EIC problem

nate_D · Post by **nate_D** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:18 am

when i use instruments that came with the EIC in live, i watch my memory (ram) in a widget called iStat pro and it slowly shows it going down from 1.5 gb to 300 mb as live loads up all the samples. other vsts don't do this. why is it the sounds that come with live are the most processor heavy? is there anything i can do, other than freezing the tracks one by one, to keep all 2gb of ram from being used up?

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:30 am

There are some big sample sets there...

As I recall, the Grand Piano is somewhere in the ~4.5 Gb range (switch to a Sampler and try to load everything in RAM, and it will tell you how short you come up...)

nate_D · Post by **nate_D** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 1:51 pm

so i guess i should just plan on sticking with the lite versions of each instrument or freeze everything? i don't have sampler (yet), and i got some questions and want/need operator before i get it. but there has to be a better way to use the EIC. i kind of feel like i got shafted for buying it. don't get me wrong, they sound great. not sure if maybe i should have spent the money on operator.

Pasha · Post by **Pasha** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:04 pm

nate_D wrote:so i guess i should just plan on sticking with the lite versions of each instrument or freeze everything? i don't have sampler (yet), and i got some questions and want/need operator before i get it. but there has to be a better way to use the EIC. i kind of feel like i got shafted for buying it. don't get me wrong, they sound great. not sure if maybe i should have spent the money on operator.

I don't want to start a flame here but I did the opposite (almost).
I bought Operator, learned to use it (I still need practice...yet) and got
some good patches out of it in the Pad area. When I need to sculpture the sound a little bit more I use Live's effects. I'm an happy operator user now.
Regarding the EIC a friend of mine lend me the big file and I test it in demo mode. After 10 days testing I almost decided to buy it, primarily because of the pianos (acoustic and MK II) but after I listened to http://www.truepianos.com/ or http://www.pianoteq.com/ I changed my mind.
I got a Macbook with the same specs as yours and I cannot play EIC Grand Piano unless I use the lite version. I always thought that Hard Disk Sampling even with 'load in RAM' feature tax the system too much for what you get. EIC luckily provides lite versions of the instruments when needed and it's not expensive. I can confirm your experience and doubts. If I hadn't had someone who already bought it I would have bought it myself. At the moment I haven't decided yet but I'm sure I've got more information than I had before.

- Best
- Pasha

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:50 pm

EIC sounds great but you need a beast to run it

it's really the hard drive - in streaming terms each note of polyphony is like an audio track

Pasha · Post by **Pasha** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:17 pm

forge wrote:EIC sounds great but you need a beast to run it

it's really the hard drive - in streaming terms each note of polyphony is like an audio track

Thanks forge. If there's something I have to learn is Synthesis.....

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:37 pm

I don't know about _beast_

I had to upgrade a bit to use it, but in the end I'm only on a 2.6 P4 with 2g Ram and a separate audio hard drive. Not really beastly

I think the main problem is these slow notebook drives

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:39 pm

longjohns wrote: I think the main problem is these slow notebook drives

well then the ABleton problem is flexibility over where to store the EIC

I'd like to just run it off my external hard drive

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:05 pm

Sure, flexibility is good

But may I ask why not put your library on the external drive?

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:12 pm

longjohns wrote:Sure, flexibility is good

But may I ask why not put your library on the external drive?

well I guess there are some things I'd like to always hae access to

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:25 pm

Let me add that this is possible to do manually. I know it would take a little time.

Copy your EIC sounds to your external. I think you'd do well by copying the entire Samples/Waveforms folder, they seem to all be in there

Now what you need are presets which reference the new disk location.

One way would be to temporarily move the EIC samples from the Ableton Library,

then when you open a preset the samples will be missing. Point the manager at the new external location, and save as a new preset on the device, for example "Grand Piano on EXT drive" or whatever.

Then you could replace the Ableton Library sounds to their original location (now the original presets are happy)

And now you have the ability to choose which disk you stream off by which preset you load

I just did this as a test with the patch Glockenspiel Brass Hits Draft (or whatever it's called)

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:28 pm

But yes I know it would be better to let Ableton install it somewhere else. Especiallly because the program is perfectly happy to run sounds off of another disk

nate_D · Post by **nate_D** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:05 pm

i could hook up my external and run everything off of that, but wouldn't usb bottleneck that down and make load times slower (mac hd 5400 rpm, external 7200 rpm)?
my main issue is that its making my free memory go from 1.4 gb when i'm running live w/o EIC instrument to 332 mb of free memory when one instrument is in use. what i'm guessing (key word guessing)is that after it's loaded off your hard drive its stored in your ram. so if i didn't recently upgrade to 2 gb of ram i wouldn't even be able to use the EICs? some of them anyways
is it possible for my hard drive to do all the work instead of my ram? i think i might be confused about where the sounds are loaded up at when they are in use. thanks eveybody for all the help btw

966sf · Post by **966sf** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:31 pm

Unlike the Macbook Pros, I think the Macbooks can get their harddrives replaced without voiding the warranty. Why not get the best HD possible. I think Hitachi or Seagate makes a 2.5" model that has 200 GB and 7200 RPM. That should fix your problem a little bit. If I'm not mistaken the Macbook runs a Seagate one that's 100 GB and 5400 RPM stock.

Though I never like to use virtual instruments for pianos. If you use damper pedal, CPU tends to get stressed too much. I'd rather just record off a real one or do an audio track from an external synth. Thank god I invested in hardware before software.

I also always found that Live's instruments were pretty processor efficient compared to when I run VSTs or AUs. Compare Kontakt's piano to EIC Piano.

forge · Post by **forge** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 1:38 am

nate_D wrote:i could hook up my external and run everything off of that, but wouldn't usb bottleneck that down and make load times slower (mac hd 5400 rpm, external 7200 rpm)?
my main issue is that its making my free memory go from 1.4 gb when i'm running live w/o EIC instrument to 332 mb of free memory when one instrument is in use. what i'm guessing (key word guessing)is that after it's loaded off your hard drive its stored in your ram. so if i didn't recently upgrade to 2 gb of ram i wouldn't even be able to use the EICs? some of them anyways
is it possible for my hard drive to do all the work instead of my ram? i think i might be confused about where the sounds are loaded up at when they are in use. thanks eveybody for all the help btw

it will need to use ram, but it wont load it completely into ram unless you press the RAM button on sampler - so it will stream from the hard disk - but it will need to use ram to buffer it as I understand it

but as I said earlier - you need to keep in mind that it effectively means each note of polyphony is like another audio track - so if you play 5 notes on the piano it is streaming 5 separate audio streams which arent really any different to an audio track in terms of bandwidth - so it is in a sense like adding another 5 audio tracks to your set

really, big virtual sampler patches like this do require alot of resources - people often use a separate computer just as a virtual sampler - like gigasampler for Eg. - these days you may not need to but you will need to give your computer the resources to cope - and it's not CPU with samplers, itr RAM and HD

I have a brand new HP pavilion dual core notebook with 1GB ram and it struggles with EIC - I have been working on a project and I had to load the grand piano in a separate project then render it

the CPU meter barely registered - but if i put a new HD and ram in it it would probably cope better