RAM, RAM everywhere

[Rick Averill]

The project I'm working on right now involves something similar to a hollywood movie musical orchestra--which is to say symphonic proportions PLUS complete rhythm section.

When I started assembling my system for this, the customer service fellow at MOTO suggested 5 or 6 gig of RAM to accomplish what I wanted. I went with 6. But when I instantiated my huge orchestra, I found DP crashing regularly, especially when I added a handful of instances of Altiverb. So I sprang for 4 more gig, which I know makes my Mac ridiculously huge. Fortunately what I'm being paid for the job allowed for massive resources like this. Now it seems to work much better, although I occasionally need to quit DP and restart the computer to keep things running smoothly.

The deal is, other people I talked to on various forums say they're using the same libraries with much smaller resources. Perhaps they aren't writing for the gigantic orchestra I am. Or maybe I'm just wasting RAM somehow.

What do you guys think? Do I really need as much RAM as I'm using? Or is this overkill? I guess I just need someone to take my hand and tell me I'm not a bad person for spending so much money on a computer like this. Don't get me wrong--it's a dream machine and a joy to use. But sometimes I get the nagging feeling that I went overboard.

[richardein]

As I understand it, DP has a limit to the amount of ram it can use inside the program, around 3 gig. As you approach that limit, you will get crashes. That 3 gig limit includes plug-ins.

The way to do what you want is either to launch stand-alone versions of part of your orchestral palette outside of DP and route the audio back into DP or buy separate computers/digital audio interfaces and spread the load of plug-ins over several boxes.

There have been articles about this in Virtual Instruments magazine which you can find online. Also, Sound on Sound magazine has covered this. There are also posts here that go into it.


While I wouldn't call either solution rocket science, the details are annoyingly tricky to work out. If you are trying to set this up on a project deadline, I would strongly suggest that you hire someone to work it out for you and troubleshoot/maintain the setup. And if you do go with separate computers, as you probably will, be sure to get a fine word clock generator and distribution unit such as Big Ben.

[Frodo]

One other suggestion (as long as you're using Altiverb) is to use it cleverly and sparingly.

With an orchestra template, it's really okay to route each section to an aux instance 100% wet. That way, you could work with 3-4 instances of Altiverb. In fact, I would just work with one 'dummy' instance on the Master Fader while tracking-- then on mixdown, crank those buffers up to 1024. I've also found that raising the host multiplyer to 2 can also help on mixdown. At that point, you can add more A-verbs as needed (within reason, of course).

Are video, VIs and audio all running from different drives and ones other than your system drive?

I have 9GB RAM and thought for a moment that it was overkill. However, I'm finding that the MacPro is loading up more than that into virtual memory-- and performance is really something to behold. How it manages to filter 11+GB of standby data into that 9GB is something that is beyond my understanding-- but how the MacPro is putting all that RAM to use is yielding results much more apparent than they ever were on the G5.

[Shooshie]

I only have 3 GB RAM, and my purposes are much less demanding than yours, but it seems very stable except for odd quirks which I have yet to understand or trace to their origins.

I think I'd listen to Frodo's advice, and consider yourself lucky to have a large amount of RAM, although Richard's advice expresses something I've always thought to be true, as well. I think there's more to this than we know or understand. Look for it to emerge in bits and pieces in the trade journals.

Shooshie

[emulatorloo]

With an orchestra template, it's really okay to route each section to an aux instance 100% wet. That way, you could work with 3-4 instances of Altiverb. In fact, I would just work with one 'dummy' instance on the Master Fader while tracking

Take this one to heart -- you do not need multiple instances of Altiverb in most cases -- put one on an Aux bus.

-----------------

[Aramis]

As I understand it, DP has a limit to the amount of ram it can use inside the program, around 3 gig. As you approach that limit, you will get crashes. That 3 gig limit includes plug-ins.

The way to do what you want is either to launch stand-alone versions of part of your orchestral palette outside of DP and route the audio back into DP or buy separate computers/digital audio interfaces and spread the load of plug-ins over several boxes.

There have been articles about this in Virtual Instruments magazine which you can find online. Also, Sound on Sound magazine has covered this. There are also posts here that go into it.


While I wouldn't call either solution rocket science, the details are annoyingly tricky to work out. If you are trying to set this up on a project deadline, I would strongly suggest that you hire someone to work it out for you and troubleshoot/maintain the setup. And if you do go with separate computers, as you probably will, be sure to get a fine word clock generator and distribution unit such as Big Ben.

Is this crashing really proven ? I am about to add 2 more gigs to my setup and now I read your message ....

Aramis

[Timeline]

Frodo nailed it for you. When crashing raise buffer settings. On big sessions it's not unusual to be up to 3 x 1024. You can reduce again when not editing and playing back with only the the play controller up and few tracks and waveforms selected.

Crashing is related to the graphics load on the Mac if your CPU is running in the green and throughput is reasonable. These graphic crash issues will likely not get better until Apple gets to the next OS in October '07 and MOTU syncs it's software accordingly.

The other option is to do less alti-v using echo sends/aux tracks as sugested or you can do what I did and buy a used 480L and send out IO> and return< to digital input. The delays involved sound fine and the tones are awsome. Better than Alti-V.

[Aramis]

Frodo nailed it for you. When crashing raise buffer settings. On big sessions it's not unusual to be up to 3 x 1024. You can reduce again when not editing and playing back with only the the play controller up and few tracks and waveforms selected.

Crashing is related to the graphics load on the Mac if your CPU is running in the green and throughput is reasonable. These graphic crash issues will likely not get better until Apple gets to the next OS in October '07 and MOTU syncs it's software accordingly.

The other option is to do less alti-v using echo sends/aux tracks as sugested or you can do what I did and buy a used 480L and send out IO> and return< to digital input. The delays involved sound fine and the tones are awsome. Better than Alti-V.

And is this crashing happenning only with Altiverb ?

Aramis

[Timeline]

Ask Rick. He mentions nothing as far as cpu and throughput so I don't know.

[Aramis]

The project I'm working on right now involves something similar to a hollywood movie musical orchestra--which is to say symphonic proportions PLUS complete rhythm section.

When I started assembling my system for this, the customer service fellow at MOTO suggested 5 or 6 gig of RAM to accomplish what I wanted. I went with 6. But when I instantiated my huge orchestra, I found DP crashing regularly, especially when I added a handful of instances of Altiverb. So I sprang for 4 more gig, which I know makes my Mac ridiculously huge. Fortunately what I'm being paid for the job allowed for massive resources like this. Now it seems to work much better, although I occasionally need to quit DP and restart the computer to keep things running smoothly.

The deal is, other people I talked to on various forums say they're using the same libraries with much smaller resources. Perhaps they aren't writing for the gigantic orchestra I am. Or maybe I'm just wasting RAM somehow.

What do you guys think? Do I really need as much RAM as I'm using? Or is this overkill? I guess I just need someone to take my hand and tell me I'm not a bad person for spending so much money on a computer like this. Don't get me wrong--it's a dream machine and a joy to use. But sometimes I get the nagging feeling that I went overboard.

Is your crashing happening only with Altiverb ?

Aramis

[richardein]

Aramis,

There's an article in Virtual Instruments mag that discusses the 3 gig issue, but try it for yourself. Open up activity monitor and set it to look at processes and note how much ram each process uses. Then open up a DP file and fill it up past 2 gigs with data, plug-ins, what have you, and see what happens. I've gotten crashes on my 2.7 gig dual g5 with 8 gigs.

The solution is to offload plugins to other computers or to standalones running concurrently with DP 5. To do the latter, you need a program called soundflower if the plug ins don't support rewire. My success running things as stand-alones has, so far, been less encouraging than offloading stuff to other boxes.

Frodo,

Are you suggesting that DP and dp alone is using up all that Ram on your Mac Pro? That doesn't jibe with what I understand to be happening but if so, that's amazing.

[Aramis]

[quote="richardein"]Aramis,

There's an article in Virtual Instruments mag that discusses the 3 gig issue, but try it for yourself. Open up activity monitor and set it to look at processes and note how much ram each process uses. Then open up a DP file and fill it up past 2 gigs with data, plug-ins, what have you, and see what happens. I've gotten crashes on my 2.7 gig dual g5 with 8 gigs.

First , I do not have access to that Mag . Second , I have ordered memory to fill my G5 at 4 gigs in order to see if I can use more efficiently my new PlugSoundPro setup . I do not own Altiverb and I am not planning in using it sometime ....
So that is why I would like to know if DP 5.11 will crash on me using all that new memory .
I got hard time to believe that DP crashes because of that instead of giving an error message saying it is lacking of ressources .
But if that is the way it happens , does someone , hardware test their memory with Apple diags ?

Aramis

[grimepoch]

From the technical aspect, the max memory DP can use is just over 4 Gig, which includes shared resources. DP can never use more memory than that as a 32-bit application (which it is).

Having more that 4 Gig in your machine helps the OS for things that it needs to use, which I believe is why Magic Dave mentions that 5 or 6 gig is the target you want to hit. This leaves 2 Gig for OSX and all things it needs.

This, of course, is dependent on what you keep up when DP is running. have iTunes up? Firefox up? any other apps up? Each of these will require memory resources. Especially web browsers, they are ABSOLUTE hogs. The point here is that you are trying to keep your machine from doing ANY swapping if possible because in those periods of swapping, you could get IO wait and lose processing power for that brief amount of time. Important? yes, because you could be tracking and get a glitch.

Want to know how much memory DP is using? Load it up and use the Activity Monitor to take a peek. I don't use a lot of sample based plugins, but the largest song I am working on now with 150+ tracks (mono) is using 1 Gig. There is still 1G free in my system, so I know I am not memory limited at the moment.

When DP goes 64-bit in the future, it will be able to address 18 exabytes of data

Want to read more about how OSX handles memory?

http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... emory.html

[Aramis]

From the technical aspect, the max memory DP can use is just over 4 Gig, which includes shared resources. DP can never use more memory than that as a 32-bit application (which it is).

Having more that 4 Gig in your machine helps the OS for things that it needs to use, which I believe is why Magic Dave mentions that 5 or 6 gig is the target you want to hit. This leaves 2 Gig for OSX and all things it needs.

This, of course, is dependent on what you keep up when DP is running. have iTunes up? Firefox up? any other apps up? Each of these will require memory resources. Especially web browsers, they are ABSOLUTE hogs. The point here is that you are trying to keep your machine from doing ANY swapping if possible because in those periods of swapping, you could get IO wait and lose processing power for that brief amount of time. Important? yes, because you could be tracking and get a glitch.

Want to know how much memory DP is using? Load it up and use the Activity Monitor to take a peek. I don't use a lot of sample based plugins, but the largest song I am working on now with 150+ tracks (mono) is using 1 Gig. There is still 1G free in my system, so I know I am not memory limited at the moment.

When DP goes 64-bit in the future, it will be able to address 18 exabytes of data

Want to read more about how OSX handles memory?

http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... emory.html

Ok I guess going from 2 gigs to 4 gigs will be a good thing for my G5 .

Thanks

Aramis

[Timeline]

Couldn't houit