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Location: Netherlands | You know, I really want a new PC, my laptop really doesn't like this one. It's just 16 midichannels btw, tune spreads out across ~55 channels in Rev. (empty channel-seperators and dedicated keyswitch tracks included). Mainly made it on my notebook, while staying at relatives, some weeks ago. Didn't need any DSP, used the onboard ac97 enviromental stuff. Exported each instrument to a seperate file and made a fast mix in Vegas, nothing too fancy. So uhm, all revisit, controlling VSampler 3 with a buncha stuff, mainly customised sounds from various sources.
Things could be better.. but my laptop can't cope with more than this. :P
clicky! oh, and don't advertise *this* link either, thanks
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: England | Fantastic! I love it.  When you say your laptop can't handle it, do you think reViSiT is the culprit, or further down the line with VSampler, etc.? I wouldn't have thought MIDI-only use would be that costly with reViSiT (it's sample playback that really hurts  ). Always good to hear revisited songs! Chris
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Location: Netherlands | well, dunno, you judge :P
It's a Sempron3000+, 512MB, dunno about the harddisk, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a 5400RPM model. XPsp2, Cub.sx3, and indeed vsampler3. Playback using [F5] in Rev. is not stable in terms of timing btw, the [>] button in the cubase transportwindow (or those buttons below the window-menu) performs stable.
Notice however that I'm a sounddesigner at heart, I'll usually change all kinda stuff around. I've two strings instruments, 'low' and 'hi'. Low = db+cl, hi = va+vi, This way the lyrical instruments are on top of each instruments, and the less lyical is at the bottom. Since a viola is nearly like a violin, I can actually save viola samples (and thus 'memory'), same for the contrabasses, tho there's a little x-area between the contrabas and cello, due the low-energy difference between the two. All the memory saved is however used for some solo layers on top of all, and another set o' violins to top to add some expression.. (no matter the age of Vitous, they're still the most playable strings I know!) So, all together the strings alone are about 70MB! Then there's solo French Horns and solo Tenor Trombones, all with keyswitches for about 6 playstyles. Easily over 100MB.. (and I even made the solo instruments mono, as they used to be stereo! Otoh, what's the point of stereo for solo-instruments, unlike tutti ofcourse, I'll gladly add the acoustics myself in the mixing stage if that saves me the cpu while composing) Those are the biggest ones I think, tho I dunno exactly, my laptop is not running atm, need to go shopping in a sec. Later today I'll list the whole bunch.
When I say the laptop doesn't like it, I mean that there're oodles o' chops while playing, and sometimes cubase just crashes and closes.. *zap*, in a second I'm facing my desktop again. :P That's why I'm opting for a new PC with 4GB and RAID speed on the HD's, it's to be a racemonster. ^_^
Rev's navigation is slow and choppy while playing btw.
Actually vsampler claims to be able to stream samples.. but I hardly believe any of it! In this specific case I couldn't even use some of the percussion-samples in my percussion-kit.. one would expect that it would be streamed from HD.. but nope!
You know what I miss the most compared to IT2? the volume-column being like the volume-controller @ midi (#7 iirc). I used it all the time in IT2 to make my own crescs/dims.. but alas.. that's MIDI allright.
Ok, shopping.. brb
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Expert
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Location: Netherlands | ok, one addition for now:
As I wrote, my channel setup spans about 55 channels, so that's for only a half-sized orchestra and 16 midi channels. Goes without surprise that the current 64 channels aren't that much if you want to go beyond the current setup. I take it this '64' is just some constant at the start of your source? If yes: ++ please  The apart from the channel-dividers, it's mainly those keyswitch channels that eat space. That's why I opted for the fixed-instrument per channel and have the current instrumentcolumn for these switch things.. a number will do.. 00-99 for c0..<something>
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: Netherlands | ok, here's the channel-list (channels in the pattern editor)
02-04 piccolo trumpet
06 woodwinds runup (combi-instrument with oboe-, clarinet- and flute run-ups)
08-10 violin stac
13-14 bassoon
15-16 clarinet
17-18 ehorn
19-20 oboe
22-24 chromatic percussion (combi-instrument with: marimba, tubular bell, triangles/chimes)
26-29 solo french horn
31-34 solo tenor trombone
36-37 low strings (bas+cel.)
38-40 hi strings (va+vi)
42-43 harp
44-45 trumpet
47-48 flute
50-52 perc (big drums, snares, crashes)
And the instrument-sizes:
pic.tp 5MB
harp 23MB
vi.stac. 6.5MB
bassoon 11.8MB
clarinet 7MB
e.horn 5.5MB
oboe 7.7MB
f.horn 63MB (9 switchkeys)
ten.trmb 79MB (7 switchkeys)
hi strings 60MB
lo strings 56MB
wood runs 5MB
trumpet 9MB
flute 5.8MB
chrom.perc 59MB
percussion 20MB, tho I'm not sure if that's what it has loaded or what the size of the instrument is. It won't play some of the samples in this percussion kit.
Quickly from the head: 333MB roughly .. maybe less due the percussion thing.. added to that ofcourse windows itself, cubase, those loopbe drivers, revisit etc. Hmm.. 333MB ain't that much.. :/
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: England | Try and see how much reViSiT is costing - disable all your other plugins (effects and VSTi's) and play your song. Get the figure from Cubase's VST Performance (F12) view - the Task Manager screen will include the overhead of Graphics. Also, see how stable it is when you use F5. Try without the extra plugins, and then try it with them, but exit back to the pattern editor (to hide the Info Page). Cheers,
Chris
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Expert
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Location: Netherlands | well that's the thing.. due the enviromental setting of my laptop (something like EAX I guess) I don't use DSP plugins! So in this case it's really just revisit, vsampler and cubase! The EAX thing was also the reason why I bought an SB-live in '99 (and still have it, come to think of it, a 7yr old soundcard!), instant concert-hall while using IT2's sb16 mmx driver.
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: England | Okay, then I think the Cubase VST Performance figure will just be reViSiT anyway - what does it say? Also, can you disable VSampler somehow and see if that improves stablity? Chris
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Location: Netherlands | hm.. typically it's about 30% cpu, with fluctuations towards 40 and 50, but with the occasional 100% peak, and if it's not 100% then it's 80%+ at least. .. oh, and it just crashed again. So, something's causing these peaks, and it logically speaking it's these peaks that cause the crashing.. maybe it's the cymbals :P (shouldn't need to explain that one, do I? :P) )
It did somewhat play with the [F5] just a minute ago, choppy sound nonetheless. But cubase's own play-button made it crash. Interestingly, while exporting solo'd rev.channels I get clean output, but it *did* crash a number of times while diskwriting! (not using that 'realtime' checkbox in the export menu ofcourse)
Point is.. perhaps vsampler is buggy as hell, I dunno. That's part of the issue I described in the other topic, where you work with completely autonome parts. If there's an issue there're multiple doors to knock on, and even then you aren't even sure you're knocking the right door!
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: Netherlands | oh ps, I'm still using an older revisit version btw (the privately sended one I think), *but* it did work quite well while I was away, sometimes choppy sound, but in most cases it worked quite well. I'll try the latest version in a minute..
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: Netherlands | Without midi-connecting rev to vs3, cpu is between 20% and 30% when using cubase's play-button, no scary peaks whatsoever.
When using F5 it's also between 20% and 30%, but just a few pixels more towards 20% I think, not sure tho.. could it be that cubase has a more tight timer than the built-in one from rev?
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: England | It sounds like the spikes are therefore definitely in VSampler. reViSiT might still have a hand in the problem (sending to much MIDI information), but I'm not sure what I can do about that. If you can, try it on a faster computer and see if the spikes are still there - it could just be VSampler stumbling over your 5400rpm hard drive, having run out of physical memory (512mb is not much for a software sampler to play with)! I have tracked a couple of bugs in v0.89, so will be looking at a fairly quick .1 patch (with or without the planned .S3M support). The biggest omission is that reViSiT doesn't currently import any Note Cut/Off pattern commands contained in IT files! This produces the apparent "stuck notes" problem some people have reported. Re: reViSiT Timer vs. Cubase Timer. They are the same timer (the host's) - in F5 mode, reViSiT just ignores the position information supplied by the host and generates its own. Hope this helps,
Chris
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Location: Netherlands | So uhm, perhaps vs3 is just an ugly brute, what softsampler do you use? I prefer one that allows in-depth editing, vsampler is quite well on that one.
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: England | I'm a fan of HALiON, but I've heard good things about Kontakt, too. Both are available as VSTi's. Chris
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Location: Netherlands | hm.. I quickly tried both Kontakt2 and Halion.. can't say it's love at first sight :P
Kontakt2 has an insane button/mouse interface and the screen is cramped with things, Halion seems little better, but to me it lacks the clean'ness, emptyness, easyness of VSampler3.
I'm a prick for layout design, and while I like custom-made controls (I make my own controls all the time in Blitzmax), I only like them when they're actually good, when they actually add value. Sofar zippo with these softsamplers, or to compare with your thesis, one mouse for everything, completely not the pc-keyboard as tool/instrument..
So, I'm actually doubting to what do.. feature/use-wise I'm drawn heavily towards vs3, but if performance peaks are caused by vs3 then it's not exactly comfy. Otoh, perhaps my notebook simply *is* a dwarf-system for the stuff I'd like to do.
Can you do me a favour and have a look on VS3, and toy around with some huge instruments? (perhaps you even like it :P) If it works stable at your system (which is, btw?) then it more or less tells me that my notebook is to blame I guess..
Musictechnology-bachelor degree in Composing, Producing, Sounddesign, Software - composer for film/tv/theatre/games/commercials - imdb registered - IT2 guru - MSX guru - sounddesign guru
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Location: England | Yeah, I'm afraid you'll find most VSTi's are mouse-biased, but don't blame the developer (unless it's Steinberg) - it's really, really hard to code keyboard for VST plug-ins. I note there is a VSTi version of VSampler 3.5 - it's worth a try. Also, I assume you're using ASIO (e.g. ASIO4ALL), rather than DirectSound or the like. I wouldn't worry too much about your laptop specs or getting a new one - you might think about a faster HDD (as a notebook, your current one could even be 4200rpm) and more memory, if you're heavily into soft-sampling. You could get a Firewire / USB2 external HDD or upgrade your internal to Hitachi's 7K100 (7200rpm, 8mb) - and stepping up to 1Gb memory shouldn't be too expensive. However, I am currently only working off a 5400rpm HDD myself - though it does perform quite well thanks to the 8mb buffer. My system is designed to be *completely* silent - there are no fans whatsoever and I use a quieter notebook drive and notebook CPU - even though it is a desktop system. Just for the moment, in fact, my HDD is on the same IDE channel as my DVD and it's using a dodgy adapter that limits it to Ultra-DMA 2 (ATA-33). I don't notice any performance difference in other applications between this and other computers, but I haven't tried any monster soft-sampling projects on it. The specs: Intel Pentium M 2.13GHz (equivalent to about P4 3.8GHz)
AOpen i915GMm-HFS Desktop Motherboard.
Samsung MP0804H Hard Disk.
RealTek ALC880 Built-in soundcard (HD Audio w/ ASIO4ALL)
1Gb (512mb x 2 Dual Channel) DDR2-533 Memory. Of course, I have other systems (with better soundcards), but this is the one reViSiT is developed on. I suggest your best bet is to try one big project with Kontakt (or Halion) and see if the computer still suffers. Or alternatively, just a simpler project on both samplers and compare the CPU usage. I'm afraid I haven't got the time to get caught up in reviewing software samplers - I've got reViSiT to keep me busy! But from previous experience... HALiON v2 (v3 is now out) - fair editing options, good performance, good mouse interface, shallow learning curve Kontakt (only used a few times) - very good editing options, good performance, fair mouse interface (v2 has keyboard support, but only in standalone?), medium learning curve GigaSampler (only used earlier versions) - good editing options, good performance, fast (but quirky) interface (can be run as standalone), medium learning curve. For "pro" use, Kontakt (and its baby, Kompakt) is the daddy - just look at the format of most sample libraries. Hope this helps,
Chris
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I'd say it's time for a tune
