mdiemer

12 hours ago, Starise said:

I recently started a thread over on the Ning forum called " Good mid priced sample libraries" Because honestly I don't think you need to go get the most expensive libraries. Lots of people there are buying the VSL stuff. Granted VSL make good libraries I just think you can make great mock ups using far less. A trained ear might hear the difference.

Here's one I recently made using a set of SONiVOX libraries. I bought Brass, woodwinds and strings plus the 88 as a bundle for 20.00 US. The strings are a little grainy but that has more to do with the way I mixed it. The 88 was a big surprise. It is pretty amazing! I also used the 8dio solo violin in this. When I bought it for 20.00 I didn't think I would ever use it. The cello is Cinesamples Tina Quo though. Even that wasn't terribly expensive on a deal. Originally this mix was too hot. I had to bring the levels down for this kind of music when not in a movie context. I think I managed to get pretty close for someone who isn't a pro.

As others have said it has more to do with the room. The best monitors in the world won't help you if you aren't hearing things correctly. Even with lots of correction on my space mixes often come out bass shy and I have to work on the bass. This is because my space still isn't totally right. If it were me I would probably take the subwoofer out or have it set VERY low if your mixing room is small. JMOP.

I am not as particular about instrument placement unless it affects how the sound will be. Some who mix for this are very particular about that. Sometimes I am, but only if the context fits.

 

Very nice piece, Tim. That violin is pretty good. I have heard stuff done with nothing but Garritan P/O that sounded incredible, so you're right, you don't necessarily need high-level libraries. I only consider what I have to be mid-level. I still use some Garritan, too. Especially woodwinds and harp. 

A quick question: What level should I set the volume knob for the BX5a monitors? Halfway?

I'm pretty sure I need the subwoofer. The woofers in the BX5a's are just 5".  I read that below 6" you need a sub.

By the way, I found this article helpful:          https://ask.audio/articles/7-mistakes-to-avoid-when-setting-up-studio-monitors

16 hours ago, Amicus717 said:

Depending on the age of your BX5s, there may be some frequency adjustment and dB switches on the back that can be used, also. The original BX5's had them, but I think they slowly phased them out in the later models. I also found that the distance from the wall behind the BX5's made a big difference in the amount of bass I could hear coming from the ports on the back. 

Thanks Rob. I have the BX5a speakers, which do not have any freq or eq knobs, just a volume knob. I may experiment with wall placement as you suggested. Right now, they are on little stands I made, about 11" high, including foam pads. They are about 4.5" from the wall, but the tweeters stick up above a shelf. The bass however are lower than the shelf, so they can benefit from the reflections.

I just discovered that I had the subwoofer crossover set very low. This may be another casualty of recent cleaning and failure to ensure the settings were not changed. Unless I was stupid enough to actually set it that low. Anyway, I am looking at starting over, basically, with this mix. first task is to set up the speaker system correctly. I now have more separation between left and right. I need to research how to set the sub crossover now. I know that 80 is often a starting point, but for studio monitoring I probably need something different. I do think I need the sub, these little guys just don't have enough bass. Just keeping you folks informed, so you know I haven't given up. although it's tempting.

Thanks very much for that, Tezza, it was very informative. I just made the discovery that I have my monitors too close together (about 20 inches, should be 3 feet - I must have forgotten about that specification when I moved stuff recently. It sucks getting old). 

So, I'm going to fix that, experiment with the crossover on the subwoofer and see how it goes. I may also have to look into room treatment, as has been suggested by many here and elsewhere. Supposedly also there's a way you crawl around on the floor, looking for the right spot for the sub. I may have to relocate my baby grand (anybody need one?).

3 hours ago, Amicus717 said:

Mike, I am wondering if the subwoofer might be a bit of overkill in your setup -- at least in regards to mixing? Maybe others wiser than I (and that would be a lot of people) can correct me on this, but my understanding has always been that for small project studios like mine -- where small room size creates built in bass problems right from the start -- subwoofers tend to cause more problems than they are worth. Have you ever tried doing your final mixes on just the monitors without the sub? I used to use BX5 monitors (they were my previous set, in fact), and they are perfectly decent small monitors. Just a thought...

 

Actually, I did start out using the M-Audio speakers alone, but their lack of bass frustrated me, so I grabbed the Mackie sub when it was on sale. I probably should have just bought better studio monitors. you may be on to something there, Rob.

I have yet to try adjusting the sub's crossover setting, and hopefully that will help.

18 hours ago, jsg said:

To make a mix that sounds good on other systems you have to mix on really fine, and usually very expensive, speakers.  Computer speakers just won't do it.   That's what pro monitors are for:  To get an accurate image of the sound, warts and all.  That's desirable, because if you can't hear what's wrong you can't improve it.

I hope you listen to a lot of classical (not film!) music and study scores.  When I finish a symphony it usually takes me about 2 years working on it every day.  Much of that time is spend in MIDI programming--attacks, releases, velocity and cc7 or 11, moving notes forward or backward away from the beat, sample-set choice, etc.  It's time consuming.  You have to think how a player would attack a note, express a phrase, create gesture and intention.  Using lots of tempo variation, even slight, also helps.  The problem is that a computer can play perfectly in time.  That easily degrades into a mechanical, artless, lifeless sound.  It's up to the musician to counteract that with techniques to bring expression, randomness, clarity and a sense of human intention into the MIDI sequence.   I'd start with basic classical piano pieces, i.e. Bach inventions or fugues, and learn that way.   Taking on producing The Rite of Spring requires not only an incredible amount of time and energy, but also top notch gear and a lot of knowledge of music.  If you have that, go for it. 

Here's a masterclass I did a few months ago on this topic:

http://www.jerrygerber.com/soundbytesinterview2019.pdf

And here's a new symphonic work you can probably learn something from:

http://www.jerrygerber.com/symph10complete.htm

Jerry

 

 

Thank you Jerry for chiming in on this. Unfortunately, I don't think I will ever attain the level of expertise you and others have. I am only interested in making modest improvements in my music, so that people will be able to get it. Maybe the Jedi Masters, as someone else here put it, will not be able to listen as it doesn't come up to their standards, and for that I apologize.  I don't have the energy or time (not to mention the ability to sit in a chair for hours; pain level limits that), to produce perfect mockups. Though I admire and envy those who do. 

I have made some modest improvements, mostly by realizing that in manually panning my string libraries, I am losing much of the signal. I have also moved the basses in more to where they are more resonant. The reason I was panning everything is that I use different libraries, and some of them have widely varying seating plans. But I have hit upon a scheme that allows me to use them mostly in their native positions, with the exception of the pizz. basses, as they are from the Vienna Special Edition library, which is not pre-panned. So they have to panned. but Vienna has power panning, where you can pan without losing signal. 

We'll see how it goes. While music comes naturally to me, as to all here, the other stuff does not. I can be a real dufus when it comes to the technical side of things. And I'm not getting any younger. any improvements from here on out are going to be incremental.

Addendum: re: my speaker setup, they are not computer speakers, but a three-way system with M-Audio BX5 monitors and a Mackie sub. I meant "computer speakers" in the sense that thye are connected to my computer. although the way my music sounds now, I can understand why someone would think they are just computer speakers. I promise, it is going to get better. But keep in mind, better is a relative term.

2 hours ago, InstrEd said:

@mdiemer I think your first movement of Three Easter Scenes is pretty good. I  mainly think you have to work on better dynamics.  Really don't put yourself down for this nice movement.

Thanks Ed, I appreciate it. But you know,  as a musician, we're all our own worst critics...

4 hours ago, JoeGBradford said:

Nice piece! Know what you mean about the sound though - yours sounds much better than the little I have composed but, as you say, it still has that unrealistic sound even though you have some great libraries 

Thanks Joe. I was planning on posting it here and another place on Easter, for the benefit of those who celebrate the holiday but couldn't get to church, but when I heard it on my other sound systems, I knew I had more work to do.

3 hours ago, Amicus717 said:

Hi Michael,

I totally know where you are coming from -- I do only orchestral music; I'm 100% midi; and over the years I have struggled to get decent mixes. 

I figured I'd write up my own approach to recording my symphonic music. For what it's worth, over the past two years I have gotten results that I have generally been happy with, and thought maybe some elements of my approach might be useful. However, I am also an amateur with tons of things still left to learn, so take all this with a grain of salt, too. 

For my stuff, I usually use only one reverb on the mix. I have found Nimbus to the absolute best reverb out there for classical/symphonic stuff. It is easily the most open and airy reverb in my arsenal, and to my ears gives the orchestra some really nice air but doesn't thicken the overall mix too much. I add Nimbus as a send, and give the majority of patches and sampler instances the same general settings -- to my ears it gives a unified sense of space if the instruments all run through the same reverb. I may vary the amount that gets sent to Nimbus from section to section, depending on what I'm writing, but it is never more than a few percentage points. FWIW, I believe Nimbus' smaller brother, PhoenixVerb is on sale for $10 over at the Deals forum -- which is an absurdly low price for a top flight, neutral and clear reverb, and I'd totally recommend you grab it and try it out. I have a ton of reverbs (I have something of a weakness for them), but the only one I fire up these days is Nimbus. I haven't touched the others in years. In my opinion, it is THE software reverb for Orchestral stuff. 

I also put a lot of work into building my orchestral template, and I have deliberately selected instrument patches that inhabit similar sounding acoustic space (or can be made to do so, using various mic mixes). I've also spent hours fine-tuning the template so that each instrument in the entire symphonic assembly sits where I want it to across the acoustic landscape. 

I use a really broad mix of libraries:

1) Orchestral Strings: AlbionONE (sustains, tremolo, short articulations and pizz); 8Dio Anthology Strings' legato patches for dramatic lines; Sonokinetic's Modal Runs; Hollywood Strings Gold runs patches; Sonokinetic Da Capo's legato string patch (for really quiet passages, as I like the sound of their strings when the mod wheel is dialed really low); Palette's Trill patches; NI Symphony Series Ensemble Strings Harmonic patch

2) Woodwinds: VSL solo woodwinds, all from the Synchronized Special Editions; Sonokinetic Ensemble Woodwinds Standard Edition

3) Brass: VSL solo and ensemble brass, all from the Synchronized Special Editions; NI Symphony Series (for low brass)

4) Percussion: NI Symphony Series Percussion (for snares, bass drum, some timpani, tamtams, suspended cymbals, mark tree); VSL Timpanis; Kontakt Library VSL Glockenspiel; Hollywood Percussion Gold (for orchestral chimes); EastWest Storm Drum 2; AlbionONE's Darwin Percussion Easter Island Hits; August Forester Grand Piano from Kontakt Library

5) A various scattering of other libraries: Kontakt Library's VSL Harp, Lacrimosa Choir patches from 8Dio, Mercury Boys Choir Elements, Embertone Recorders, and a handful of Eduardo Taloronte's Era Libraries (Era II Vocal Codex, Dark Era percussion and flutes, some Forest Kingdom flutes, etc). 

If I need to push an instrument back or bring it forward, I usually start with the microphone mix settings built into the library in question, or the reverb built in the sample engine/library. This last point applied mainly to the original VSL Special Edition libraries, which were quite dry and center panned, and needed Vienna Ensemble's built in reverb to push them back into the acoustic space, and Vienna Ensemble's mixer and stereo width slider to position them properly across the acoustic landscape. When VSL released the Synchronized versions of its Special Editions, the reverb and positioning of the default mix for those instruments worked a lot better right out of the box, and they fit into my template's acoustic space with minimal adjustment. 

The only time I ever fire up a second reverb is for some of the Era patches, if I need to give them a particularly distant or washed-out sound (and for that I usually create a second reverb send with Valhalla's Shimmer). There were a few occasions where I tried using Wave's TrueVerb with it's early reflection room/space simulations, and would run various sections through it first in attempt to manipulate their positioning, but I never found it more effective than just whatever settings I could manipulate in the various libraries themselves. 

As far as getting good mixes is concerned, I bought the best monitors I could afford (a pair of Adam F7), spend a LOT of time with them so I have a good sense of their sound and how it translates, and when in doubt I tend to trust the ears of the engineers who made the samples. I rarely do much beyond the slight cutting of frequency here and there -- usually in attempt to clear out some mud and honk from the mix. I almost never add anything via EQ, and I usually do minimal compression unless I have a specific solo instrument that really needs to cut through the mix. And before I compress it, I usually try to clear space for the solo instrument by adjusting the orchestration first. 

When I have a final mix from Cubase (my main DAW for midi work), I usually take the exported track and bring it into Cakewalk and use ProChannel to master it (which for me usually means giving it a bit of boost using ProChannel's Concrete Limiter, and adding ProChannel's Tape Emulation and/or Console Emulation to give it some analog mojo). 

I have no idea if the above things are right or wrong, or outright heresy, but right now I get results I am generally happy with. I've linked to two tracks below, both of which were built using the exact template setup listed above. For both, there is only one instance of Nimbus reverb, very limited EQ, and Cakewalk's ProChannel Concrete Limiter and Tape Emulator over the final mix - basically just four plugins across two DAWs, and absolutely nothing else. To EQ these tracks, I used IK Multimedia's White Channel on the "Cut Boominess" setting, and dialed back the amount it was actually cutting by a fair margin. I find it effectively takes just a bit of thickness and smear out of the low end, and to my ears that seems to go a long way to clearing up the whole mix without gutting the bass.

I find these particular mixes sound great on my monitors, very good on my iPhone earbuds and my bluetooth headphones, acceptable in my car (nothing sounds particularly good in my car, frankly, so its a good test), and the folks I've sent it to have never made a negative comment about the mix quality, so I assume it sounds decent enough on their systems.  

As I mentioned, I do not presume to have all (or any) answers to the various issues that crop up for us folks doing symphonic music on computer. But what I outlined above has worked for me, and I figured I'd offer it up as some potential ideas that may work for you as well.

https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/the-soldiers-hornpipe-ver-4

https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/a-song-for-the-trillium-queen-adrielles-theme

I hope some of this helps, or at least inspires some different approaches. But for what it's worth, I totally get how you feel, and I've ranted a bit myself on this topic. 

Good luck! And if you want to connect about this stuff -- send me tracks to listen to, bounce ideas back and forth, etc -- please let me know. We orchestral folks need to stick together

Regards,

Rob

Wow, thank you very much, Rob, that was really informative. I would love to have my mixes sound as good as yours. sometimes I wonder if the style I compose in has something to do with it. I don't have much dynamic variation in my music. I tend to write stuff that's on the quieter side. Or maybe my samples aren't good enough. 

Anyway, I will keep re-reading your advice, there's a lot there. I've already read it three times, and again I really appreciate your taking the time to help me out here.

On 4/16/2020 at 2:40 PM, InstrEd said:

Put a Darth Faper head  on the mixing board and all your mixes shall be cured 😏

If only it was that easy...

I've been doing some research, and one thing I saw was to put the basses closer in, having them too far to the side loses too much signal.

Here's another brick wall I'm running into: I use different orchestral libraries. Most are recorded in-situ or position, so theoretically you don't have to pan them. Unless, you mix them with other libraries that have different seating arrangements. Like, Vienna tends to have the basses on the left; most others have them on the right. There can also be differences with the two violin groups. But moving them out of their "native" positions makes me nervous, as now I'm changing their position in the room they were recorded in. but that's what I do, I can't have the basses sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right.  It seems the more I try to experiment, the more confused I get.

On 4/15/2020 at 9:14 PM, craigb said:

😁

Great! Where can I get one of those?

Hi Tim, of course I recognize you, both from here and the Ning forum. Thanks for all the great suggestions. I'll take them into consideration. I figured I needed to re-set my sub-woofer setup. I have also noticed the lack of bass, but when I'm working it's so overwhelming I have to keep it low. I usually use a the Sonar LP-64 EQ on the master, and increase the bass there some. 

I recently downloaded the free Ozone elements suite, courtesy of Sweetwater.  but it seems like over-kill, and much more designed with loud pop/rock etc in mind. So I have yet to use it. I mean I've tried it, but it just made everything extremely loud.

15 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

How about posting an example of your current results.  That might provide some insight.

 

Traditional Classical Recordings are just a Stereo Pair,in the room recorded live.

Having everything in the box as a separate track has its own challenges to get a similar  style of recording.

However, getting a "big" recording should actually be pretty easy.    Translation to other systems is a challenge.    Many mixers will use stereo monitors.  Adding a sub can be deceiving for translation in some other formats. unless you have a great ear and learn how it will translate.  

OK, you asked for it:

https://app.box.com/s/s2mb484mubt2zxg9o1gq2zke17b9uu6f

It's the first movement of Three Easter Scenes, which I just completed.

15 hours ago, DeeringAmps said:

Maybe you should listen some of Jerry Gerber's work.

He has several in the songs forum right now.

Here's the thread for his Symphony #10

Often he makes the score for his works available as well.

IIRC he also teaches virtual orchestration.

t

I've heard Jerry's stuff before, even emailed him once or twice, but never really studied how he does it. I'll check out the thread you posted.

I'm coming to the conclusion that it is. I work my butt off for months, make a wave or mp3 file that sounds decent on my computer speakers, but when I play it on anything else, it sounds terrible. I know you're supposed to do it so it sounds good on anything, but how does one do that? If I make a mix that works on my M-Audio-Mackie-sub setup, how is it going to sound good on my big tower stereo system speakers? Or bookshelf speakers? No one ever tells you how to do that;  just that you have to do it.

The vast majority of mixing and mastering tutorials are for non-classical music. I've done many. I've tried many approaches over the years. I still keep producing tinny, flat mixes. My samples are pretty good: Vienna Special Edition, Vienna Appasionata Strings; Cinematic Strings 2; EWQL Sym. Orch. Gold. Plus some Garritan and Dim Pro stuff. I have a UR-22 audio interface from Steinberg. I know that's not the best, but for pure midi why would I need anything  better? I am not recording any audio whatsoever.

I'm considering giving up and just using notation software from here on in. Maybe I'll decide to pay someone to make a recording that actually sounds good of my music. 

My system is an i7 with 32 BG ram. That's not the problem. Maybe my hearing is going, but then I never made any decent mixes even 20 years ago.

Keep in mind, I'm doing purely orchestral classical music, many instruments in the mix. Here's an example of what I'm up against: I know you're supposed to use more reverb to simulate depth. OK, so you have a string group, Violins 1, Violins 2, Violas, Cellos and Bass. So, the violins are in front. so, put more reverb on the others. but how much? No one ever tells you that. Is it a certain percentage? Is it that I need to just listen and wing it? I can't trust my hearing anymore. 

Then there's panning. I've spent dozens of hours trying various schemes. Also tutorials. but accurately simulating a full classical orchestra on a computer with some software just doesn't seem to work. 

Guess I'm just venting. I don't really expect a solution. Probably the best advice would be to just give up. Figure out some other way to spend my time. Maybe go back to just writing poetry. At least I have the computer skills needed for that...

An update on this: it seems that saving anywhere other than C drive brings on the slow-saving gremlin. Oddly, if I rename the piece, then it starts saving normally again. No clue what that's about, but it is a workaround, albeit a rather weird one.

I just log off and on if this happens. Hopefully though I'll remember the other suggestions next time. but  probably I won't...

Thanks again Bitflipper. I'll have to bite the bullet at some point. It's not so much the price, it's more the hassle of all I have to do to get several orchestral libraries up and running, not to mention reinstalling Windows.

anyway, I did a little research on slow-saving in Windows 7, in general, as the problem has returned. One thing that caught my eye was that saving on USB drives can result in corruption. In fact, I had been doing that, and now seem to recall that the slow-saving may have started then. So I went back to my old Glyph external drive. now I'm wondering if that too is suspect.

I did some things to try to improve the situation yesterday, and ended up making things much worse. I had to do a system restore, and in safe mode at that. Now things seem fine, and the project is saving OK, but I'm afraid to use the Glyph now.  I may go back to using a CD. Or I could save a copy on the D drive, which has my samples. It's a 1 TB drive so there's plenty of room.

Anyone have any thoughts on these ideas?

2 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Hibernation puts your computer back into the exact state it was in prior to sleeping, restoring the entire contents of memory. Including any wasted memory and unneeded background processes. Only a hard reboot gives you a clean slate. Yes, it takes longer to get going initially. I just go make a pot of coffee. 

I'd try to discover which virtual instruments are taking the most time to load/save. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do that other than the painstaking process of saving and restoring different versions of your project with different instruments deleted from it. However, logic dictates that the largest memory consumers will likely be the prime culprits, and you can find out that information from Kontakt.

I have identified instruments in past projects that gobbled insane amounts of RAM even though they played a small role in the composition, and those are the first things to get frozen. A frozen instrument has zero load time. Granted, I often have to un-freeze some of them later to tweak the composition, but in the meantime I can enjoy very fast loading times while working on other stuff.

One thing I avoid doing is loading a lot of instruments into a single instance of Kontakt. Yes, doing so does save some CPU, but it makes freezing and un-freezing more time-consuming. Separate Kontakt instances for smaller groups of instruments gives you finer granularity when deciding which tracks to freeze. So while it may make perfect logistical sense to combine a whole orchestra into one instance, chances are there's a piccolo flourish or a tambourine hit that you won't need to edit and can therefore be moved into its own instance and frozen.

Same idea goes for Omnisphere, an even worse memory hog than Kontakt. I've had slow-loading projects suddenly speed up after freezing a single Omnisphere instance. Non-sample-based synths are never a problem, so I'll often try Zebra for percussive hits and bells over Omnisphere. It might not have the same tonal complexity, but if it works in context that'll be one track that won't slow me down.

Are you using an SSD for audio/samples? The newer NVMe drives are so frickin' fast it's almost like reading/writing to memory. I don't have one yet, but I'm just waiting for prices to fall some more. Unfortunately, I have over a Terabyte in just Kontakt libraries alone, so moving them to an NVMe SSD will be expensive. 

Thanks for all that great info. Fortunately I only need to use one Kontakt instance, with just 5 instruments on it (Cinematic Strings). That loads quite fast. The hogs are East West Play, and especially the Vienna Ensemble player. Still, my projects load in about 5 minutes, but in our time-conscious, instant gratification mindset, that seems like an eternity. And I don't have any games on this computer; I don't want anything to divert me from working. So I either sit and twiddle my thumbs, or watch a few minutes of whatever game is on TV. Which is, of course, these days just reruns of Tom Brady super bowls, which I have already seen too much of (although I live in Maine, I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

I've never frozen an instrument, but that's a good idea. I do have a tambourine and triangle on the Vienna Player, and Cymbals on Play. They could certainly be frozen as I rarely need to adjust them. I also do follow your advice in assigning simple percussion instruments to less resource-Hungary synths. In fact, I usually just use the Garritan stuff, it's decent and the Aria player loads in seconds. On this project however I needed more oomph for them as there's a lot going on in this piece.

As for SSD's when I finish this project I was thinking of getting one for the C drive. however, the WD Black hard drives on this rig, though 6 years old, continue to perform perfectly, so I may just wait until they die. Or I could get SSD's up and running and use the others as backups, I guess. I do plan on updating the Play synth before my next project, in case that improves load times for my EW instruments (EWSO Gold).

I did some experimenting. Hibernating results in the slow load times, just like sleep. I also realized that hibernation is what happens when I have a power failure. When I start up, it takes forever, and I think my system is borked, but then it eventually does start.  I don't know if hibernating is the default action for W7 Pro in case of poer failure, or if I had it set to hibernate when I push the power button. I decided to set it to "do nothing" when power button is pushed, as I use the start menu to shutdown, log off etc.

3 hours ago, bitflipper said:

Rebooting is the only way to fully reclaim allocated memory. What you've probably been seeing is the result of gradual memory loss (not yours, your computer's) that inevitably occurs over time. If you have a lot of RAM it may take weeks before the problem becomes noticeable - unless you're running extremely memory-intensive applications.

This happens with all operating systems, but Windows has historically has been particularly guilty of memory leakage issues. I remember it being discussed a lot when Windows 3.0 came out. Back then a typical system might have only 4 MB of RAM, so memory management was something you had to be cognizant of. Nowadays we have so much RAM we can be pretty sloppy, leaving the computer running for months at a time and rarely if ever checking memory usage. So if you currently have 16 GB, doubling that to 32 GB should let you go longer between restarts. 

 

As for the memory loss, I got both kinds, Bitflipper. Like many of us old Cakewalk guys here. As for Ram, I do have 32 GB. 16 was not enough, upgrading to 32 did help substantially, especially with things like clipping and distortions. 

I'll keep in mind the need to restart periodically. I'm sure weekly would do it, but I'll probably let it slide, like I do most things....

5 hours ago, pwalpwal said:

restart is more complete than logging off

True, so it may be that logging off helps some problems, but not others.

10 hours ago, Promidi said:

Would logging off, rather than the full restart, be enough?

Not sure, but it does help when a project won't open quickly for some reason. What I mean is, sometimes I work on a project, close it, and try to open another one immediately, but nothing happens. Logging off and on does help in that case.

I know I marked this solved, but the problem returned. However, I think I know now what it is. So, in case this applies to anyone else, I don't shutdown my computer completely most of the time, I just suspend. That way my large orchestral projects load much faster. But this seems to eventually cause slow saving for some reason. Fortunately, the fix is easy: Just restart periodically.

Just now, User 905133 said:

Thanks, I found it just before you posted this. Both you and Promidi get a like!