So, I'm nearing the completion of this last string arrangement for the album...working in Cubase4 w/VSL strings.

The audio starts getting choppy. ?? Maybe it's been because I've had it up all day...reboot.

Nope. Still choppy. Task manager says I'm really close to my physical RAM...yikes. Yet, VSL's instruments says they "see" another 250mb available to the sample engine. Hmm. I froze and unloaded a few of the tracks I wasn't going to focus on. Now, Taskmanager looks better...but, VSL shows LESS avaialble RAM than before I froze them!!

What changed today? Well...I made a shortcut to my project file this morning so I could start it straight off (since it takes 5-10min to load the VIs) rather than starting Cubase THEN loading the project. Maybe that was a mistake. Shouldn't be any different. Gonna reboot and find out.

Thing is...I'm (((THIS CLOSE))) and it starts freaking out. It couldn't freak out before, piss me off, and keep me from investing the time? No...now, this has GOT to happen through whatever rig I've got to do to make it happen.

Ahh...to have a MacPro w/8gb.

quote:

Originally posted by Popmann:
I'm (((THIS CLOSE)))

It's funny how the parentheses perfectly impart the image of you holding your thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

Sorry for your troubles. Especially when it's apparently caused by something as seemingly inconsequential as creating a shortcut. What the hell? A friend of mine's compressor settings disappeared from Cubase for no reason whatsoever. Had a mix he really liked going and whoosh - they were gone.

It's fixed. That was it. Load Cubase...THEN load the project-it's fine even with everything unfrozen.

Man, I gotta order that RAM...I just hate how I'm having to overpay because it's older...

Anyway, these VSL strings are maddening to start with for a number of reasons. They're set up to use keyswitches to change articulations and such, right? Great...except that we forget that Cubase "chases" continuous controllers (looks backward from the play point for the current state) for a reason...well, obviously it doesn't chase notes (keyswitches)...so, end result is that unless you play the sequence from the very beginning to catch the articulation changes, you don't really know what it sounds like--and thus it can sound bad on one pass, you think you correct a velocity or something, but what really made it jump out was being on the wrong articulation. Next pass it sounds weak because it's the RIGHT articulation, but you altered the velocity.

I mean, they're really amazing sounding...but, what a learning curve. You can reprogram them to use CCs for a lot...but, I don't know how much. I'm too far into THIS tune to experiment. But, I do need to log some nerd time with them to really get the best CC set up and some basic matrix templates.

The thing is Cubase can handle 2Gb ram.
It uses 512Mb for internal buffering and crash protection. Leaving 1.5Gb for the rest including plugins because they are started from the Cubase process. On Win XP/Vista 32bit 4Gb is the most Windows can handle, of those you have to subtract the graphic memory (video card) and/or other drivers and you should end up with 3 to 3.5Gb ram windows can use.
Of those Cubase still only can use 2Gb (like any other windows program) but having more than 2Gb ram ensures that Cubase and the plugins have the full 2Gb to play with.

Actually...Cubase can use over 3gb. Do some searches on the "/3gb switch" for XP.

I've been putting off buying RAM because 4gb for my old machine will be $280. 4gb for a new machine is like $120 for the same CAS latency/quality. I have 1.5gb now--so, I will have to chuck that RAM to go to 4gb.

I've been told the 3gb switch will kill my Gigastudio, though (as it runs in kernel mode)...so, I have to weigh in the price of replacing it for pianos, too. That, I keep holding out hoping to find a used Yamaha upright locally...

The problems have come back...it's just a matter of butting up against full RAM utilization. I keep freezing and unfreezing to get by, which is annoying.

quote:

Originally posted by Popmann:
Actually...Cubase can use over 3gb. Do some searches on the "/3gb switch" for XP.

The /3GB switch changes the way the 4GB virtual address space is split up. Instead of splitting it as 2GB of user mode virtual address space and 2GB of kernel mode virtual address space, the split is 3GB of user mode virtual address space and 1GB of kernel mode virtual address space.

It has officially been denied by Steinberg, the /3gb switch does nothing for Cubase because it is not linked
/LARGEADDRESSAWARE
Cubase still only uses 2Gb of ram. Well I have to admit I have not followed the latest development, coud be some newer patch for cubase4 has changed that.

Flies in the face of what VSL says...they use the 3gb switch all day--and Cubase is the platform they test in. They say it will yeild about 2.8-3.2gb of RAM visible to the sample instrument, depending on the switch options and how lean you run your OS.

I got confirmation from my Exchange admin buddy the other day that you can use the /3gb switch to allocate more user mode RAM without even having 3gb...he says they do it whenever there's more than 1gb in the box.

Anyway... here's the sticky over at the VSL site: PC Memory Config-VSL

Similar things posted at Cubase.net, but they're not stickying them.

If I won't see more than 2gb, I'll cheap out and upgrade to 3gb (keeping 1gb adding 2)...half the price, all the benefit, and will immediately start saving for a Mac to run it all.

quote:

If I won't see more than 2gb, I'll cheap out and upgrade to 3gb (keeping 1gb adding 2)...half the price, all the benefit, and will immediately start saving for a Mac to run it all.

:-)
That was kind of my point, that you could save a few bucks and go for 3Gb. On my hmm newest computer i run a Intel quadcore 6600 with 4Gb ram, of which 3.5Gb are available to Windows+programs. It runs fine, I have yet to see/hear any difference using the /3gb switch, currently it is On. I don't run GigaStudio and it may behave very different from the Motu MSI and the IK Philharmonic Miroslav I do run.
I have read that some run plugins in standalone mode (for them to allocate more ram) and use a virtual midi driver to patch them with Cubase or whatever.
As long as we are in 32bit I don't see any real solution, 64bit is way to expensive with the amount of ram you would need, and the software is not there yet.
I too sometimes toy with the idea to go Mac but I'm afraid it is not the solution to all problems :-/

A single solo viloin take 900mb of physical RAM just to buffer the dedicated HD streams. Yes, it's significantly different from IK and MOTU's instruments. this is VSL--not Gigastudio. Giga can't even address more than like 800mb total internally. I mention Giga, because I'm told the 3gb switch will kill Giga's performance. If it does, I'll need a new piano solution. Or either maybe just make multiple entries in the boot.ini--one with, one without to boot into Giga. I already have to disable hyperthreading to get Giga to run right.

If you're not pushing the 2gb limit...you're not going to see/hear any difference with more.

A Mac IS the solution, albeit to expensive one for me...they've been loading 7gb+ into Logic for years. It was a rig until the latest Logic/OSX.5, which has apparently lifted all RAM ceilings in Logic. They've had OS level 64bit addressing for years. Logic is stil la 32bit app, but they've done something to it to give it the same memory addressing...maybe it runs different threads for each instrument plug in or something-each of which would get 4gb.

FYI...resolution:

I installed 4gb of RAM. Ran the 3GB switch w/ the USERVA=3328. Virtual memory is turned OFF.

I can now get Cubase/VSL to load about 2.7-2.8gb of sample buffers, so, yes--C4 IS large address aware.

On top of that, Gigastudio, which uses kernel memory, can still load both my Boasendorfer 290 and (yamaha) Gigapiano. Although, it chokes if you load much of anything else on top of them. So, no need to buy a user mode piano instrument. Giga will get me by until I find a nice Yammy U1/U3 to put down here.

I did, for the record, first install 3gb total...but, while the 3gb switch did make Cubase/VSL "see" more RAM to load into, it didn't really change anything in the real world--it maxxed at about 1.7GB of sample buffers. Considering my OS boots into 110mb, and C4 uses about 100mb overhead, this factors correctly--the 3gb switch doesn't really work unless you've got more than 3 GB, even with the USERVA option set to 2.3 or 2.5gb, which are the options I tried. Like I said-it does make it "see" more, but it can't seem to utilize more than an untweaked default memory allocation.

In case anyone else is thinking about it.

Oh, yeah...this also dispells the rumor that the 3gb switch only works with XP Pro, as I'm running Home. I've long told people that Microsoft said that it would work with either version of XP, but people didn't seem to believe me--proof is in da puddin'.

That is good news.
What version/revision of Cubase4 do you run?
My comments where based on the first release
I didn't switch to cubase 4 because I was told it did not handle memory much differently than Cubase3.
I would love an excuse to upgrade :-)

I am running the striaght off the disc 4.01. I've honestly run into no real issues with it...and reading all the ungodly "look what they broke in the upgrade" about the following point releases, I'll likely hold off a while (or you know-forever ) on downloading their updates.

This system has the tightest MIDI timing-internal and external of any PC config I've run so far...and the only "crashes" have been related to my overloading the RAM with VSL samples, which should be a thing of the past now in the real world.