create project

[nyplugin]

Hi guys, I need a suggestion...

My setup is the follow:

macbook pro 2.66 - 8gb ram - 2 internal hard drives 7200rpm, one for the system and one for the samples - usb audio interface - external hd firewire 800 7200rpm for additional samples.

I use DP 7.24.

My question is, where do I create the project folder? in the system hard drive or an external one? should I use an additional hd in chain with the firewire one?

Thank you all!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Probably the best place would be whatever drive has the least amount of activity. The sample drive may be going full tilt at times and it is usually best to keep that separate if you are referring to VI samples being fed to an instrument. The audio files, which should probably stay with the DP project folder.

The theory behind that is the drive works less if it is trying to access just one large file and can dedicate resources to performance (playback). You want to spread the hard drive head access time to as dedicated a task as possible.

[geoffg]

One nice thing about keeping projects on the external drive is that you can easily plug it into another system. I sometimes collaborate in this way with a friend who also uses DP. Then again, if the project references plug ins or VIs that your collaborator doesn't have, it probably won't work.

[Frodo]

Probably the best place would be whatever drive has the least amount of activity. The sample drive may be going full tilt at times...

Yes. To that I'd add that the System drive is always busy with a portion of it dedicated to virtual memory which itself monitors and manages the data being paged (called upon) and delivered at any given moment.

While low-level audio loads from apps such as iTunes might stream without incident from the System drive, DAWs benefit greatly when the drives are not overworked.

[bayswater]

... System drive is always busy with a portion of it dedicated to virtual memory which itself monitors and manages the data being paged (called upon) and delivered at any given moment.

You can see a record of page swaps in activity monitor. With a lot of RAM, the number could be very low, and using the system drive might be feasible. E.g. just using mail and web browsers on a MBP with 8G RAM, page swaps drops to zero over long periods.

[nyplugin]

Thank you all! I connected another hd to the firmware 800 I already have and I use it for the project folder. But still with 3 kontakt with 16 track each and 1 omnisphere with 8 tracks, I'm struggling like crazy!!!

[kgdrum]

IMO this is a pretty hefty project for a Mac with 8 gig of ram,using Kontakt and Omnisphere w/ 3FW drives.
As Magic Dave said in some other threads,you might do better spreading out Kontakt and Omnisphere to separate instances for each track so you utilize all of the mbpro's cores.
If you can add more ram this could help overall.
Also using K & O as standalone to get past the 4 gig ram limitation might also help.
You might also want to check your Kontakt settings.
You probably might be creating a fw bottleneck if you're trying to use 3 hd's on the fw buss.
This is a very big load for this setup,maybe convert as many of the tracks to audio as you can.

[nyplugin]

thank you man!! anyway I'm not using 3 fw hd. I installed 2 hd in the computer and only using one external fw for samples. I just added another fw in the chain for the project folder. Should I have contact samples on one hd and omnisphere/ stylus in the other hd?
I'm also using 8gb which is the maximum for my model I guess and kontakt setting with memory server

[kgdrum]

Are you using K&O as standalone or in DP?
If they're in DP you could be hitting the 4gig ram limitation.
Some users have better results if they run Kontakt last in the chain.
Omnisphere is very demanding,I never bought it because of the rep.
Have you tried freezing tracks to audio?
MDave also recommends having more instances of VI's with 1 track each instance not multiple tracks in each instance of K&O so you utilize multiple cores.
I guess you have dual so it might not make much of a difference.

[nyplugin]

How can you have one instance of Kontakt for each track? I usually have 32 kontakt tracks, 32 instances would be way too much...

[kgdrum]

Spread out as much as possible,again you're putting some heavy demands on a modest 8 gig system.
Are you using K&O standalone?
This many tracks with K&O might be realistically beyond 8gig in a 32bit DP.
Freeze tracks etc....
See this thread,this might explain better than I can.
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 26&t=53498

[nyplugin]

Great! thank you so much! I'm using Kontakt memory server which use contact as a stand alone. I'm gonna give a shot to DP8 anyway, I'm gonna install it next week

[bayswater]

Using multiple instances of Kontakt won't help a lot with your Mac because it only has two processors, but if you use two instances it should help a bit, according to Magic Dave's advice.

Have you checked at OWC (macsales.com) to see if you can install more RAM? Some Macs that can only take 8G according to Apple, will work with 16G.