Simeon Amburgey

3 minutes ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

VI forum is pretty much a must read.  I don't really post much (if ever there) but the content is pretty good.  And it is the place for BBCSO talk.  They are claiming to have a fix coming soon.  So I'm hopeful.  If they can manage to fix it perhaps I'll finish my CbB template.  I do get a kick out of the fact that Cakewalk runs it better than Cubase 10.

Can't wait to see your template.

I just loaded my very simple test project and was actually able to play some things while it was loading 😮
@Matthew Sorrels, thanks so much for your feedback; it is always good to have comrades right there with you in the trenches.

1 hour ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

When I load my test ostinato project (with 40+ tracks and every instrument), it takes forever to load but claims to only have 11gigs loaded.  But Task Manager shows 32gigs Private Bytes and 54gigs Working Set size.  Which is crazy.

Yes, definitely strange. I do hope they will take the Windows platform users seriously.

BTW: I found the forum you mentioned VI Control. Looks like another rabbit hole to explore but also lots of useful information from some wonderful users, some which I recognize from home base 😎

20 hours ago, synkrotron said:

Another Logic guy having fun:-

 

Perhaps we have to move to Logic 

Very nice!!!

I have Cubase 10 on my system as well and thought I would see what would happen under similar instrument load circumstances and seeing the same basic principle here; very crushing memory loading. I sent a ticket in to Spitfire offering to help with testing Windows performance so we shall see when some more of the dust settles from the initial week after release.

I had another thought about removing some of the actual RAM out of my system just to see what would happen; I suspect nothing good. The journey continues! 

1 minute ago, synkrotron said:

Yes, I noticed that in some of the Daniel James "first look."

 

Really strange...

To make sure I watched DJ studio tour and indeed MAC Running Cubase.

2 minutes ago, synkrotron said:

But Daniel James is on Mac...

Is it a Logicentric thing?

Ok now who's inventing their own words???? but you are onto something; when companies build in a closed system and then offer it to those outside of that system then that is when all of the real fun begins in the user community and Spitfire needs to manage this well I believe to be even more successful going forward.

I understand in some part going to your own plugin as I am sure Kontakt has some sort of licencing fee you may have to endure in order to get things on their player.

The saga continues....

OK, I see now the indicator in the upper left corner that is GREEN when the articulation is actually loaded so there is not necessarily a penalty for having them available. Also the only indicator of load activity is the tiny "LED" indicator in the upper left corner of the GUI that flickers wildly until settling on GREEN.

Not sure how he was able to play anything while it was loading (probably an Applecentric thing).

The Hans Zimmer standee is a cool touch! I have C-3PO ;^)

1 hour ago, synkrotron said:

Well, at least someone is enjoying it:-)

Yes, a lot of fun!

What confuses me when I look at his default screens (ie. Violas) the memory footprint is so much smaller. I am seeing around 760mb with the default mic position loaded) compared to my over 2gb when not even loading all of the articulations.  If I turn on Mix 1 and the Ambient 1 Mix my memory soots up to over 3gb.

1 hour ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

Spitfire posted something on VI about them looking at the Windows problems but it didn't exactly inspire me with confidence.

Do you have a link?

So back home and still wading through how to manage this on my current machine so I thought I would try an experiment. Fresh booting into Windows and stopping several unneeded processes (Dropbox, Skype, One Drive, etc. - I know 😉) and here is what my memory usage looked like:

I then loaded Cakewalk by BandLab with my test project and here is what it looked like:

And then I added up the individual memory usage from each of the five instances of Spitfire BBC SO and it came up to around 11.5 gb which accurately represents the difference in the before and after loading.

I limited each instance of Spitfire BBC SO to the Con Sordino and Legato articulation for the strings and Legato, Long and Long Cuivre for the French Horns and limited to no more than two Mic signals (Violins - Mix 1 and Stereo, Violas-Tree, Celli - Mix 1 and Stereo, Basses-Mix 1 and Tree, French Horns- Mix 1 and Stereo) to minimize the memory footprint.

The sounds are beautiful to say the least. I am hearing some strange things hear and there (the Con Sordino Violas seem to have something weird going on and you can hear the loop point somewhat). I think this is a journey for the long haul and hopefully things can only improve with Spitfire being open to accept true, constructive feedback from the community because in these days and times $1k is nothing to sneeze at! 😮

4 hours ago, JoeGBradford said:

I'm not sure whether to feel envious or not 😉

I know, right?

It just seems odd in a way as I thought about it this way; someone says they have this amazing pet that they are going to give you and you are so excited because its pedigree sounds very impressive and who wouldn’t want to have such a unique and special animal. i thought sure, I have a cat and they seem to be very easy to care for and provide a lot of fun, entertainment and companionship.

The day arrives and I am told the delivery just was dropped off, I come home with my heart full of expectation and excitement when I turn the corner and there stands a very amazing, beautiful but very huge elephant!😳

I guess that is where I’m at currently. I am somewhere between excitement and discouragement as I try and figure out the best way to care for this new member of my music production family. I am very hopeful but know there is a decent road ahead learning curve wise as well as a definite need to upgrade my production system which realistically needed to be done, seeing my current system is really being pushed already to the limit.

I also think I am really going to need a bigger litter box 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Well this afternoon I had a package in the  mail and lo and behold!

I was very impressed by the package and even a little personalized shall I say “birth certificate”. The SSD is enclosed in a USB C enclosure and they supply a USB C to regular cable. I did have a little hiccup installing as I had installed the plugin from the download earlier but there was a very nice video “Watch Me First” that helped me get back on track.

One word: OVERWHELMED

Looking at my current system I was not prepared for the shear magnitude of what I was getting into. By default all the articulations are loaded for a particular instrument and that is something I can get a better handle on by editing and only making active the ones I think I will actually use.

Also all of the mic signals can be once again, OVERWHELMING as most of us will never use the Dolby Atmos signals and to get really crazy with opening all of the spills separately would be an adventure indeed. 
 

The first thing I loaded was the strings and to be totally real, I cried as I played the Con Sordino  Violins, they are just  beautiful. I then loaded a couple of other instances (Violas, Celli, and Bass) and cried again when I was looking at using over 20gb (out of 32gb installed) of system memory. I think once again having so many articulations loaded at a time. There seems to be something strange going on with memory management that at the moment is difficult to put a finger on.

Along with @Matthew Sorrels, watching through some of the Daniel James video marathon brought some honest if not very salty reality to this library. We’re it not for my dear friend who graciously gifted this to me; looking at it now from this standpoint I am not sure if  BBCSO would have been something I would have really jumped on myself if I had the budget to do so.

Also getting used to having to install multiple instances of the BBCSO plugin is something I will have to get used to and once again agree wholeheartedly with the comments about a lack of feedback on loading instruments and the current mechanics of how things are handled from a memory or ssd streaming perspective.

My journey is just beginning and hopefully things will improve over time as more real in the field feedback gets back to Spitfire. The community of users they desire to build around this library will require them to take seriously all of the feedback as some have mentioned and address the really thorny issues raised or it will be over before it has a real chance of taking off.

The other mindset is the “Apple-centricity” (did I just make up a new word?), Many users are not on Mac OS or that use Logic or even Cubase (I use a MacBook Pro on the road to play virtual instruments live). Again, it is taking the feedback from users and creating an environment where everyone will reap the harvest of collective knowledge on all platforms which will ultimately benefit everyone.

All I know is I feel on the edge of a new frontier as I start putting together a strategy for building a reasonable new system that can be up to the challenge of carrying me into some amazing opportunities.

OK, rant over 🤓 You can be sure I will keep you posted and please keep me in mind if there are discoveries or minefields you find along the way!

Always Joyfully!

- Moved to Instruments and Effects -

1 hour ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

'm using a ASUS X299-Prime II with a Intel i9-9960X and 128GB of Ram, nVidia 2080-Ti video card.  It's a mildly overclocked 16-core monster.  Main hard drive is a very fast Samsung NVMe drive but I've put BBCSO on a 1TB Crucial MX500 drive (benchmarks around 560MB rw).  Running Windows 10 Pro.  The machine was built a little under a year ago to last me at least 5-8 years.  It's a pretty decent box.

Man! When plugging this into PC PartPicker I almost stopped at the CPU but made it up to the Graphics Card and still not done  wow what a machine!  
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/praisetracks/saved/#view=CxpPnQ

1 hour ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

I would love to know what the Crystaldisk marks for the Spitfire SSD is -- be sure to try some benchmark against the drive when you get it.  I've never bothered with sticking SSD drives on USB3, would be interesting to know what kind of performance that would get you.

I will see what I can do. I think the Spitfire SSD is a Samsung so it should be a good one. I also have a SATA to USB 3 adapter I might try. I currently only have 3 SATA 6 ports with the rest being SATA I so we shall see ho things go.

@synkrotron, I thought I would plug your PC Build into PC  Partpicker 🤓

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/praisetracks/saved/#view=nrNb8d

Came up to around $1737

@Matthew Sorrels, what is your current computer setup look like?

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I should get the SSD version of BBC SO hopefully early this week. It appears it got hung up in Chicago for about a week...ugh!

Here it is here just for reference for the thread. Always glad to help when I can.

Quick Tip | SampleTank 4 Multitimbral Mode in Cakewalk by BandLab

I had one of my viewers need some help understanding how to use SampleTank 4's Multitimbral capabilities. I hope this short video Quick Tip will help. Enjoy!

I just published a video demonstrating how you can leverage Melodyne’s Direct Note Access to MIDI to extract a piano performance and use it to play various samples piano libraries (in this case  NOIRE and UNA CORDA). Amazing potential! Enjoy.

Melodyne Direct Note Access To MIDI | Feat: Una Corda - NOIRE | River Flows In You by Yiruma

3 hours ago, Peter - IK Multimedia said:

This list breaks down by set, SampleTank 4 MAX includes Miroslav Philharmonik 2 CE and Total Studio 2 MAX would include Miroslav Philharmonik 2  https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/include/st4/soundlist/SampleTank_4_MAX_Instruments.pdf

It is linked where the other one Simeon posted is linked (the "Sounds" subnavigation on the SampleTank 4 MAX page):  https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/st4/#sounds

Edit, no slight on Simeon of course - I frequently post these PDFs directly and I realize I should also post the link where they are actually found

No slight taken 😎

It is a little overwhelming trying to sort all of the sound content out as it is truly a massive collection of SampleTank history.
Lots of wonderful sounds to be sure.

Opening the App it is good to see that they give you the option to install things separately  somewhat.

I just need the SSD or some extra drive space 😥

5 minutes ago, Matthew Sorrels said:

I think they are borked due to the BBC release.

The new issue of Sound On Sound is out today, cover article on Spitfire's BBC product. 

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/spitfire-audio-bbc-symphony-orchestra

It's an interesting read (subscription required).  Perhaps I was looking for reasons to not spend the crazy money on this, but it's not the super positive review I would have thought.  To be sure it is positive, but it points out a bunch of issues, chief among them their plugin just isn't that good UI-wise (see quote below).  I think I'm going to have a hard time convincing myself it is worth getting.  The disc space cost alone is almost enough to punt it.

 

My Spitfire BBC SO SSD seems to be in customs limbo in Chicago so I doubt I will get a chance to look at this any time soon. The entry price is indeed a big obstacle and for myself would not be possible except for the amazing generosity of a dear friend.

i agree about the interface as well. It seems they are continuing to use the LABS GUI approach with its own language and seeming massive waste of space. Just watching the videos and such it just seems like the GUI is not that intuitive but I will reserve my final judgement until I get an actual look at it first hand.

The other issue is having to run so many individual instances of the plugin as it seems a hit on resources, especially with potentially so many but again we shall see. The Spitfire core user base seems to be heavy in the use of Logic as their DAW of choice. They recently put together a massive template and I have yet to see what the final track count and memory resources were used so that would be interesting to follow up on.

i am hoping to do some videos when I receive everything and will be able to answer more questions that are out there.

11 hours ago, cclarry said:

 

I believe Philharmonik is part of SampleTank Max...so you'll get that if you bought one of the I/O keyboards...

While Philharmonik is not included, some patches from the libraries seem to be included (possibly from Philharmonik CE). Here is an exhaustive list comparing all of the sounds included in each version of SampleTank.

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/include/st4/soundlist/SampleTank_4_comparison.pdf

Just posted this walkthrough of Steinberg's Electric Bass Expansion for HALion, HALionSonic and HALionSonic SE. It is a very well done electric bass sample library with lots of effects and play ability features. What stood out to me is the way that whatever you play on the keyboard is intelligently mapped to the frets and strings as it would be on a physical bass guitar. There are also different "player" models that approach fingering and string posistion based on the genre of music you might be working on at the time. Lots of fun as usual to be able to share these with all of you.

I have the iRig Keys I/O 49 and it is really nice. It sort of fits the space where the keyboard is just right for the times an 88 key is way to big and a 25 key just would not be practical; I think of it as the Goldilocks portable 🤓

The addition of the audio/MIDI interface built in also makes it nice as you eliminate more gear you have to take. The keyboard action itself feels very nice as well; not mushy but has a nice weight and resistance that works well.

Here is a review I published a few months ago:

https://praisetracks.com/ik-multimedia-irig-keys-i-o-49-just-right/
 

It's amazing when I was doing this video I did not realize it would publish on today October 21 which is sort of a Back To The Future anniversary as that was the date Doc Brown set in the De Lorean. Vibrant is an expansion library for HALion and HALion Sonic 3 that features what I think are some of the best sounding Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Clavinet sounds I have heard. It really was like going back as I played and heard these wonderful sounds. Check out my play-through video here where we have some fun going back in time.

@Noric, it might have something to do with the Windows Default Audio device in the Sound Control Panel. This is probably what Chrome (hosting BandLab) is looking for.

Try setting your AudioBox as the DEFAULT Windows Sound Playback and Recording device and see if that makes a difference.

All the best!