How to squeezing just a little more out of my setup

[Jim Offerman]

Hi guys,

I need to get a little more performance out of my current setup:
- PowerBook, 1.5 GHz G4, 512 MB RAM
- Logic Express (6.4)
- and, of course, GPO

I arrange my instruments one group at the time and then convert them to audio and move on to the next group. This is working well for me, except that I can't get a decent string section up and running. I can load three string parts, after that my computer just chokes.

I've lowered the sampling rate, increased the delay, maximized the audio buffer settings in Logic... none of it seems to matter. Is there anything else I can do to get a little more juice out of it? It would be very nice to be able to arrange the entire strings section in one go.

I'm planning on installing more RAM eventually... but I have to save up first. As of now, it looks like I am going to have to finish my current (hobby) movie project with what tools I have now.

Any suggestions for getting the maximum out of the current setup would be greatly appreciated :)

gr,
Jim.

PS: Any chance that direct from disk support for the Mac will be available soon? Would that ease the memory requirements of GPO?

[DPDAN]

Hi Jim, I am not a computer expert by any means, but 512k of ram is just not enough to do much more than your computer is doing. I believe all of the GPO sounds are loaded into ram, so,.... if you don't have more than 512, my guess would be that is all you can expect, especially considering that the operating system uses some ram. I believe that you are doing what is best, and that is to print to audio tracks once the midi track is the way you want it. Just wanted to respond to your question but it is possible that Karl could answer this better for you since he runs GPO on a Mac, I use a Mac with Digital Performer, but GPO is running on a separate PC as a stand alone device, sorry that was redundant :)
DPDan

[billp]

Jim,
I don't know how a 1.5Ghz Mac compares with a 1.5 Ghz Intel machine, so I can only answer generically.

With a soft synth like GPO (without DFD) you're working with 2 variables:

Memory determines how many instruments can be loaded concurrently.

You can get more memory by loading only the necessary programs, etc. that you need. Unload things like the QuickTime player and iTunes, for example (if possible).

CPU and sound card latency determine how many instruments can be played simultaneously.

The easiest thing to do to get more instruments playing simultaneously is to increase the latency of your sound card. This will let you play more instruments simultaneously without the computer "choking".

With DFD, the samples are loaded as needed, so your initial memory requirement is lower, but the dynamic loading and management of the samples adds additional load to the CPU.

[bmonroney]

I use PowerBook G4 1GHz, and my best investment in performance with soft-samplers was to purchase 2GB of RAM. If you can manage to get at least 1GB with Logic you'll probably find that it helps significantly. I use DP4 which seems to be more RAM-hungry.

DFD support, when it arrives will give you more sounds in less RAM, true BUT...Laptop drives are not as fast as 3.5" 7200 RPM drives, which will affect streaming performance - and the CPU load when using DFD is heavier...so I strongly reccomend a RAM upgrade. (You can use the full version of Kontakt now to load GPO sounds with DFD enabled).

Make sure your PowerBook processor is set for maximum performance...go to System Preferences->Energy Saver->Options, and select "Highest" from the Processor Performance pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen.

[Jim Offerman]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your suggestions and insights...

I feared I would get a unanimous "buy more ram". There's only so much money I can pour into studio equipment every month (a bird's gotta eat), so I'll just have to be patient :)

Going for the maximum 2 GB of ram, though. I also want to get one of those Firewire harddisks... together (with DFD), that should dramatically increase performance.

Anyway, I'll have to make due in the meantime (probably means having smaller string sections in this project...)

cheers,
Jim.