Computer set up question

[anne]

I have good gear - that is not the problem. I don't feel like I'm using it properly. I have a Mac Pro (2 yrs old) with 3 gigs of ram. I have 2 internal drives, and one external back up. I have a separate external boot drive that is disconnected from the rest, in case of an emergency with the computer.Lots of power, but I seem to bog the system down regardless when recording. I think there is just too much searching going on (my cpu meter in logic runs very high, and I often get "overload" messages when trying to play the tracks) I wanted to put all of my samples on drive 2 and only keep the programs installed on drive 1, but could find no way to do this with installing. For example Logic, Kontakt, Stylus, etc would be installed on 1, the sample data would be on 2, and then when I have a song file, that would reside on 2 without the need to save samples in that file. Is this the correct way to set it up? If not, can someone advise me as to the best way to set it up? I'm at a point now where I can still move things around easily to set up my computer correctly. TIA. - Anne

[mazz]

Hi Anne,For Kontakt and Stylus, you can move the samples manually. For Stylus, you can move the folder called Sage, which is in your library in Application Support under Spectrasonics. Then you put an alias to the Sage folder in the original location and all is well (there are instructions for this on Spectrasonics website). Make sure to remove the word "alias" after the name.For Kontakt, you can drag the library folder to your new drive (if you use the Apple key when you drag it, it will be moved instead of copied). Make sure Kontakt is closed when you do this. The next time Kontakt opens, it will detect that the library isn't where it thinks it is. You can then point it to the new location and from then on it will find it.I don't know about how to move the samples for Logic but there are plenty of Logic-heads here that can help you on this.If you can possibly swing another drive, I would recommend it. This way you can have your samples and audio tracks on separate drives as well. When you are streaming samples from disk it's exactly the same as streaming audio tracks. If the little magnetic head on the drive has to jump all over the place to find samples and then tracks, it's going to be working pretty darn hard. If you can take half the load off of it that would be preferable. I'm not sure how many drive slots you have but if yours are full, then FW 800 would be just fine. I'm using that for my audio drives and one sample drive and it works just fine.Good luck!!MazzAlso, if you are finished recording your audio and MIDI tracks, you could increase the size of your buffers (not sure how to do that in Logic). When you are mixing, you don't care about latency like you do when you're recording so make them as big as possible. This will allow the disk extra time to find the info and start putting it in the buffer so your CPU doesn't have to work as hard to pump it out as the drive gives it to it.

[anne]

Excellent instruction, Mazz. And increasing the buffer in Logic is very easy. For the price of SATA drives, it would be well worth it to pick up another. Mac Pros have 4 drive slots internally.This sounds like it will be a lot less work than I was anticipating (to put all of my samples on their own drive).I have a Kontakt specific question for anyone who can answer this : I have Kontakt and EWSilver - the EW samples show up in the list in my Kontakt program, but the don't play. My EW program doesn't start. Would I be best to uninstall / reinstall EW since it was on the computer before Kontakt?I have yet (over 1 1/2 yr) been able to get my EWQLSO to work properly! I'm an idiot or I just am cursed when it comes to my east west!

[mazz]

Anne,Are you trying to load the instruments or the individual samples? Make sure you're trying to load the instruments (i.e.: solo flute legato). They should open in Kontakt just fine. The original Silver player won't run on Intel Mac so dont' even try that. You could upgrade to the Kontakt 2 player but if you already have Kontakt, it's not worth taking the time to do so.HTH,MazzBTW: Get as big a drive as you can afford for your samples since they'll be sitting there and you'll undoubtedly add more as time goes on. For your audio drive it doesn't need to be that big because you'll probably back the projects up and delete them to make room for other projects.

[anne]

So I have a 500 MB drive for my samples, I have Kontakt 3 (moving samples to new drive) and I have moved my Stylus (SAGE) folder over. I want to be sure of the next thing - can I just move my Apple Loops the same way? I have a lot of good stuff in there - Tia - Anne

[mojobone]

My guess would be that most of your troubles could be eliminated by simply increasing your latency settings when you mix down; as soon as the need to monitor live instruments is no more, latency becomes a non-issue, so you can free up processor resources accordingly.