Break when changing states

Hello

When I change song states in order to change instrument in live situation I got a “silent” due to the time necessary to load the next preset.
(For instance : With Omnisphere : loading a new preset take about 2-3 seconds and I got a “blank” during this time)
It’s about the same with independence (maybe 1 or 2 seconds but we can hear this change)
What is the best way to manage it ?
Is better to use rack states instead of song states ?
Do you think it’s better to load every plugins several time to switch from one instance to the other instead of switching preset inside a single instance ?

What are your experiences about it ?

Olivier

I am sorry if this topic was already discussed but I didn’t find it (most of topic I read concern hardware to switch states
)

Hi Olivier, maybe this will help you…

ok thanks
I will study this video

olivier

Yes, you’ll want to avoid any sample loading within a song. You may get away with switching sounds on non-sample-based softsynths (they usually switch very quickly), but loading a different set of samples within a song does not work well. Not only does the loading take time, but it also puts significant strain on your system, so other non-sample sounds may cut out as well.

So you’ll definitely want to have all sample-based sounds loaded at the start of a song (if you need fast switching between songs, you’ll even want to have all of them loaded at the beginning of a set, so you should start putting your sample-based instruments into shared racks NOW and not put your plugins into songs directly).

To avoid sudden peaks in processor utilization due to switching, I’d also recommend to keep all these sample-based instruments active (switched on) from the beginning of the song and switch between them by simply activating or de-activating the MIDI routes from your keyboard to them.

So if you have two or three different sounds e.g. in Omnisphere, you could put them in a Multi inside Omnisphere and simply switch MIDI sounds channels - then you only need one instance of Omnisphere. Or you create multiple instances of Omnisphere (with linked racks, this means TWO different linked racks, both with Omnisphere inside them) and simply use song states to change the routing from your keyboard to one of the instances.

Using rack states will not help you here - when you have Omnisphere inside a rack and then use a rack state to switch sounds in Omnisphere, it will still have to load the sounds from disk and create the interruption.

What WILL help is using Omnisphere inside a rack in Multi-Mode and using rack states to simply switch MIDI routing within the rack (without changing Omnisphere configurations on rack state change) will definitely clean up things.

Cheers,

Torsten

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Hi @olivier71500 I think you need to lock the states to avoid auto-save which can create that break in the sound (especially on slow computers): right-click on the State and select “Locked”. Hope it helps.

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Thanks for your help
So it’s better to use midi channel on/off to switch instruments
Maybe directly from the hardware controller I will try …

With this method we can use 16 differents instrument configuration per song (if using directly midi channel , more if we use rack states)
And then what would be the best method to switch songs without reloading every instruments ?
( do you think it’s better to use racks ?)

olivier

Yes, absolutely - if you put your instruments into linked racks, they stay loaded when switching between songs. You need to use pre-loaded setlists for this - Cantabile then loads all plugins and racks when loading the setlist. Using linked racks means that any such rack gets loaded only once and stays in memory. If you use instruments directly in your songs, pre-loading a setlist means that every instrument in every song needs to get pre-loaded. This can guzzle up your memory really fast - this is why you use linked racks.

Cheers,

Torsten

Thanks for your answer
I will experiment