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

Dave and Nick, thank you both for such on-the-money (and understandable) explanations. Now I get it. I know that Kontakt hangs on to unused samples, but it does have its own 'purge' capability which dumps every sample NOT used in a given MIDI track (or universally). It's something one has to remember to do, but a great feature (not unlike the equivalent in Vienna Instruments, I believe. But this standalone/Soundflower idea is VERY interesting. I was in composer John Frizzel's studio recently and he'd ditched his two Gigastudio rigs in favor of a second G5 (for reasons that I won't drag up here) and was using a couple of free utilities to do much the same thing — with standalone instances of pre-v2 Kontakt running on the second machine. It was too much for me to absorb at the time, but now I'm ready for it :-) I've just done a search for Soundflower and see on the related forums that 'Jack' has just been released (formerly only Linux-based) and that it does much the same thing (some are saying better), so there's something else to look at. BFD *does* have a standalone version, but only in its stereo-only garb — no multiple outs — which is a shame. That said, to run Kontakt through Soundflower would free the RAM situation up so much that BFD would be less of an issue. I'm strongly considering getting this new Muse Research Receptor Pro as my BFD workhorse anyway. I've been talking with the grande fromage at Muse about it's capabilities in this regard, and here's what he emailed just yesterday: "...I loaded the JNF Big Gretsch Brush Set, the Gretsch Maple Kit, and the WFL 1958 Brush Kit from XFL, all at once on a Receptor Pro. You do have to set the RAM cache and disk streaming settings on BFD properly, I've got it set to 8192 and16384, if I trigger them all at once (all 3 kits, so I am playing 3 snares from 3 different BFDs every time I hit the snare, all on MIDI channel 1) for a layered sound the hard drive gives out, but that is probably not what you are doing, you probably just want them all ready to go so you don't have any load time, and will be playing individual hits fom each kit...so this setup plays with no glitches and will work perfectly for your needs. By the way, at this setting, Receptor says I still have 42% of memory available...and I have the buffer latency set to 256 samples." Allegedly, (word on the street) many of the revisions that have been made to BFD that have turned it from a buggy liability into a stable workhorse have come through FXPansion's close working with Muse Research... All good stuff. Thanks again for your wisdom. I'm going to report back when I get everything working and look forward to the article in your un-missable mag! Trevor

--- In logic-users@yahoogroups.com, Nick Batzdorf <recording@...> wrote: > Then you send the stand-alones MIDI using IAC and route their audio > into Logic's mixer using Soundflower It's funny, routing the audio was a breeze, but can I get IAC to work? Can I heck. I enable IAC in the Audio/Midi panel and it shows up in both Logic and the Standalone Kontakt as one of my MIDI 'cable' options. But as soon as I activate it in Kontakt to be the input source of choice, and play a note from an instrument in Logic set to same, my studio fills with feedback mayhem and Kontakt locks up. The only solution has been to force quit Kontakt each time. Do you have any ideas, please?

On Nov 29, 2006, at 8:17 AM, Nick Batzdorf wrote: > > 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. This is an artifact of the VM subsystem. I just did a little experiment where I malloc()ed 500MB of memory, zeroed it (so that it really was real), read it all back (just to make sure) and then went to sleep, and all of it was flagged as inactive from the start. This kind of makes sense, as you don't want to mark *all* of the memory as active right off the bat (since then there will be no candidates for swapping.) Once a bunch of memory accesses start, the VM system will see which pieces of memory are getting used the most and flag them as active. So it makes sense that sucking up a sample library (and not using 99.99% of it) will result in a very large block marked Inactive. --Dave

Has anyone used only Logic to create ringtones? cheers e

>Has anyone used only Logic to create ringtones? >cheers >e I have made several ring tones completely in Logic. Hans Jensen

On 29-Dec-06, at 2:53 AM, Hans Jensen wrote: > >Has anyone used only Logic to create ringtones? > > >cheers > > >e > > I have made several ring tones completely in Logic. > > Hans Jensen Hi Hans, I would like to make some custom ringtones. Where did you find out the ringtone format and file size etc? cheers e

ecadesky wrote: > Hi Hans, > > I would like to make some custom ringtones. > Where did you find out the ringtone format and file size etc? > > cheers > > e > Format?? That depends on your phone. Its either a general midi file or its an aif/wav/mp3 Id imagine.. I havent run into any problems with taking little aif snips out of songs and stuff and throwing em directly onto my Motorola RAZR. And now I got real Black Sabbath and Sleep ringtones haha! -- Chris http://www.monotrematamusic.com http://www.myspace.com/monotremata http://www.descentrecords.com

From: ecadesky <eric@glassorchestra.com> Subject: Re: [LUG] Logic for ringtones? On 29-Dec-06, at 2:53 AM, Hans Jensen wrote: > >Has anyone used only Logic to create ringtones? > > >cheers > > >e > > I have made several ring tones completely in Logic. > > Hans Jensen Hi Hans, I would like to make some custom ringtones. Where did you find out the ringtone format and file size etc? cheers e ------------ The format can be different for different phones but I found that either midi or MP3s usually work. For my Verizon LG phone, both midi and MP3s work. On midi, I have to make sure that the volume and velocity on all parts is all the way up or it will be very quiet. On MP3s, It is good to make sure there are some dynamics and the overall level should be around -6 to ­9 db or it will distort on the phone. Hans Jensen Jensen Engineering LLC http://www.terrasoundstudios.com/ W 303-922-9474 C 303-325-6268

<quotes fixed by admin - please reply underneath the quoted text as per LUG rules> From: Chris Coccia <descentrecords@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [LUG] Logic for ringtones? ecadesky wrote: > Hi Hans, > > I would like to make some custom ringtones. > Where did you find out the ringtone format and file size etc? > > cheers > > e > Format?? That depends on your phone. Its either a general midi file or its an aif/wav/mp3 Id imagine.. I havent run into any problems with taking little aif snips out of songs and stuff and throwing em directly onto my Motorola RAZR. And now I got real Black Sabbath and Sleep ringtones haha! -- Chris ................ The only problem with doing aiff is it is uncompressed so it will take up a ton of space. At least with my phone, I found that I have to keep the ring tone under 340k so using the MP3 format lets me have a longer tone. Hans Jensen Jensen Engineering LLC http://www.terrasoundstudios.com/ W 303-922-9474 C 303-325-6268