Can't Freeze Synths

[Billy86]

See the photo please. I  have four "Simple Instrument" synths in a project -- 1 EZ Drummer, 2 EZ Keys and 1 Addictive Keys.  I've dragged the MIDI out of EZ Keys 1 (a piano) and put it on a MIDI Track "ADK MIDI" to drive the Addictive Keys VSTi in track 4.

I've muted the EZ Keys, but want to keep it because I want to be able to access its MIDI data if I need to make a change moving forward. I'd like to freeze it to take the load of CPU, but the freeze button  on the track and in the Synth Rack seems inactive. I click and nothing happens.  The same is true for the other EZ instruments; I can't freeze them. Should I be able to?

Interestingly, I AM able to freeze Addictive Keys, as shown. The only difference I can tell is that AD Keys has an external MIDI track driving it, whereas in the EZ Instruments, the MIDI is contained within the VSTi. 

NOTE: There's also an instance of Kontakt as you can see (so, I actually have 5 synths), where I'm using Strummed Guitar. It, too, has an external MIDI track associated with it driving an instance in a multi-rack, and I can freeze that VSTi as well. So, if it has an external MIDI Track going into a VSTi, I can freeze it, and if I doesn't have external MIDI going into the VSTi, I can't. Is this how it should work? 

I can ARCHIVE all the EZ Instruments, but that doesn't "unload" them from CPU the way freezing does, is that right?

 

[scook]

35 minutes ago, Billy86 said:

I can ARCHIVE all the EZ Instruments, but that doesn't "unload" them from CPU the way freezing does, is that right?

No, both archiving and freezing remove the synth from memory.

[tonemangler]

2 hours ago, Billy86 said:

I AM able to freeze Addictive Keys, as shown. The only difference I can tell is that AD Keys has an external MIDI track driving it, whereas in the EZ Instruments, the MIDI is contained within the VSTi.

I'm not sure what you mean by the MIDI is contained within the VSTi, you must create midi data to trigger a VSTi,  therefore once you drag move all midi data from a VSTi track there will no longer be anything to trigger it,  you can't  freeze it since it's  producing no sound.  You can either drag copy (Ctrl+Shift+drag) the midi data to a new midi track or duplicate the midi track and change it's output to Addictive Keys.  Then you will have two identical midi tracks, one triggering EZ Keys and one triggering Addictive Keys.  Next Archive EZ Keys, there's no need to freeze it because you're only going to mute it anyways.  Freezing is used for playback of tracks that use high system resources so as regain those resources,  Archiving is used to store a track as a safety precaution in case you want to revisit it later.  Personally, as far as VSTi's go,  I never use Instrument tracks, I prefer to use separate midi and synth tracks,  a midi track triggering a synth (audio) track.  Cheers.

[Billy86]

21 hours ago, scook said:

No, both archiving and freezing remove the synth from memory.

Oh, okay. Had found an old forum post thru Google from some years back that said otherwise. Thank you!

[Billy86]

18 hours ago, tonemangler said:

I'm not sure what you mean by the MIDI is contained within the VSTi, you must create midi data to trigger a VSTi,  therefore once you drag move all midi data from a VSTi track there will no longer be anything to trigger it,  you can't  freeze it since it's  producing no sound.  You can either drag copy (Ctrl+Shift+drag) the midi data to a new midi track or duplicate the midi track and change it's output to Addictive Keys.  Then you will have two identical midi tracks, one triggering EZ Keys and one triggering Addictive Keys.  Next Archive EZ Keys, there's no need to freeze it because you're only going to mute it anyways.  Freezing is used for playback of tracks that use high system resources so as regain those resources,  Archiving is used to store a track as a safety precaution in case you want to revisit it later.  Personally, as far as VSTi's go,  I never use Instrument tracks, I prefer to use separate midi and synth tracks,  a midi track triggering a synth (audio) track.  Cheers.

the EZ line of products have MIDI capabilities built into them, so the MIDI data is contained within them. You never have to have a separate MIDI track external to the VSTi if you don’t want to. I chose to bring the MIDI out of EZ Keys so I could route it Addictive Keys as the piano, instead of EZ Keys.  But I understand what you’re saying about instrument tracks not having any audio to freeze. That makes sense given what’s happening here. Thanks.