple before I quit out of DP. That way all the instruments load the next time you open the project without having to load the VEP server document manually.

I had an issue with extremely long save times about three years ago... mine were over a minute. I had to turn off autosave, because it would interfere with tracking. The solution turned out to be to not use the templates I'd carefully built over the years, but make a new template file from scratch. There was some legacy gunk in those templates that screwed me up, and I still have the problem when I open old files from that era.

It may be worth a try, to set up a "new" file with the same number of tracks and see how it behaves.

I use a lot of multi-track audio, but no virtual instruments; so your mileage may differ.

Thanks. I'm not sure this approach would apply. I don't really use templates and this project was built from the ground up. I think the project is just large. It occupies around 25gb of RAM (nearly all of that from VIs). I'm thinking it just takes that long to save to disk. In fact VEP takes about as long when it autosaves, but doesn't interrupt playback or do anything noticeable in DP when it does....anyway, i spent most of the day moving the project to VEP so i'm not motivated to troubleshoot further on it right now.

I'd be interested if any one is seeing shorter save times with projects this size. If that were the case I too might be able to decrease the duration of my saves.

dix, do you have Trim enabled on your Mac?

Without Trim, SSDs can appear to have room, but actually be struggling due to the presence of stale data. Trim tells the SSD what the OS already knows, that is, which data is to be retained and which should be discarded. If Trim was not on, it can take a while to do its job once enabled. Running Repair Disk in Apple's Disk Utility application after enabling Trim might speed things along.

If you have an 840 EVO SSD, there is also the Samsung 840 EVO stale data issue, but it shouldn't impact write times, I think.

Thanks. I do have it enabled. I also tried saving to a brand new SSD, a Evo850, on my SATA3 bus with no difference.

dix wrote:Thanks. I do have it enabled. I also tried saving to a brand new SSD, a Evo850, on my SATA3 bus with no difference.