I don't understand how Notion is handling memory with VSTis

[lazerlike42]

My question is specifically about EWQL, but I'd imagine it would or at least may pertain to other VSTis.

Essentially, I cannot understand why the Full presets take up so much more memory than the Lite presets. Obviously, I understand the concept: the lite presets exist because they take up less RAM. The problem is this:

When I load up just ONE full preset, my system memory goes down by 300-500 MB - just for that one staff. When I load up one lite preset, it goes down by 100-150 MB. Makes sense so far.

But when I look at the Play VSTi window for the Lite preset, it tells me its taking 150 MB. OK, that's consistent. Now when I look at the Play VSTi for the Full preset, it tells me its taking 81 MB. Total. For all 16 patches that are loaded. This is consistent with my experience using Play standalone. Each patch takes between 2-10MB of RAM, with the average being about 5 MB. Add up 16 of those - even 16 really big, 10MB ones - and you get to 160 MB, maybe.

So if I look at how much RAM each individual patch should take and I add it up, it doesn't nearly reach the 300-500MB that are actually being used. If I look at what Play is telling me its using while loaded into Notion, its still only 80-100MB, but somehow I've lost 400 MB by loading it up. What the heck is going on here?

[pcartwright]

[quote="lazerlike42"]When I load up one lite preset, it goes down by 100-150 MB. Makes sense so far. But when I look at the Play VSTi window for the Lite preset, it tells me its taking 150 MB. OK, that's consistent. Now when I look at the Play VSTi for the Full preset, it tells me its taking 81 MB. Total. For all 16 patches that are loaded. This is consistent with my experience using Play standalone. Each patch takes between 2-10MB of RAM, with the average being about 5 MB. Add up 16 of those - even 16 really big, 10MB ones - and you get to 160 MB, maybe.[quote]

It sounds like an inconsistancy on Play's end. After all, why would EWQL even bother to make Lite patches if the difference, based on your example above, is only 10 MB per 16 channels?

[lazerlike42]

Well, keep in mind that EastWest doesn't call them lite patches. They call them Keyswitch patches. The reason they exist is to allow the user to have more articulations than you can fit into the 16 channels Play has. In fact, the EWQL manual talks about the keyswitch patches taking up more memory than the regular ones exactly because they consist of many more articulations.