My - insert Sampler Based plug-in here (Superior Drummer, Groove Agent, etc) - is causing my DAW to

• crash
  
• take 20 minutes to load
  
• Freeze the system
  
• makes the system sluggish or all of the above when opening the session….
  

Or as I’ll put it: “What exactly is happening with RAM in these larger sessions?”

First, before getting hot under that collar, try a little experiment.  Start a NEW session in your DAW, one that doesn’t have any tracks and isn’t coming from any templates.  Now create an instrument track and instance the ‘problem’ plug-in.  Chances are it loads just fine and now works.  So what is going on?  In a nutshell, you’re session is requiring either more RAM than your system has to offer, or is requiring more RAM than the application can allocate…. huh?

It’s like this…

Currently the most RAM an application ON A MAC can allocate is about 4.5 GB of RAM.   If your system has 4 GB or less of RAM to begin with, then you’ll be hitting that ceiling sooner which is obvious.  What isn’t obvious is that for folks who have 6 or more GB of RAM installed your DAW still can only access a maximum of about 4.5 GB of RAM. So every sampler instrument, Drum kit, orchestral library etc you insert in a session is going to take a small piece of the RAM pie until there is no more and then you’ll get the (read opening sentence)

Well that Sux.

Yes it does, but it’s not a new problem. It’s been with us all along and trust me when I say that today, these limitations seem almost minimal compared to where the technology has come from.  What is new however is the A) every computer can now accept a lot more than 4 BG of RAM, and B) the amount of brand new users who have never used a DAW, never used a Sampler, have never been exposed to the inherent limitations of these systems and have been sold a wonderful “yes you can it’s so easy” dream. Which means when reality hits it’s a shocker for most who really have no idea what’s happening ‘under the hood’

Yes Fine, but what can I do?

Someday in the not very far off future applications will become 64bit. What that basically means, in context of this Blog, is that the limitations of memory access are lifted. Native Instruments for example just released a 64 bit version of Kontakt 3.5 which is 64 bit.  Load as much into it as you have RAM for.  But in the meantime, you’ll need to keep an eye on your overhead.  Don’t load 6 instances of EZDrummer, Don’t load the Acoustic Grand Piano into your templates if you don’t play it. In the case of VSL, they created an application that loads the Vienna library into a second application in the background. This means you get 4.5 GB of RAM just for the orchestra library, and still get to keep 4.5 GB of Ram for whatever DAW you are running.  As long as you’ve got 10 or more GB of RAM to begin with it’s a great solution.

As a final caveat, keep in mind that the 4.5 GB limit I mention here does vary from DAW to DAW, It simply a maximum potential and does not necessarily mean 4.5 GB worth of samples. The DAW itself is taking up RAM and that will vary and some applications may max out at a maximum allocation of 4 or less.

It can be so complicated can’t it?

I wish to mix my tracks live into 4 parts- bass, drums, keys and odds & ends and have them running concurrently on 4 Audio tracks live .

We would call these “STEMS” or “GROUPS. Are these “stems” recorded to their OWN tracks or do you want to be able to mix them into “GROUPS” Live?… So that you could make adjustments WITHIN the “groups” or “stems”? IE: All drums would be coming out of a “STEREO PAIR” but, you may want to be able to raise or lower the snare live… For this tutorial I will assume that all your tracks are separate…

I need to learn how to send these out of Cubase 4.5.2…

You will need to create GROUP tracks in Cubase…

PROJECT>ADD TRACK>GROUP CHANNEL…

In the OPTIONS box that appears, choose to create 4 and make them STEREO.

You will now have 4 STEREO GROUP CHANNELS.

NAME each one just like you name an AUDIO TRACK . IE: DRUMS / BASS / KEYS / ODDS&ENDS.

In the MIXER you can now select an output destination for each instrument…

So… You can now set the OUTPUT of each audio track to the appropriate GROUP…

IE: Kick – to DRUMS / Snare – to Drums, Hat – To DRUMS, etc…

Once you have completed the routing, you will have 4 FADERS (The GROUP tracks) that “contain”your different “groups” or “stems” of instruments.IE: 1 fader controls the volume of ALL drums, another fader controls ALL Keysboards, etc. NOTE: They will appear at the extreme RIGHT of the Mixer.

…to an M-Audio Firewire 410 interface , and then route these 4 audio tracks into the mixing desk that I will have on stage.

The FireWire 410 has 8 Line outputs on the back so, you can use these “line outs” in pairs…

IE; 1+2 = Drums / 3+4 = Bass / 5+6 = Keys / 7+8 = Odd & Ends… You would then just connect these

physical output “pairs” to your mixer… Just make sure that the pairs of faders on your mixer are

panned HARD LEFT & RIGHT to maintain the stereo imaging (if there is any).

To ROUTE the AUDIO that is coming from the FADER GROUPS directly to the various outputs

of your FireWire 410 you will need to set some things up in your VST Connections window…

Like this: Open VST Connections…

And you will see this – Make sure you have clicked on the OUTPUTS TAB!!!

Next, click on the ADD BUS button and add 3 Stereo buses.

Then click OK.

You will now see something like this…

Note that EACH pair of stereo outputs is assigned (in the device port column) to outputs 1-8

of MY Device. You should be able to achieve the SAME with your FireWire 410.

Finally, we need to set the OUTPUTS of our newly created GROUP tracks.

Open the mixer, locate the group channels we created earlier and set the outputs like this…

And this…

And this…

And so on.

If everything is set correctly, you will hear your groups out of the separate

pairs of outputs on the back of your FireWire 410.

NOTE: If you are ONLY monitoring the “MAIN” stereo out, you will NOT

hear anything routed to outputs 3-8 until you hook them up to your mixer.

We’ll start by creating a NEW Garage Band project, just to keep it simple.

Starting with a blank GB project, click on TRACK from the top menu area,

and from the dropdown, choose NEW TRACK.

Select “SOFTWARE INSTRUMENT” and click on “CREATE”. Below…

You will now have a new TRACK that automatically loads a Grand Piano. Below…

Next, on the right hand side of the screen, click on the “EDIT” tab. Below…

At the top of that window, you will see “Sound generator” and you

will see the word PIANO in a “bar”… Below…

Click on the word PIANO and a pop-up menu will appear… Below…

From this pop-up menu, choose EZdrummer from the list. Below…

EZdrummer will “load” but, you won’t “see” it until you click on

the new “Sound Generator” icon that replaces the “Piano Keys” icon. Below…

After clicking on the GENERIC Sound generator ICON, you will see EZdrummer… Below…

At this point, you will either see the window ABOVE OR you will see this… Below…

If you see the window above, you will need to AUTHORIZE EZdrummer.

For instructions on how to Authorize EZdrummer see this article…

http://www.toontrack.com/support_portal.asp?prod=EZdrummer%20and%20EZX%20expansions&issue=Authorization&os=Mac%20OS%2010.5.x&seq=Garageband

Once you are Authorized or if you are already Authorized, you can start using EZ drummer…

Click on the “OPEN GROOVES” button IN EZdrummer. Below…

And then you will see this (below)… Click on each category until you find what you want and then

Drag and Drop the “groove” you want.

… And it will look like this (below) after a “Drag and drop”.

Finally, let’s change that PIANO ICON to a DRUMMER ICON!

CLOSE the EZdrummer window (you can always bring it back by clicking on the EDIT TAB and then clicking on the GENERIC SOUND GENERATOR icon).

And we will be back here (below).

Now click on the PIANO ICON here… Below…

And you will see this pop-up selection of ICONS… Below…

Just click on the ICON of your choice (DRUMSET) and your new ICON will appear in your track.

(then change the name)

That’s it!

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7-29-09 / FM