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Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 12:16 pm
by TCDetroit
Hi. I like the feel of the new app. Bravo!

I tried the search samples but this only worked when I put the sound folder back into the Application Support location. Is there a way to relocate the sounds off the boot drive (To my Sample drive)?

Second. Now that My Notion2 libraries are re-put (N3-DVD2 Installed) into the N3 default location can the old original N2 libraries be discarded?

Thank you in advance.

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 2:32 pm
by DrH
I too installed the N2 sounds, but beware that they *do not* contain all of the N2 Sound Kit instruments or playing techniques.

Therefore, my question is:

Can I somehow access the complete N2 library that I have purchased and installed until such time as Notion gives owners of N2 Sound kits free access to the N3 current equivalents (as promised) and (hopefully soon) completion of all the sounds and techniques that we now have in N2 sounds?

Thnx!

DrH

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 3:47 pm
by astinov
Hi TCDetroit,

Unfortunately as of now the location of the samples can not be modified, however we do have that on the list for changes that we plan to address and we hope to be able to provide you with that functionality soon.

On your second question, if you still plan on using NOTION 2 I would not advise you to discard your old samples, because you would lose the NOTION 2 playback. However, if you plan on using NOTION3 exclusively and installed the Legacy library support, then yes, you can discard of the old NOTION2 sounds.

I'm very pleased you like NOTION3, thank you!

Lubo Astinov

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 1:57 am
by jbm
Unfortunately, this is a serious problem for me as well. My boot drive is an SSD, with nowhere near enough room to install the samples in app support. Fortunately, I primarily use Notion with VSL, so I can get by without the content. But I would like to take advantage of some of the samples, so I'd love to see this feature bumped up the list. I'm actually a bit surprised that you could hit v3 without this capability; having samples on a separate drive is pretty much common practice.

J.

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:16 am
by kelldammit
you can move the sounds to an external drive if you're using the latest version of notion3. here's how:
on your external drive, create a folder called Notion, and within it a folder called Sounds.
inside the Sounds folder, copy your Bundled and N2 folders (if present) from their default location in Program Files/Notion3.
if you haven't installed the sounds into those folders, drag the .prx's to those folders.
Open notion, and go to File/Preferences. In the Audio tab, down at the bottom, you'll see an option called Samples Folder.
simply click the choose button, browse to and select the Sounds folder on your external drive.

you should be all set!

kell

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 5:31 pm
by jbm
Ah, great news! Thanks for the heads-up.

J.

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 1:53 pm
by jonknowles8
I've purchased Miroslav Philharmonik but it hasn't arrived yet. The library has 7 GB of sounds. I would like to install it on an external drive, perhaps one with enough room room for Vienna or EWQL if I decide to buy those one day. GPO, N2 and N3 (all installed on the HD) plus Miroslav likely will be enough for what I want to do though.

Will a (large enough) flash drive / stick be adequate to do this or should I use an external hard drive? I'd rather use a stick because it is quieter and smaller.

I can see it could be an advantage to put the libraries (GPO and Miroslav anyway) on an external drive / flash drive in case the main HD crashes. Other than that, are there any other advantages to doing this?

I have Reaper demo now; not sure if I will be using it after all - if that figures into this.

Jon

Win XP, dual core Intel 2.1 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Notion 3, GPO4 (Aria).

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 01, 2011 2:03 pm
by pcartwright
I wouldn't use a flash drive for something like sound libraries; flash drives aren't necessarily faster and they can fail as easily as a hard drive. You can use an external hard drive assuming that the connection is fast enough. I recommend using an internal hard drive dedicated to sound libraries and backing up your libraries to an external hard drive, and, if possible, to an online resource (Carbonite or something similar).

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 1:53 am
by jonknowles8
Thanks for the suggestions. On thinking further about it, I gather one would have to put all the libraries into the same folder, either on the HD or the external HD (or point N3 from one to another while loading instruments, which would be inconvenient). Since I have 3 libraries now on my main computer HD, guess I'll put Miroslav there too. And likely backup some or all of them on an external HD.

I thought I had read posts on this forum about the usefulness / desirability of putting libraries on an external drive and I thought Lubo Astinov mentioned something about that in one of the tutorials on VSTi's - which is why I was wondering.

Jon

Re: Move Sound library to external?

PostPosted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 8:06 am
by Surfwhammy
jonknowles8 wrote:Thanks for the suggestions. On thinking further about it, I gather one would have to put all the libraries into the same folder, either on the HD or the external HD (or point N3 from one to another while loading instruments, which would be inconvenient). Since I have 3 libraries now on my main computer HD, guess I'll put Miroslav there too. And likely backup some or all of them on an external HD.

I thought I had read posts on this forum about the usefulness / desirability of putting libraries on an external drive and I thought Lubo Astinov mentioned something about that in one of the tutorials on VSTi's - which is why I was wondering.

Jon


The VSTi libraries for Notion 3 need to be in the same parent folder, but this is not a requirement for third-party VSTi libraries like the ones from IK Multimedia (Miroslav Philharmonik, SampleTank 2.5, Xpansion Tank 2, SonicSynth2, and so forth) . . .

As you can see in these two screen captures, on the Mac the Notion 3 Sounds are in a completely different parent folder from the various IK Multimedia VST and VSTi components . . .

Image
Notion 3 Sounds ~ Mac OS X 10.6.6

Image
IK Multimedia VST and VSTi Components ~ Mac OS X 10.6.6

I do not use Windows, but I think that the folders on a Windows machine will have a similar organization and structure, although some of the higher-level folders will be a bit different with respect to location and naming conventions, where to be specific "higher-level folders" is referring to different aspects of the operating system and so forth . . .

On the Mac, the "higher-level folders" typically are "Library" and its subfolder "Application Support", with the application-specific folders being subfolders of the "Application Support" subfolder of the "Library" folder . . .

Regarding external hard drives, LaCie has some very nice units that have several different interfaces (eSATA, USB 2, Firewire 400, Firewire 800) . . .

Image
LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11156

On the other hand, internal hard drive prices have dropped significantly over the past year or so, and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM internal hard drive costs approximately $60 at Other World Computing (as contrasted to the 1TB LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk price of approximately $150) . . .

It is virtually trivial to add an internal hard drive to a Mac Pro, and depending on the specific type of Windows computer it should be just as easy if there is an open slot and the motherboard and power supply have the required hard drive cables, and I think that some of the newer Windows machines probably have the same type of internal hard drive bays that a Mac Pro has, where you do not need to mess with cables, at all, since you only need to open part of the computer case, at which time installing an internal hard drive maps to pushing the internal hard drive into a slot that already has the required cables attached . . .

The internal hard drive will need to be partitioned and formatted, no matter how you do it, but so what . . .

So what!

It has been a while since I did any hardware work in the Windows universe, but there probably are hard drive controller cards, and for the most part they will be very fast if not faster than some of the onboard hard drive controllers, where for example 10 years ago there were ultrafast SCSI cards (PCI) and external SCSI hard drive bays, which is what people used for multimedia and whatever, since they were considerably faster than IDE drives . . .

Whatever!

eSATA and USB 3.0 are considerably faster and more readily available, but the 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM internal hard drives are very peppy, and at some point it becomes a bit absurd to wander into making everything super fast, unless you are doing video work or 3D modeling . . .

There are eSATA and USB 3.0 PCI cards for the Mac Pro, as there are for Windows machines . . .

You can get an eSATA or USB 3.0 PCI card for about $30 to $35 at Amazon.com, and when this is combined with an eSATA or USB 3.0 external hard drive, it will be as fast or perhaps faster than the internal hard drives, depending on the motherboard, processor(s), system design, and whatever . . .

Whatever!

Nevertheless, if have a Mac Pro or a Windows machine with a case that allows you to access the hardware, something so simple as getting a faster internal hard drive with a higher storage capacity can be a very inexpensive way to boost the overall performance and throughput of your computer . . .

There are software utilities that make it possible to clone an internal hard drive, and if you have the ability to add an additional internal hard drive, you can clone your primary internal hard drive and then boot to the new internal hard drive, which depending on the various licensing schemes might require reauthorizing some of the software and the operating system itself, but there are provisions for doing this . . .

It is very easy to do on the Mac, and it probably is easy to do on a Windows machine, although with respect to Windows machines running anything beyond Windows 2000 Professional, I hesitate to guess what might be involved regarding licensing schemes, although the reality is that hard drives fail and it is fair and reasonable to expect to be able to replace a failed hard drive without being required to go through an endless series of strange and bizarre licensing procedures, no matter what the operating system might be . . .

In the grand scheme of everything, it is difficult to determine which of the two major operating system vendors (Apple and Microsoft) are the most paranoid overall . . .

Apple definitely is very paranoid with respect to its hardware and operating systems, but my solution for the Mac is to get a family-license for everything, which does not cost much more than a single-user license, so that I typically have 5 licenses for all the Apple stuff, hence for example I can have at least 5 separate internal hard drives that are fully licensed for OS X 10.6.6, and since it takes just a few minutes to swap an internal hard drive on the Mac Pro, what do I care . . .

Not much!

And I think that you can do something similar in the Windows universe, which at least in theory should not require much more than connecting to the web and going through an authorization procedure and perhaps downloading some updates . . .

[NOTE: Microsoft support for Windows XP SP2 ended last summer, so you need to be running Windows XP SP3 to get automatic updates from Microsoft. How this applies to replacing a hard drive is another matter, but you can call Microsoft and ask about it . . . ]

I suppose that after working on Windows machines since the first version of Windows, I should not be surprised to discover that hardware prices at the component level continue to drop, but I have not checked internal hard drive prices in a while, and I am a bit surprised that 1TB internal hard drives that a few years ago were in the $150 range now are approximately $60 or less . . .

It all depends on a lot of factors, but if your motherboard and hard drive controller(s) are sufficiently fast but you have a slower internal hard drive, then upgrading your internal hard drive can be a stellar way to get a performance boost and a huge jump in storage capacity, but even if the internal hard drive performance is the same, upgrading to a larger capacity internal hard drive gets you more storage space, which in the Windows universe for a machine that has easy access to the internal components is not a difficult upgrade . . .

On the other hand, I did some upgrades on an Apple 20" iMac 2.1-GHz (G5) iSight computer, and it was a bit frightening, since it required removing everything from the front, which begins essentially by removing the flat-panel display, and it is not something that Apple supports or advises as a do-it-yourself activity, but so what . . .

So what!

At the time, there was a website in France that had detailed photographs of all the steps, and I did the upgrade successfully even though the instructions were in French, really . . .

Really!

Summarizing, doing internal hard drive updates on a Mac Pro or a Windows desktop computer that has an easily opened case is not very difficult to do if you have the required tools and know enough about working on electrical stuff to avoid injuring yourself, which mostly is a matter of disconnecting the computer from the electrical outlet or power strip and avoiding touching capacitors unless you properly discharge them . . .

There are some rules for avoiding damage to the computer caused by static electricity, but the most important thing is to avoid electrocuting yourself, since the fact of the matter is that doing anything involving electricity and electrical components requires following safety procedures very diligently . . .

Another strategy is to have a computer technician do the upgrade, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :)