Melchior Posted September 14, 2007 Share Posted September 14, 2007 Hey hey. Just wondering if anyone out there can help me work out a noobular problem. Before I go on, let me spew some numbers at you: I have a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 w/ hyper threading 2 gigs of RAM I am using Fruity Loops Studio 7 XXL On my current project, FL Studio takes up about .5 Gigs of RAM not playing. I have a project I'm working on that has a ton of different instruments/channels. 8 of these instruments are just soundfonts and samples I've downloaded. About 14 of these are samples using a VST (Virtual Drumline 2 using a Kontakt Player) I copied to the plugins folder. (thanks to some useful advice from this forum ) The problem is, on certain points of my project, the CPU peaks out and the music scratches, hisses and flips out like a kitty that has been possesed by demons. My theory: For these 14 channels that I'm using this VST, each one is using a separate instance of that VST. I think that loading 14 of this same VST might be the problem? Each one can hold 8 different instruments, but right now each one only has one instrument because I don't know how to switch to different ones. I also have Kontakt 2, which I'm not sure if that's useful to anything, but I thought I should mention that. Also, someone mentioned in another post (that was somewhat related to this topic) that I could use the MIDI Out feature. I played around with it, but I couldn't figure out how to connect it with Kontakt 2 or my samples. So, each time I load another instance of this VST, I stop breathing a little more hoping my computer will not fry itself. Should I be worried? Concerning the CPU problem, I would think that my computer should be able so handle this, because I've thrown a lot more at it than this. If anyone has any other ideas on why you think my CPU is maxing out, I'd appreciate any help! Thanks. Melchior Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunahorum Posted September 14, 2007 Share Posted September 14, 2007 Hmm I have no idea. I would like to know how to do multiple sounds in the same vst without loading up multiple ones though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 Err.. so you're loading a lot of sounds, and you're wondering why your computer is having trouble playing them all back? The more stuff you try to do in realtime, the more your computer will 'choke' - as CPU usage rises, the audio doesn't get buffered fast enough and it produces glitches like the ones you've described. Solutions: get a faster computer, increase buffer size, get a better audio interface/drivers. The first option is vastly preferable, as the latter two may only marginally help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunahorum Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 you could possibly use edison to record some of the more cpu intensive tracks down to wav files Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melchior Posted September 15, 2007 Author Share Posted September 15, 2007 Actually, I knew the more sounds you had going on at the same time uses more CPU power. I'm not that big of a Noobite . What I was wondering, was that having multiple instances of a VST that hosted these sounds was what was overworking my computer. I've run MUCH more samples that that before. For each of those 14 samples, I had 1 instance of that VST hosting those sounds. Instead, I was figuring out how to get 1 instance of that same VST to host all 14 sounds. Which, actually, I did figure it about 2 hours ago. In case anyone is curious, all I did was open that VST (Kontakt Player 2) load all my 14 samples onto it, and open a MIDI-Out channel for each of those 14 instruments. Connecting them involved making sure that the Port number matched up from the VST to the MIDI-out channel (which is what I was having problems with before) and then obviously connecting the channel number with each instrument. I can now play the song no problemo with even more sounds added. Now, I'm just simply curious whether it was those multiple instances of that VST slowing my computer, or some other dark magic noob problem that I am unaware of. It would be good to know and could be a strategy for other nooboligists out there to make there music run more smoothly! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 Ah, I understand now. Yes, you ALWAYS want to use as few VSTs as possible. Virtually any VST, no matter how simple it may seem, uses CPU and RAM. This is especially true with samplers. That's why they are made to load multiple instruments... they would ravage your CPU if you had to make another instance each time you wanted another sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melchior Posted September 15, 2007 Author Share Posted September 15, 2007 And ravaging they did. That's really good to know Zircon. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunahorum Posted September 15, 2007 Share Posted September 15, 2007 you can have up to 16 midi outs before you have to load another VST right? Or can you change the loaded samples mid-song? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted September 16, 2007 Share Posted September 16, 2007 Very few VSTs these days will let you change samples mid-song on the same channel, though it can be done. Otherwise, with VST2 standard (VST3 is not quite done yet), yes, 16 MIDI channels per VST instrument max. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melchior Posted September 16, 2007 Author Share Posted September 16, 2007 I'm very curious how that could be done. I've used this VST on Sibelius and have changed the "banks" easily. Also (and sorry to keep beating this dead horse), I have found when I do load, say, 8 instruments onto one VST, for 7 of them I can't adjust their "channel volume" in the piano roll (or any of the channel controls for that matter). I use those a lot so this is yet another obstacle for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melchior Posted September 16, 2007 Author Share Posted September 16, 2007 Nevermind, I guess FL won't let you use volume controls for MIDI-Out. Gotta find a different use one VST for all my instruments now. Looks like I'm back to square one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted October 2, 2007 Share Posted October 2, 2007 You can edit the volume without the volume knob. If the VST, like the one I'm using (Kompakt), lets you edit volume and panning in there, just use that. If not, you can edit the volume in the piano roll with the intensity window below it. Its a cheap method, but it works. I haven't figured out how I could do that with panning yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted October 3, 2007 Share Posted October 3, 2007 Yes, the MIDI Outs all correspond with channel volume. Say you have strings loaded into your sampler, MIDI channel 1. A MIDI out pointing to that sampler, channel 1, will affect the strings' volume if you move its volume knob. Very simple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 I'm having a problem where my piano instrument shows up in all of my MIDI out tracks. It shows up in my strings, my pad, my harp, etc. and I really can;t figure how its doing it, so this MIDI out business is a lot trickier than it seems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephyr Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 I'm not sure about how come the piano is showing up in all of the midi channels, but I can answer your question about panning in the piano roll. At the very left of the velocity window at the bottom of the piano roll, there should be a a grey box, right-click it and choose "panning" you can then set panning for each individual note. (I think that's the way it is, I'm not home at the moment but I'll check when I get there). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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