Platform: 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro with 8GB memory (8x1GB) and 5TB of hard drive storageI encountered this problem, which also happens with "Save", and after a bit of experimenting I determined that it occurs when there are more than 51 instruments, although it might be more than 50 instruments, and sometimes the only message is that the file cannot be saved, at all . . .
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NOTE: The reason I think that 51 instruments probably is the upper limit is based on doing a lot of C/C++ programming, where indices begin at 0, so an array with 50 items has indices ranging from 0 to 49, hence I think that a "magic number" like 50 might have been used, which creates the possibility for a very subtle "bug" that would map to having 51 items in an array when the "magic number" was used as the upper bound but only 50 items being completely accessible when literal numbers were used (0 through 49), but regardless of whether it is 50 items or 51 items, Notion 3 goes "out to lunch" on the Mac and simply freezes when you add a 52nd instrument, where it will work for a few measures of adding notes but then locks-up, so as with everything it is a good idea to save projects frequently, which also is the case with Digital Performer and every other program. And this does not bother me at all, since there is a practical workaround that completely solves the problem, which is what is important to me. I can lock-up Digital Performer or any other program on virtually any platform, but the key from my perspective is being able to determine the rules and a practical set of solutions, which continues to the case with Notion 3 and Digital Performer. And it is no different than discovering how to avoid breaking guitar strings every 10 minutes, which mostly is a matter of focusing on specific techniques and so forth . . . ]
Whether it happens on other platforms is another matter, but on the Mac the problem occurs when too many instruments are added to a Notion 3 project file . . .
The workaround I devised is to create a separate folder for each song, where I keep a set of Notion 3 project files as the instruments evolve over time, which works very nicely for what I need to do and is
not a lot of extra work, although it takes a few minutes for the Notion 3 project file to load when there are 50 instruments based on a rather diverse set of VSTi sampled sound libraries . . .
Basically, when I get to 50 instruments but need more, which is nearly all the time, I get all those instruments into Digital Performer 7.21 via ReWire where I record them as soundbites . . .
Then, I do a "Save As" or whatever for the Notion 3 project file to keep it as a time-stamped archive . . .
If I need more instruments, I work with the original Notion 3 project file but replace some of the existing instruments with new instruments and corresponding VSTi sample sound libraries, and when I have the notes entered I record
only the new instruments to new tracks in Digital Performer 7.21 as soundbites, followed by saving everything and making yet another time-stamped archive copy of the now updated Notion 3 project file . . .
Doing it this way makes it possible to have hundreds of instruments, but only 50 at a time in any specific Notion 3 project file, which works and is fine with me, since it solves the problem . . .
And the reason I need so many instruments, as explained in a few of my other posts, is that I use multiple copies of the same instrument to create motion within what I call the "Spherical Sonic Landscapeā¢", where I like sounds to move around from place to place . . .
There are other ways to make sounds move around in the Spherical Sonic Landscape, but this particular technique is very precise and generally easy to do, although it takes a few hours, but so what . . .
So what! (1) Compose a part for an instrument to play, typically a series of notes that is faster rather than slower, where a simple example is a steady kick drum part where the notes are quarter notes . . .
(2) Decide on how many places from far-left to far-right you want the kick drum notes to appear, and then create a new but identical instrument for each place, assigning the same VSTi to each essentially "cloned" instrument . . .
(3) Copy the entire original part to each of the "cloned" instruments . . .
(4) Using the Notion 3 mixing board, set the panning for each instrument to the desired location, where the panning is set to a smaller region as the number of instruments increases. If you just want left and right, then set the panning for the left instrument to the left half of the entire region and do the same for the right instrument by setting its panning to everything to the right of top-center . . .
(5) Then using equal-value rests, replace notes with rests to determine which of the "cloned" instruments and the original instrument actually plays the note . . .
COMMENTSOverall I think that 8 instruments is at the upper end of what actually can be heard clearly with respect to panning location, so with the limit of 50 instruments per Notion 3 project file, this maps to being able to set about 5 to 10 instruments in motion, which is good, but if you need more instruments in motion, then you can do the time-stamp and archive thing (see above) . . .
The current version of "I'm Going Goo-Goo Over Ga-Ga" (The Surf Whammys) has a lot of instruments in motion, including the primary kick drums (which alternate far-left and far-right), the deep bass (which also alternates far-left and far-right but opposite of the way the primary kick drums alternate, a double-kick drum that appears every so often at top-center, and an assortment of keyboard synthesizers that move rapidly from far-left to far-right in a back-and-forth motion, along with a somewhat elaborate set of Latin percussion instruments that move primarily among four locations, all of which are what I call "sparkles", with the general technique being what I call "sparkling", which mostly is a Pavlovian type of primitive aural response behavior modification technique that is designed specifically to capture and focus the attention of people who listen to
DISCO music, since ongoing research clearly has demonstrated that such folks are not the brightest candles on the cake with respect to being able to focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time, since if they actually were able to focus on something for longer than a few seconds they would have realized thirty years ago that
DISCO music pretty much went out of style, although it is having a resurgence at the dawn of the early-21st century with such fabulous
Pop songs as "Bad Romance" (Lady Gaga) and the European Single for "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus), hence my current focus on
DISCO music, which is fabulous . . .
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Im-Going-Goo-Goo-Over-Ga-Ga-11-20-2010-DP7.mp3Fabulous! It might be a bit easier to hear some of the motion in this early version of the "basic rhythm section" for the Surf Whammys parody of the European Single for "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus), which curiously is based on the same "basic rhythm section" for "I'm Going Goo-Goo Over Ga-Ga", although it is at the tempo of 136 beats per minute rather than the 119 beats per minutes tempo of the "Bad Romance" parody, although the "parody" aspects are a bit subtle, really . . .
http://www.surfwhammys.com/FeelingYouFeelingMe-BasicRhythmSection-Notion3-10-2010.wmvReally! :)
P. S. The only other way to move stuff around that I have discovered is to use automation with DIgital Performer, but it takes a lot of work and is not very precise . . .
Doing the motion work with Notion 3 and "cloned" instruments takes a few hours when you consider the composing and configuring time, as well as the time required to configure the ReWire channels in Notion 3; save and close Notion 3; start Digital Performer; create new tracks in Digital Performer and set their input to the correct Notion 3 ReWire channels; start Notion 3; and then record the Notion 3 ReWire channels as soundbites, but so what . . .
So what! The reality is that Phil Spector did a lot of this type of thing in the early-1960s in his "Wall of Sound" technique, but he did it with real musicians and very simple analog magnetic tape machines . . .
George Martin expanded the technique with four-track analog tape machines in the 1960s, and a bit later Alan Parsons expanded it all the more with multitrack tape machines, where "The Dark Side Of The Moon" (Pink Floyd) . . .
More recently, it is very easy to hear stuff moving around when you listen with studio-quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506 (a personal favorite) to "Bad Romance" (Lady Gaga) and the European Single for "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus), which have a lot of "sparkles", for sure . . .
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NOTE: This is the YouTube music video for "Bad Romance" (Lady Gaga) . . . ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I[
NOTE: This is the YouTube music video for the European Single of "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus) . . . ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVbQxC2c3-8Creating the "sparkles" with Notion 3 is very precise, and it takes less time than it takes with other strategies, which makes it
very practical, for sure . . .
For sure!P. S. S. Given the amount of time required to load all the VSTi stuff for 50 instruments, I think that 50 instruments is a reasonable upper limit, so I do not view this as a problem, per se . . .
I can do what I want to do, which is more important to me than it taking an hour or two to put an instrument in elaborate motion within the
Spherical Sonic Landscape, since it is a quite amazing technique when it is done very precisely, which is what Notion 3 makes possible in a very practical way . . .