Freezing tracks and de-loading instruments from RAM

[MonoPoly307]

Hi guys,

I'm a long-term Logic user, but we're gearing up to do some gigs using looping. I'd been eyeing off Ableton, but was very excited to see that DP10 includes an Ableton-like clip playing system.

One thing I really struggle with in Logic is managing my RAM for big orchestral projects. I use plenty of Spitfire and Project SAM libraries, and they are very RAM-heavy.

Logic does allow track freezing, but it doesn't offer a way to de-load the plug-in's samples when you freeze a track. This is something that other DAWs like Cubase and Pro Tools have offered for quite a while.

My question to you guys is - does DP offer this feature, and is it simple to use in practice?

Thanks everyone!
Mike

[cuttime]

I always use

Code: Select all

sudo purge

in the terminal before a RAM intensive project.

[magicd]

Pretty sure this is how it works:

At the end of an instrument freeze track operation the instrument track is disabled (ENA button in Tracks window). As far as I can tell, disabling an instrument track unloads all the samples from any sample based instrument. I just checked this in Activity monitor. When the instrument track is re-enabled the samples are loaded back up.

Dave

[MonoPoly307]

Pretty sure this is how it works:

At the end of an instrument freeze track operation the instrument track is disabled (ENA button in Tracks window). As far as I can tell, disabling an instrument track unloads all the samples from any sample based instrument. I just checked this in Activity monitor. When the instrument track is re-enabled the samples are loaded back up.

Dave

Thanks Dave,

That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear - it will make a big difference to managing my RAM in big projects.

Cheers
Mike

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I can confirm Dave's comments (not they they need confirming... lol). After freezing, I deselect the enable button (usually on a v-rack). However, and Dave can correct me if I'm wrong, bouncing to the project format and adding to sequence is much faster than freezing in my experience, and should give the same results. It seems that freezing happens in real time while bouncing happens as a computer process (as opposed to a realtime recording).

It might be that in some instances you'll get a better result freezing if you're using CPU intensive VIs. Remember to place large, complex instruments in their own instantiation of the VI as that will spread the CPU load across the cores of your machine. That single fact has really improved my system performance (and was another MagicD revelation). I don't think I've seen that in the manual but I've yet to actually read the damn thing in it's entirety.