Ableton Forum

If RAM is the issue, can someone explain why Roland for example with its V-Piano generation and below, stopped using big libs in favor of Math Modeling? They could go 64 bit like I guess Korg is doing. (a little off-topic, we're talking DAWs here but nowadays Workstations do more and more..), what do you think?

just one question : With maschine standalone, you can launch it 64 or 32 bits. Guess what? I launch it 32 bits otherwise 80% of my plug-ins don't work...

The Carpet Cleaner wrote:just one question : With maschine standalone, you can launch it 64 or 32 bits. Guess what? I launch it 32 bits otherwise 80% of my plug-ins don't work...

yepp, you have to update your plugins to 64bit-compatible versions... if avaliable.

Pasha wrote:If RAM is the issue, can someone explain why Roland for example with its V-Piano generation and below, stopped using big libs in favor of Math Modeling? They could go 64 bit like I guess Korg is doing. (a little off-topic, we're talking DAWs here but nowadays Workstations do more and more..), what do you think?

Roland have a history of wanting to model things rather than just be a synth/sampler etc. Many of their in house failures have because some of the electronic music worlds favourite toys when abused - 303 possibly being the best example of a modelling failure that found alternate sucess evenually.

The D50 sample + synthesis was at the time as interesting attempt at modelling that fitted the limited digital technology of the day. Yes - nice synth too, but its design was based upon using samples to deal with the bits that were really heard to model decently and let synthesis deal with the bits that a player would want to control as a sound envolves.

Fast fordward - v-drum series is a long foray into modelling. I think there is even a v-accordian somewhere. The original v-synth and its immediate predessor was driven by a desire to model rather than specifically synthesize. V-Synth GT is what really added the missing elements to make it work convincingly for some sounds. As usual with roland attempts - it happenned to make for an interesting synth as well.

The V-Piano to me is just roland moving further down that long term goal of modelling things. Finally analysis and hardware availability is leading to algorythms with practical implementation in reasonably buildable hardware. V-piano is very expensive for what it is really, actually so are the high end v-drum modules. In the case of the v-piano - part of that cost might be due to needing several fast DSP to do the job (TBH I have no ideal what is inside the v-piano) as well as roland just wanting to sting early adopters as is usual for most businesses one way or another. Actually roland seems to want to sting everyone these days except for their pet USA market, but thats a different issue.

Korg OTOH dont have a modelling goal - just stuff that sells and people can fuk about with and make pop music or do whatever they want with etc. The Oasys was (I think) the foundation of a brute force approach of taking a generic computer and a general OS to do all the system managment, UI etc and farm out actual DSP work to a bunch of DSPs. Its like a PC running Linux with say a bunch of UAD cards plugged in (IIRC). 64 bit is a logical next step for a platform that is at heart very generic computer like. You may as well take advantage fo the general computer ways for doing things - big sample libraries etc rather than being constrained to stuff as much as possible into a tiny amount of ROM. Back with the M1 - Korg started a heavy sample based approach to doing things. In fact the M1 was so good, many of us still use it today for some sounds.

Hard to mention these two with also mentioning Yamaha - well they started as odd balls and from that day to this about all they have ever shown is a distinct lack of direction and consistency or purpose. Not suprising - they have other interests like motorbikes etc... Just a business that makes shit that sells for the hell of it - a classic we do everything type of big far-eastern company.

Anyway - point is what these companies are doing doesnt have that much to do with the general memory is cheap argument. If memory still cost $100 per MB and they could find a reliable market for somethign with several gigs in it at some extortionate price - they would do it.

+1 for 64 bit (or workaround like splitting processes to allow more than 2gb of memory). The argument for 64 bit seems very simple - a lot of users (possibly most and certainly anyone who likes to use hungry 3rd party vsts) are running out of memory and having to bounce things when everyone using other DAWs doesn't have to. Simple. If Live 9 isn't 64 bit, I bet many users will look to move to another DAW.

Khazul wrote:

Pasha wrote:If RAM is the issue, can someone explain why Roland for example with its V-Piano generation and below, stopped using big libs in favor of Math Modeling? They could go 64 bit like I guess Korg is doing. (a little off-topic, we're talking DAWs here but nowadays Workstations do more and more..), what do you think?

Roland have a history of wanting to model things rather than just be a synth/sampler etc. Many of their in house failures have because some of the electronic music worlds favourite toys when abused - 303 possibly being the best example of a modelling failure that found alternate sucess evenually.

The D50 sample + synthesis was at the time as interesting attempt at modelling that fitted the limited digital technology of the day. Yes - nice synth too, but its design was based upon using samples to deal with the bits that were really heard to model decently and let synthesis deal with the bits that a player would want to control as a sound envolves.

Fast fordward - v-drum series is a long foray into modelling. I think there is even a v-accordian somewhere. The original v-synth and its immediate predessor was driven by a desire to model rather than specifically synthesize. V-Synth GT is what really added the missing elements to make it work convincingly for some sounds. As usual with roland attempts - it happenned to make for an interesting synth as well.

The V-Piano to me is just roland moving further down that long term goal of modelling things. Finally analysis and hardware availability is leading to algorythms with practical implementation in reasonably buildable hardware. V-piano is very expensive for what it is really, actually so are the high end v-drum modules. In the case of the v-piano - part of that cost might be due to needing several fast DSP to do the job (TBH I have no ideal what is inside the v-piano) as well as roland just wanting to sting early adopters as is usual for most businesses one way or another. Actually roland seems to want to sting everyone these days except for their pet USA market, but thats a different issue.

Korg OTOH dont have a modelling goal - just stuff that sells and people can fuk about with and make pop music or do whatever they want with etc. The Oasys was (I think) the foundation of a brute force approach of taking a generic computer and a general OS to do all the system managment, UI etc and farm out actual DSP work to a bunch of DSPs. Its like a PC running Linux with say a bunch of UAD cards plugged in (IIRC). 64 bit is a logical next step for a platform that is at heart very generic computer like. You may as well take advantage fo the general computer ways for doing things - big sample libraries etc rather than being constrained to stuff as much as possible into a tiny amount of ROM. Back with the M1 - Korg started a heavy sample based approach to doing things. In fact the M1 was so good, many of us still use it today for some sounds.

Hard to mention these two with also mentioning Yamaha - well they started as odd balls and from that day to this about all they have ever shown is a distinct lack of direction and consistency or purpose. Not suprising - they have other interests like motorbikes etc... Just a business that makes shit that sells for the hell of it - a classic we do everything type of big far-eastern company.

Anyway - point is what these companies are doing doesnt have that much to do with the general memory is cheap argument. If memory still cost $100 per MB and they could find a reliable market for somethign with several gigs in it at some extortionate price - they would do it.

Excellent! Thanks.

sach160 wrote:+1 for 64 bit (or workaround like splitting processes to allow more than 2gb of memory). The argument for 64 bit seems very simple - a lot of users (possibly most and certainly anyone who likes to use hungry 3rd party vsts) are running out of memory and having to bounce things when everyone using other DAWs doesn't have to. Simple. If Live 9 isn't 64 bit, I bet many users will look to move to another DAW.

+1. Want it soon.

doghouse wrote:All this 64 bit crap is getting on my nerves. Maybe you guys weren't around for the 16 to 32 bit transition. It will take another year or two before everybody has worked through all the kinks.

The big deal for 64 bit is memory addressing but I haven't seen any PCs loaded with TBs of RAM just yet

absolutely, sick of seeing this need for 64 bit everywhere

superistic wrote: absolutely, sick of seeing this need for 64 bit everywhere

just curious... why even come into the thread in the first place if you feel so strongly about 64 bit?

superistic wrote:

doghouse wrote:All this 64 bit crap is getting on my nerves. Maybe you guys weren't around for the 16 to 32 bit transition. It will take another year or two before everybody has worked through all the kinks.

The big deal for 64 bit is memory addressing but I haven't seen any PCs loaded with TBs of RAM just yet

absolutely, sick of seeing this need for 64 bit everywhere

It's not about TBs, it's just getting over 4GB. That's not such a big number if you use lots of sampled instruments.

posssu wrote:

superistic wrote:

doghouse wrote:All this 64 bit crap is getting on my nerves. Maybe you guys weren't around for the 16 to 32 bit transition. It will take another year or two before everybody has worked through all the kinks.

The big deal for 64 bit is memory addressing but I haven't seen any PCs loaded with TBs of RAM just yet

absolutely, sick of seeing this need for 64 bit everywhere

It's not about TBs, it's just getting over 4GB. That's not such a big number if you use lots of sampled instruments.

I use Trilian and Alchemy, Trilian has its fair share of large samples and some patches in Alchemy as well - never had any memory problems running these

its amazing the amount of people that seem to be running "sampled instruments" all of a sudden

Maybe people also refer to huge Live Sets with RAM Based Clips. In that case the RAM bottleneck (son of an HDD bottleneck) is sure there. For my usage I have never found a RAM issue in my 32bit 4GB iMac SL 1.6.4 environment even using EIC Grand Piano that is 5GB of samples and cannot be loaded in RAM. EIC and Sampler/Simpler make good use of the smartprime option Ableton introduced once ago. Although I use many audio tracks (HDD streaming based) plus EIC Grand and Session Drums and Latin Percussions I have never came across RAM problems. I have to admit that some glitches here and there happen but nothing big given that I do not perform live. Notebooks have 5400RPM drives and can become bottleneck very soon if you do not have a SSD (expensive) so RAM is the cheaper alternative... but it will be always limited by hardware. Theory is Theory and real life is how vendors built memory channels in their motherboards...

Just my two cents

- Pasha

superistic wrote:its amazing the amount of people that seem to be running "sampled instruments" all of a sudden

That might be because sample players have got a hell of alot beter recently and so are worth running for synth type stuff rather than just conventional instrument sounds.

superistic wrote: I use Trilian and Alchemy, Trilian has its fair share of large samples and some patches in Alchemy as well - never had any memory problems running these

its amazing the amount of people that seem to be running "sampled instruments" all of a sudden

Actually Trilian is so far the only plugin that has caused problems (but probably because a) the sample sets are really big and b) my other sampler Kontakt uses the Memory server to load the samples outside of Live's memory space). Before I bought my new computer the limiting factor was also the CPU, but now on the new desktop computer it's no longer a problem so it's easy just keep on working and adding whatever you want instead of thinking about the resources.

In a recent project (a big pop song, about 55 tracks loooooots of plugins), I tried to add another instance of Trilian (already had at least one) and it said that it can't load anything, because there is 0gb ram left. So at least I assume this is because Live has run out of its 4gb limit, I have 12gb total).

So getting the limit up from 4gb will help if the project gets big. It's not only Trilian of course, whatever plugin comes last on top of the pile will eventually fill the rest of the 4GB and simply refuse to load.

But of course I also realize it's not a biggie if you never had problems with memory and the projects stay smaller. In that case I can see why having 64bit seems like a less important request.

Pasha wrote:Maybe people also refer to huge Live Sets with RAM Based Clips. In that case the RAM bottleneck (son of an HDD bottleneck) is sure there. For my usage I have never found a RAM issue in my 32bit 4GB iMac SL 1.6.4 environment even using EIC Grand Piano that is 5GB of samples and cannot be loaded in RAM. EIC and Sampler/Simpler make good use of the smartprime option Ableton introduced once ago. Although I use many audio tracks (HDD streaming based) plus EIC Grand and Session Drums and Latin Percussions I have never came across RAM problems. I have to admit that some glitches here and there happen but nothing big given that I do not perform live. Notebooks have 5400RPM drives and can become bottleneck very soon if you do not have a SSD (expensive) so RAM is the cheaper alternative... but it will be always limited by hardware. Theory is Theory and real life is how vendors built memory channels in their motherboards...

Just my two cents

- Pasha

So, a solid state hard drive is better than having more RAM?