On Nov 28, 2006, at 3:48 PM, Trevor Gilchrist wrote: > I've been studying the idoiosyncracies of memory usage whilst > working in Logic (7.2/Dual > G5/7Gb RAM/10.4.8) to see where the resources come and go as I > instantiate various > instruments and their libraries... > > I'm a big BFD user. And RMX, Kontakt, Trilogy etc. It's fascinating > to see how much each > one influences memory consumption and most of the time the feedback > from the Activity > Viewer makes sense. But recently, I've been watching the dark blue > "inactive" memory > segment — which I believe to be the cached 'waiting to be re-used' > memory — just fill and > fill until it's, well, full. At that point I get erratic behaviour > (clicks and stutters etc.) in Logic > and the only thing that I can find to clear back to proper > functionality is a restart. Logic > doesn't crash, per se, but it certainly seems to be straining. My > "active" memory segment > rarely gets up much beyond a few hundred MB. > > Is there enough detail in this description to get some advice from > someone with a bigger > brain than mine, 'cos I'm not sure what's going on. Is the > 'Inactive' memory segment where > the machine hangs on to samples on the off-chance I might need > them? If so, can I clear it > — like the 'purge' commands one finds in Adobe programs? Or am I > completely > misunderstanding what's what? There certainly seems to be some > correlation between the > 'filling up' of the inactive memory segment and poor behaviour in > Logic. > > Any advice greatly appreciated. No rush. Posted by: "Dave Katz" dkatz@dkatz.org dkatz42 [interesting explanation snipped] > To make a long story short, you need to get more RAM if you're > running out... But with 7GB installed you should be able to load Logic up to roughly 3GB of real memory before things get flaky. So it seems weird that the active segment rarely goes beyond a few hundred MB. The first question I have is whether it isn't something silly like disk-streaming not being turned on or installed in Kontakt? (Does BFD stream?) In any case, I've never seen this happen - once you have samples loaded, Activity Monitor shows the same amount of RAM assigned to Logic in perpetuity. Well, that's not entirely true, because if you're close to maxing Logic out and load more samples, I've seen it lower the RAM use and start filling up virtual memory (i.e. the hard disk). Anyway... there's a great trick for accessing way more than 3GB on a single machine, and that's to run stand-alone versions of instruments outside Logic. That gives each instrument its own memory space; you won't get 3GB per instrument, but I've been loading about 7GB reliably on an 8GB machine. This works well with K2, since it has 64 program slots, but you can't run it as a plug-in and stand-alone - you have to choose one. Does BFD have a stand-alone version? That would be a good candidate. Then you send the stand-alones MIDI using IAC and route their audio into Logic's mixer using Soundflower (free download from Cycling '74). Or if you have an RME interface, use its loopback feature to route the audio. (We actually have an article about this in our Dec/Jan issue, which is just about to hit the stands. Excuse the obnoxious own-trumpet blowing...) Nick Batzdorf, editor/publisher Virtual Instruments Magazine - the world of softsynths and samplers www.Virtualinstrumentsmag.com 1-877 VImagzn (846-2496) 818/905-9101, cell 590-9101