MOTUnation.com

Im using DP for live performance and I have approx 160 songs/chunks/sequences. Each chunk has approx 5 stereo tracks and I use one plugin for the light show. We are currently using MacBook Pro 2013 model. I'm trying to figure out how many chunks/songs I can have in one session that DP and my computer handle.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
JE

I think that’s a non issue. The resources of each chunk are loaded with the chunk. They don’t stay in RAM. If appropriate, I’d also suggest putting anything redundant (VIs) in a v-rack so it won’t have to reload every time. Are you using all 169 chunks for every gig? If not, I’d also prep each gig with only the data you’ll be using for that show.

Chunks reside in RAM. There’s your limitation. One of the recent MOTU Zoom videos goes into this.

mikehalloran wrote:Chunks reside in RAM. There’s your limitation. One of the recent MOTU Zoom videos goes into this.

Not all resources do. VIs reload with every chunk selection. That's why god invented V-Racks.

One caveat on V-racks: Adding a V-rack increases audio latency in your project, similar to raising the buffer setting. This is probably only an issue if you are running any live audio channels through DP. It MIGHT also cause a tiny bit more delay when you hit "Play". You may have to adjust to it.

Doug

Tidwells@aol.com wrote:One caveat on V-racks: Adding a V-rack increases audio latency in your project, similar to raising the buffer setting. This is probably only an issue if you are running any live audio channels through DP. It MIGHT also cause a tiny bit more delay when you hit "Play". You may have to adjust to it.

Doug

Not that I don't believe you, but other than you saying so, where is definitive evidence on that? I use V-racks all the time and don't see that issue.

Hey, MLC! I admit my memory on this issue is a little hazy. For many years I used DP to run our live show, including mixing live audio channels, running live VI's, playing a live video clip, running our light show, and playing back pre-recorded audio tracks simultaneously. Since our live vocals were going through DP, low latency was very important. I remember experimenting with using V-racks and a separate chunk for each song. I was surprised that enabling a V-rack increased latency, but to be honest I can't remember if the increased latency was only on VI's, only on live audio tracks, or both. Although it's not as convenient, I ended up putting all of our songs in one long chunk and merging stereo backing tracks into one long soundbite to get the lowest latency possible. I used the markers window to cue individual songs and inserted playback stop commands into a MIDI track to keep the next song from starting if desired. (DP only allows one pre-set autostop location).

Doug

Tidwells@aol.com wrote:Hey, MLC! I admit my memory on this issue is a little hazy. For many years I used DP to run our live show, including mixing live audio channels, running live VI's, playing a live video clip, running our light show, and playing back pre-recorded audio tracks simultaneously. Since our live vocals were going through DP, low latency was very important. I remember experimenting with using V-racks and a separate chunk for each song. I was surprised that enabling a V-rack increased latency, but to be honest I can't remember if the increased latency was only on VI's, only on live audio tracks, or both. Although it's not as convenient, I ended up putting all of our songs in one long chunk and merging stereo backing tracks into one long soundbite to get the lowest latency possible. I used the markers window to cue individual songs and inserted playback stop commands into a MIDI track to keep the next song from starting if desired. (DP only allows one pre-set autostop location).

Doug

Thanks for the extra info. When dealing with singers, latency might be a feature and not a bug... lol

I used to use chunks ALLOT for all sorts of reasons, but I found that the more chunks I added, the slower DP got.

Even simple tasks in DP I would start getting spinning beachballs when I had allot of chunks.

And hitting "save" or "save-as" also was way slow each time.

I stopped using lots of chunks awhile back, so I don't know if this is still the case with DP, but for me, anything I can do to make DP snappier (and something I don't need to think allot about when making music) is worth it.

JSmith1234567 wrote:I used to use chunks ALLOT for all sorts of reasons, but I found that the more chunks I added, the slower DP got.

Again, it's not that I don't believe this, it's just not my experience. I routinely have dozens of chunks in a project, especially theater and sound design heavy film. I'm not seeing a slowdown, but it may also depend on what VIs, how efficiently they are divided to take advantage of multi threading (sending different VIs to different cores of the machine - yeah, there's a trick to it) and what kinds of demands are placed on the VIs in the tracks.

I DID see sluggishness until I distributed the VI load on the CPU efficiently. Just sayin'

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:(sending different VIs to different cores of the machine - yeah, there's a trick to it)

Could you direct us to a good place to learn how to do that?

Thanks

aculver wrote:

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:(sending different VIs to different cores of the machine - yeah, there's a trick to it)

Could you direct us to a good place to learn how to do that?

Thanks

I think the answer lies in avoiding a small number of heavily multi-timbral VI instantiations, because each VI instantiation can exploit only a single CPU core. Instead of running one instantiation of, say, Kontakt housing 16 different VIs, run maybe four or even eight instantiations with only a few of those VIs housed in each.

The approach that works best on your system will depend on core count. If you want to see the impact visually on a Mac, open Apple's Performance Monitor and enable the CPU window.

It’s only helpful to run large VIs in their own instance of the host player. Smaller instruments can share a single instance of the host. If it takes a while to load an instrument, it gets its own host. That is assuming the host and DAW are capable of multi threading. DP seems to do the heavy lifting. I’m not sure about all the others.

IME, it's not so much how many chunks you have in the project that slow DP, but how many tracks you have in your active sequence. At least here, this makes a very obvious and easily testable difference.

With very heavy-track counts, even when inactive, things like switching between apps, switching between DP windows, or selecting tracks to show/hide, becomes slow. Some things make DP stop responding instantaneously and just feels clumsy. Deleting unused extra tracks (hundreds of them), and then closing/reopening, do make a big difference, at least here.

So what I do now to avoid that, is I keep my active composing chunk as lean as possible, and bring stuff (all prerouted) from a "Master Chunk" (where EVERYTHING lives) in that same project as needed. Sometimes I use clippings or even Loading chunks for this too.

What does make DP unbearably slow to open a project is having lots of V-racks with lots of VI assignments active in the Chunks window. In my template, DP always takes so long to activate the V-racks. It connects super fast to the VEP servers, but DP is so slow, even if it's not sending anything at all to VEP (with the Decouple mode active).
Sometimes all this takes 10-15 minutes, just to open the project, independently of the loading of the samples from the slave computers. Pray to Tlaloc that DP doesn't crash at all, or each time there go 10-15 minutes of wasted time, which is especially nice when you're under all-nighter neck-squeezing deadlines where every minute counts... Fun!

Other than that, DP's chunk/V-rack organization and functionality is so amazing and versatile. I simply could not live without this unique DP feature, since I organize everything around it. Chunks/VI-racks, together with VE Pro 7, make a ridiculously powerful package!

FMiguelez wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2020 1:29 pm
So what I do now to avoid that, is I keep my active composing chunk as lean as possible, and bring stuff (all prerouted) from a "Master Chunk" (where EVERYTHING lives) in that same project as needed. Sometimes I use clippings or even Loading chunks for this too.

This is one of the best tips around!!
I tend to have only one document per project with multiple chunks for every scene or movie sequence. Duplicating the master chunk for every sequence yields thousands of inactive tracks, so getting rid of them is the best option by far.

Gracias, amigo!!