I have watched the video about Fast Song Switching and I have a question. To take advantage of “Linked rack”, I suppose that the linked rack has to be opened in every single song right? Because if not in Song 5 I have to download “synth “amazing pad” vst linked rack” again since is it omitted in song 4, and I loose the effect of linked racks?
Song 1 - piano vst linked rack, synth “amazing pad” vst linked rack, strings vst
Song 2 - piano vst linked rack, synth “amazing pad” vst linked rack
Song 3 - piano vst linked rack, synth “amazing pad” vst linked rack, choir vst
Song 4 - piano vst linked rack,
Song 5 - piano vst linked rack, synth “amazing pad” vst linked rack, guitar vst
Then another question. To don’t have too many linked racks to download in the first song maybe it’s better to have some more rarely used vst downloaded separately for every song. Like the examples strings vst, choir vst, guitar vst?
Sometimes I have problem that Cantabile says that the song is ready, but if I start to play the song directly after the pc says it downloaded it happens that one vst are not sounding (normally a big sampled based vst). That’s the reason I have to find out a solution like this.
To fully profit from fast song switching, you need to pull your songs into a pre-loaded set list. Then, ALL plugins and racks used in that set list are loaded at the beginning (yes, that can take a while, but that’s before starting the gig or the rehearsal). After that, switching is really fast, and it doesn’t really matter which of the loaded racks your song references.
Then another question. To don’t have too many linked racks to download in the first song maybe it’s better to have some more rarely used vst downloaded separately for every song. Like the examples strings vst, choir vst, guitar vst?
Not sure what you mean with “downloaded” - but I guess you mean loading a plugin into memory, right?
Again, if you use pre-loaded setlists, everything is loaded into memory at the start. If you use plugins directly in your songs, all of them (in the setlist) will be loaded as well. The downside of this is that if you use the same plugin directly in multiple songs, it will be loaded multiple times, whereas linked racks will be loaded only once.
Sometimes I have problem that Cantabile says that the song is ready, but if I start to play the song directly after the pc says it downloaded it happens that one vst are not sounding (normally a big sampled based vst). That’s the reason I have to find out a solution like this.
What Cantabile can’t see is when a plugin takes some time to load samples after it itself has been loaded. So Cantabile only gets the signal “OK, plugin is up and running”, so it assumes everything is fine. But especially some sample-based instruments only start loading their samples once they’re loaded and initialized. That, Cantabile can’t know.
Best with big sample-based instruments is to preload all of them with the set list (if your computer has enough RAM) and not change the sample set once they’re loaded.
I have like 30 songs and for the moment probably to many different vts for a gig/rehearsal. But if I limit my vst to for example into four different pads, two arpeggio vst, two strings and piano and organ to use for all the songs, let’s say 10 different vst, maybe it’s possible to use pre-loaded set lists. What do you think? I don’t have a super PC, it’s a i5 pc with 8 GB RAM, and 512 SSD hard disk. Lenovo Y70-70.
I found this from you. Do you mean that you use 191 vst in a pre-loaded set list? Then I can use more than 10 vst…
Yes I mean loading a plugin into memory.
It seems to me that if I start to play before the vst is completely loaded into the song, the vst stops loading and will never work. At least for me it’s like that lately with big vst. But if I don’t touch the keyboard the vst will load…sooner or later. Anyway, if I use a pre-loaded set list I will not have this problem anymore.
As Torsten says above. Set up a setlist to cover all of your songs that you will need to play. Make good use of linked racks and preloading, and you should not have the problem that you are concerned about.
A pre-loaded set list you mean?
How many vst do you think I can use in the same pre-loaded set list? …more or less, it depends on how memory consuming the vst are of course.
Yes, a pre-loaded set list, and, yes, it will depend on memory capacity and exactly what you want to load, and you will only find that out by trying it
The number of plugins shouldn’t really be an issue - yes, I really use 191 vst plugins in a pre-loaded set list (about 20 of them are FreeG, which I have in every instrument rack and which I am currently replacing with simple rack gain). But the amount of RAM could become an issue, if you use large sample sets. This may require a bit of fine-tuning (there was an extensive thread around this a while ago…). So if your RAM can deal with all your used sample sets at the same time, go for it! As I wrote in the thread you quoted, my larger set list (some 60 songs) loads at around 3.5 GB of RAM, but I specifically selected my plugins to be memory-efficient, no big Kontakt libraries anywhere.
If your RAM isn’t sufficient, you’ll either have to use lower-memory-footprint sounds in your live setup or work without pre-loading a set list and live with the loading time between songs. In this case your assumption is correct - any racks not shared between sequential songs will have to be re-loaded.
Does it change anything if a vst in a pre-loaded set list is a linked rack or just a vst?
In other words, is it better for some reason if I convert common used vst to linked rack even in a pre-loaded set list?
Yes, it makes a huge difference. Say you have the same piano plugin in five songs directly (no linked rack). Then pre-loading these five songs means that this same piano plugin will be loaded five times, taking up five times the amount of memory. If you put it into a linked rack, it will be loaded only once and be re-used across songs.
Note: if you have sample-based plugins in your linked rack but you use different sample sets in your songs (e.g. a grand piano in song 1 and an upright in song 2), then pre-loading will not help you - the plugin will still need to load the new sample set when switching songs. Cantabile can’t look inside the plugin…
I will follow your advice and I can expand the RAM to 16 GB on this pc, so I will do that.
Thanks for all help today guys
I will go through all my songs and create a big schedule over all my most important vst, transform them to linked rack and just stick to them in the future.
As Torsten, I am re-aligning some of my racks to be more efficient. One thing I have started doing is NOT preloading a whole gig of sets. If I do, I recently noticed a little slow down in state changing, so I know my RAM is being taxed. I now make a folder for my gig that includes my seperate sets. I load ONLY the next set during break. Each set has usually 8-10 songs. Of course, that is for a gig with breaks between sets. A gig with one continuous set would be preloaded, but usually with less songs than a 4 hr gig.
Wow……my first pre-loaded songs in my Set-list What a feeling.
And perfect that you can tick those songs in the playlist that you want to take part as pre-loaded songs in the set-list, for that particular gig or rehearsal.
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