memory in Gst?

[lex]

Ok I can live with rather slow loading times, BUT! I can\'t seem to load more then 67% of the memory in Gst?
Is this normal, what I\'m interested is if every single GSt set up properly should be able to load as much as 99%?
Cause in 2 years I have never been even close to this figure......

Alex

[Simon Ravn]

I can load up till 99% in GS in Win98. However I run into some clicks and pops problems (which I have on one machine ALL the time at the moment btw - GS must be the most unpredictable piece of software ever invented). I tried expanding from 1gb (which is the highest amount of mem you can use in Win98) to 1.5 and give it a try in XP. However, I found that I can load less samples in XP with 1.5gb than with 1gb in Win98 - go figure. When I was up at about 60% loading became REEEEEEALLY slow, and at around 70% it told me there was no memory. I tried tweaking with Cacheman etc - no difference.

An interestinf phenomenon, which I might not be the first to see, I found yesterday was that GS crashed - but not more than I could run it again without reboot. After doing this, my performance which took 5-10 minutes to load at first GS run, now only took 1-2 minutes!! What\'s up with that?? My guess is it has something to do with memory already being allocated by GS. BUT, if this is the case, how about making GS allocate all your memory once when you boot GS, and then release it all again - if this works fast and cut your loading times to 1/10th, it would certainly be a nice feature.

[lex]

Yes alocating memory would be great, or at least something that would make it predictable..
I had more or less the same story, 1Gb RAM, had great working 98SE , was able to load up to 87% which was enough..then switched to win2000 and I was able to load 45% then crash...now I\'m on WinME and I can load 67% before crash...
so strange...heh..maybe I should write to Tascam, it would be the first time to ask for support..
Oh SImon, since you\'re here..I\'m going to buy another giga rig soon, you said that the MSI mobo with SIS n&s bridge works well?
And there is only one model from MSI with that chipset, as far as I know, right?
Thanks,

Alex

[Simon Ravn]

Oh well it\'s funny you should ask. I just assembled another system based around the SiS chipset, ECS K7S6A motherboard (the other one is K7S5A), and it doesnt work well. I get pops and clicks all the time for no apparent reason. I have now tried for two days to track down the problem without success, moving cards around, disabling PCI IRQ ACPI mode from Win98se and a lot of other things, still no luck. So right now I don\'t know what to recommend!

[Haydn]

Simon,

It appears the GigaStudio can\'t load more than 1 GB of memory under Win2K or XP. Tascam posted on their website a few months ago that this is a known issue. I haven\'t heard any updates on this problem.

[Simon Ravn]

Lex, for now my problem is gone. I moved the cards around and changed a few settings. Not sure which helped though. It seems pretty random what\'s going on:) Tomorrow I\'ll prolly be back in click hell. I dont think this is chipset related though, since this happened at the same place in the sequences each time. At one point I was convinced it was just a bad loop in the sample. But then all problems disappeared so... I don\'t know what to think.

Haydn ahh ok not even over 1gb in XP. That explains the situation alright.

[midphase]

Wow...I don\'t mean to poop on GS but the more I talk to guys that are having problems the more I get the feeling this software is not quite the do-it-all dream sampler that Nemesys/Tascam would have me think.

Today I learned that some libraries\' voice usage is so big that it results in an effective polyphony of only about 15-20 notes! Then I learned that more and more people are considering buying additional PC\'s so they can have more than just a few instruments going at once.

Now this whole issue with crashing and memory. Maybe the grass is not much greener in Giga-land! images/icons/confused.gif

[lex]

Simon:
Thanks, and your curent story sure sounds familiar...I guess it\'s just you get good components and then pray that giga will like them..GSt is like a spoiled brat..\"Giga do you like this MOBO...NO I want the other one, I don\'t like this one...but Giga this one has all t he features you need and plenty more..I DONT care I don\'t like this one..buahhaha...\"
Midphase:
Yes giga is pain. Why is it so hard for Tascam to post exact specs for the machine that will run Gst perfectly? Because it would look scary, probably. What I want to say is that if you look at their requirements it seems that the only thing you need is a GSIF card, decent machine, and a fast HD, and off you go..well for some lucky people yes, but for meny NO...
I know I\'m just ranting here, but I\'m just frustrated because last night I started on a new project, and guess what. Gst started missbehaving like hell. It took 37 minutes to load performance with 60% of memory loaded (1gig)...and thats fine, I\'m used to it...but, after those 37 minutes it crashed like hell...I really hate him sometimes...

Alex

[stevefu]

Yet another bunch of specs for the record - I am having excellent machine performance (load times/capacities) w/ GS160 using the following rig by itself, running Logic 5.1.3 at the same time:

WinXP Pro
Asus P4B266-C Motherboard
Intel P4 2.0GHz 512k cache
1GB Corsair DDR SDRAM
Western Digital WD400JB 40GB (system drive)
Western Digital WD800BB 80GB (sample drive)
Pioneer 106S DVD-ROM
Leadtek WinFast A250 LE 64MB AGP (digital to LCD)

I have loaded up to 99% memory without any trouble and the machine loads samples very quickly.

It\'s also very stable, no crashes or frustrations like that. Now if only my Delta 1010 would be friends with it 100%... I\'ll eventually try an RME I think.

If you use premium quality parts you shouldn\'t have problems at the machine end; I think finding the right sound card is the critical and hard part to conquer. There\'s definitely an element of hardware-OS-software compatibility Russian roulette involved, imo.

[Kenn159]

Simon Im confused
You were ranting and raving about your K7s5a ECC motherboard with the Sis chip ,and finally after the long search for the right rig for giga studio you had put this setup through it\'spaces are were getting 160 voices without any pops or clicks.
You were recomending it to everyone as the perfect motherboard for giga.

And I was thinking , wow finally a motherboard and CPU combo that works great for giga .
And now you are saying something totally different?

Im guessing that it worked great for a while and just started to act up?
That seems to be fairly common here.
Donnie had a new soundchasers computer that he said was pop and click free and the perfect solution for giga , but then came back and posted a month later saying getting pops and clicks.
Which leads me to conclude that NO ONE is able to run giga studio as advertized.
160 voices of polyphony without pops and clicks or frezzes etc.
I know after I post this a couple people are going to say they have they perfect machine , but after all the years of reading all the post and later on seeing the same people that had perfect running machines having problems.
[If there is a perfect machine setup for giga , its probably as likely to come upon that combination as win the lottery.]

OK a note to you Tascam and Nemesys tech wizards that designed this program.

Thanks you very much for such a insightful and inovative piece of software[Im serious] but please try to fix this nuts and bolts basic problem of the pops and clicks before you invest anymore time in bells and whistles updates to this program.
Thanks , Ken

[gabriels]

Strangely enough, there was a period, when I was originally setting up Gigastudio, that I had fairly serious problems with clicks and pops and worse. I was quite demoralized after a long night of trying to get it running better. I remember quite clearly that I was running for at least 15 minutes near the end of that session, and that I was just trying to determine what was causing the problem. I didn\'t change any settings, I had rebooted just prior to the last session of playing, and finally just gave up... shut down, and went home.

The next day I booted up, started Gstudio, and began playing, expecting to have the same problems as I did the night before. That\'s not what happened. GigaStudio behaved beautifully... 160 polyphony, maybe I had the two minute glitch, maybe not, I can\'t really remember... but essentially, everything was ok.

It didn\'t last more than a few days. When the problems reappeared, I went through the usual reinstalls, tweaks, etc, and again got a pretty stable system.

Hopefully, someday, this will all be behind us. Until then, ya just gotta love a sampler that gives you such potential, and often actually performs beautifully.
Gabriel

[dcbprod]

Early on, I discovered that once I load a large performance, I need to reboot Gigastudio and load the performance again. The second load is about 5 or more times faster and all the popping ands glitches disappear. I was once told that resetting the Giga and reloading has the same effect but I have not found that to be as surefire as restartting Gigastudio. I usually run at over 90% memory full.

[thesoundsmith]

Let us hope that V3.0 addresses this issue seriously. More and more libraries are coming out with large memory requirements (hey, here we are, right back at the Akai S1000 days again! images/icons/rolleyes.gif )

My live rig is filling rapidly, and I don\'t have 25% of the quality samples installed. (Just an aside for the live system users out there-Dan Dean\'s Alembic Spoiler bass has a keyswitch that is great for electric bass live. Just about every style that I want (so far...) is available from the one file.)

Dasher

[gabriels]

Dasher,
How are you generally feeling about getting onstage with a live Giga rig. I vacillate about this. Sometimes I feel I\'d trust Giga, other times I think I\'d better have 2 or 3 rigs going at the same time, and be ready to switch over in case there\'s a crash.

There are times when it takes me 2 or 3 tries getting my GigaStudio set up and ready to play. I\'m using KH strings and VOTA and samples of my own. It\'s a fairly complex setup involving MidiOx and Vota Utility. Sometimes it seems quite stable. Other times it will crash.

It\'s getting better however. As I zero in on the midi routing I need, and make less changes to that aspect of it. I believe the system is getting more stable.

What\'s you\'re experience?
Gabriel

[thesoundsmith]

Gabriel, I haven\'t actually done it yet, I\'m still configuring and testing.

But when I do, it will be with a box that has absolutely nothing else in life to do but run sequences that drive Giga. No internet, no letters to mom, no Hearts or Solitaire. It is my considered opinion that Giga can be a stable product if you let it be (get it clean and leave it ALONE...)

OTOH, I will also have our Roland SC88 and Sound Canvas there for backup/fallback. I think I\'ll be able to trust GS, but I\'m not going to be TOO naive. images/icons/grin.gif

Dasher

[composer22]

Yes I am still alive and can tell you absolutely that GS cannot utilize more than 1 gig on XP. I gave up digging into the details, but my guess the last I looked and followed the internals was it is related to how these guys implemented memory allocations to get around virtual memory constraints in the system. I have strong indication they did it totally wrong - e.g. BaD software engineering from lack of taking the time to understand the XP architecture properly.

Dont waste your time and $$$ buying extra memory to do your own testing. I have 2 gigs in my machine and only 1 gig is utilized. It also cost me a lot of $$$$

They did ban me from the forum, btw, and they have banned others as well. They continue to refuse to follow up with active engineering reasons.

alot of people got hurt in the pocket expecting that GS would work > 1gig. A number of studios composers and a major sample developer estimated their hardware costs around a larger maximum memory ceiling. Now they have to goto multiple machines

[killerbobjr]

Originally posted by composer22:
I gave up digging into the details, but my guess the last I looked and followed the internals was it is related to how these guys implemented memory allocations to get around virtual memory constraints in the system. I have strong indication they did it totally wrong - e.g. BaD software engineering from lack of taking the time to understand the XP architecture properly.<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">From what I\'ve discovered digging around in the bowels of Gigastudio, Nemesys apparently uses the multimedia extensions for managing memory (the mmioXxxx functions) of the loaded Gigasamples and dispatches the memory chunks as needed to the engine in the kernel. Since there\'s a limited amount of system space memory in the kernel, this is the only logical way of doing it. Any limitations in allocating memory are probably the fault of the mmioXxxx routines. I\'ll have to write up a quick little program to test this out though.

[thesoundsmith]

I was going to post a fairly long statement here (when DON\'T I? images/icons/rolleyes.gif ) but I decided that it will reach more folks if I start a different thread. Look for \"Some Thoughts About GigaBugs\"
Dasher