Sample Loading Problem

I have a new problem that's cropped up in the last few weeks that's really concerning. I'm a gigging keyboardist using a laptop with Apple MainStage. My project has grown quite large with over 100 "patches" (one patch per song), though I use a lot of alias channel strips to keep my RAM and CPU to as low as possible. I use quite a lot of Kontakt instances for pianos, solo strings, various sampled instruments (I leave the synths to Massive and other third party VIs). But recently, I've been having trouble with my main piano, Alicia's Keys, not loading all of its samples (or sample headers) into memory on startup. It goes about 1/3rd through and stops with a Yellow light near the purge dropdown. Usually after a couple of minutes it'll suddenly come alive again and load the rest, but until then it's on a "by need" basis, where it only loads as I actually trigger the sample. Since it's a round robin patch with many velocity zones, I'd have to play every key about 40 times to load everything! Purging and Reloading doesn't help either! The first time this happened it was mid Gig, and suddenly all my notes were delayed, it was scary and horrible. Curiously, I haven't added any new patches recently, so it's not like it crossed a threshold, I even went through and deleted a number of unused Kontakt instances to cut down on RAM, but it's still doing this. AND it's always stopping at around 75MBs every time, so I get the feeling there's something specific going on.

I have a MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM (maxed out), and MainStage says I'm only using 10GB. Any idea on a way of forcing these instances to load all samples?

 

I haven't heard of this before. My first gut reaction is to wonder whether your machine might actually be out of RAM. Launch Activity Monitor, switch to the Memory tab, and then load your MainStage concert and keep an eye on the RAM gauge at the bottom. What kinds of stats does it show there as your concert loads?

 

Oh, it's totally running out of memory. Activity Monitor is reporting 15.9GB RAM being used and 20GB VM. But isn't that what Virtual Memory is for?

I'm now not sure how big of an issue it is, now. I tried it a few more times and it pretty much always loads within 2 minutes after opening the project (which takes 5+ minutes), so I just have to wait few more minutes. Got some other issues to deal with though.

 

Virtual memory is not what you want to be playing with when streaming samples. You're basically just out of RAM. You'll need to either upgrade your RAM, or economize on the samples you're loading.

 

Virtual memory is basically using your hard drive (very slow) instead of RAM (very fast). You don't want to use that at all, it just makes things very sluggish.

 

Unfortunately, my MacBook is maxed out on RAM (16GB), and it looks like even now it's impossible to get one with 32GB. Gotta figure this out some other way than upgrading my machine.

 

Well, you can start by purging samples from instances, then playing the project once. Then only the used samples get loaded. Should be a much smaller footprint.

 

I haven't noticed that that stays after a quit and reload. You sure? Also, that's a problem for Round Robin patches, or with multiple velocity regions... and, I like to improvise and jam a bit, I'm not going to be using all the same notes all the time.

 

If you resave your project, it will stay that way.


It's either that, or you need to take more care on which instruments you're loading into your project and watch out your RAM load... Having 100 patches in RAM all at once is definitely going to be taxing on the resources, RAM especially. No wonder you're having problems. Do you often duplicate the same patch multiple times? Don't do that - even though samples themselves don't get loaded twice, all other resources (graphics, effects, groups, zones, this all takes RAM even though Kontakt's Engine page doesn't show it fully!) do.

You should probably use a global DFD buffer size override (Kontakt's Options->Memory), set it to something like 36 or 24 kB and it should hopefully reduce the RAM load (default value is 60). Ideally, you want an SSD and your DFD buffer set to 6 KB (smallest). Unless your MBP already has an SSD inside, in which case just go to 6 KB buffer straight away. Try stuff out.

 

I do a lot of Channel Strip aliases in MainStage, which is like a Virtual Rack in other DAWs, drawing on exactly the same VI instances complete with effects chain and everything, so those shouldn't take up any RAM, really. Many of my patches use that. I literally have ONE piano Kontakt instance going, but a good deal of the "patches" use it. So many of the patches aren't anything but different chord charts but using the same Kontakt instances. I keep a MainStage Patch called "RACK" which I just throw a lot of my commonly used Channel Strips in, and link to them. But still, I probably have at least a 100 individual instances... many of them NI Massive (which shouldn't use anything near Kontakt), but still.

Yeah, I've been thinking about ripping out the optical drive and putting in an SSD. But then again, part of me just thinks "Wait, get a new computer in 6-months or a year" I'm going to need a second one for my other job at some point anyway. Just wish I could get one with 32GB.