NOTION Music Forum

Hello,

I am having an issue when I am running Notion 4 in 64 bit mode using J-bridge to access Kontakt4 plug-ins. When I load a score in notion using a Kontakt plugin (I currently have four instances of Kontakt up and running in this score) I find that only 2 or 3 of the Kontakt patches will playback while the other patch will remain silent even though the sounds are loaded. The sounds will not even play when activated via midi keyboard when the instrument track is selected. Interestingly enough, when I close and reopen the program and load the same composition, Kontakt will randomly pick the tracks it will play/not play back the sounds on (playing/not playing back different Kontakt patches than before).

Perhaps some general advise in using plugins would be in order for when I use other plugins (Play, Miroslav, etc..) they seem to crash Notion. I almost think that there is something wrong with my setup because it does not take much to crash the program when I employ a few plugins.

Here are my computer specs:
iMac OS 10.6.8
2..8 Ghz i7
16 GB RAM

Jbridge runs in auxhost vs. auxhost64 mode...should it be in 64 mode? Whenever I close Notion I get a Jbridge Error message: auxhost quit unnexpectedly

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000ffffffff

I do not believe this happened in 32 bit mode (Of course Jbridge was not needed in 32 bit mode)...but any advise would be appreciated.

Regard,

Patrick

Why are you using jBridge? There's a 64bit Kontakt that you can use...

patrickjbrowne00 wrote:I am having an issue when I am running Notion 4 in 64 bit mode using J-bridge to access Kontakt4 plug-ins.

Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments) supports 64-bit mode, and it works very nicely with NOTION 4 . . ,

Native Instruments is having its annual 5-day "Thanksgiving Special" 50-percent discount promotion (November 22, 2012 through November 26, 2012), which makes this an excellent time to get Kontakt 5, and Kontakt 5 also works in the 32-bit universe with NOTION 3 . . .

Using Kontakt 5 is the best strategy, since it avoids having to make sense of "bridging" software, although I am somewhat intrigued by the possibility of using Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 (Vienna Symphony Library) as a "bridging" application, except that I a lot more intrigued by the idea of all the slower vendors getting on the program and doing 64-bit versions of their products . . .

[NOTE: In the Mac universe, the official rule according to me is that when MOTU and Notion Music do 64-bit versions, it is time for everyone else to get on the program, where in terms of being vastly impressed, the fact of the matter is that Notion Music released NOTION 4 about a week or so before the MOTU folks released Digital Performer 8, which is the 64-bit version of Digital Performer . . . ]

patrickjbrowne00 wrote:Perhaps some general advise in using plugins would be in order for when I use other plugins (Play, Miroslav, etc..) they seem to crash Notion. I almost think that there is something wrong with my setup because it does not take much to crash the program when I employ a few plugins.

Here are my computer specs:
iMac OS 10.6.8
2..8 Ghz i7
16 GB RAM

The iMac specifications look fine to me, but you are running Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), and it tends to be best to stay current with the operating system, where Mac OS X 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) is the current version . . .

Some of the IK Multimedia effects plug-ins are 64-bit, but CSR Classik Studio Reverb and all the IK Multimedia VSTi virtual instruments continue to be 32-bit only, which is a problem . . .

And due to the ever evolving software landscape, what happens with software companies is that they do not focus so much on ensuring complete compatibility with older versions of the operating system . . .

So long as you can run Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) on your iMac, I think it makes sense to get current on the operating system and Kontakt 5, and since you have Kontakt 4 the upgrade to Kontakt 5 is $119 (US) . . .

Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments)

Lots of FUN!

Because when I go to the Notion VST Manager and try to enable the Kontakt 4 plugin I get the following error message "Kontakt 4: The plugin can.t run in a 64 bit intel host".

I have verified that the "run in 32 bit mode" in unchecked for both Notion and Kontakt in "get Info"

Also, since I have other 32 bit plugins I like to use I thought Jbridge would be a solution.

Thanks.

Patrick

Thanks for the Kontakt 5 suggestion...I will look into that. I just thought Notion 4 would work better. When you use Notion 5 how many instances (sample size/processor usage) of this plug is too much for Notion or any program for that matter....do you think? I use orchestral templates so i could potentially use quite a number of plugins) thanks.

Patrick

patrickjbrowne00 wrote:Thanks for the Kontakt 5 suggestion...I will look into that. I just thought Notion 4 would work better. When you use Notion 5 how many instances (sample size/processor usage) of this plug is too much for Notion or any program for that matter....do you think? I use orchestral templates so i could potentially use quite a number of plugins) thanks.

Patrick

From my testing of NOTION 4 in 64-bit mode on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro with 20GB of memory running Mac OS X 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion), I think there is a virtual festival of space for everything, including somewhat surprisingly lower requirements for processing rather than higher requirements, although it makes sense when you think about it a while, because 64-bit instructions are more optimal even though they have more bits . . .

It looks like running NOTION 4 in 64-bit mode along with running VSTi virtual instruments in 64-bit mode makes it possible for the Mac to do a lot more computing, where to be specific I watch what happens with the Mac OS X Activity Monitor, and the utilization the 8-cores when running everything in 64-bit mode was lower rather the higher percentage when everything was running in 32-bit mode, which basically maps to perhaps 10 percent of the processing capability of the Mac Pro being used for smaller and medium NOTION 4 scores, which is outstanding, since if the utilization is 90 percent or higher for all the available cores, then it is time to get a new Mac . . .

With NOTION 3, the reasonable upper limit was 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments per NOTION 3 score, typically with only a few VST effects plug-ins, since VST effects plug-ins also use some of the 32-bit application workspace, but with NOTION 4 in 64-bit mode and all the VSTi virtual instruments running in 64-bit mode, I am not concerned about exceeding practical limits, although I need to do some experiments to verify this . . .

There are quite a few dependencies, and the operating system version certainly is one of the dependencies, since Apple adds processing improvements with each new version of Mac OS X . . .

SUMMARY

As time allows, I plan to do some experiments to determine the practical upper limit in NOTION 4 (64-bit) for instances of VSTi virtual instruments, but as noted based on the experiments I have done so far, I am not concerned about it, since among other things one of the experiments involved doing ReWire 2 with 25 notion tracks sending streaming audio to Digital Performer 8, and it was very peppy and smooth . . .

And depending on the specific model of iMac you have, it is possible that it is faster than the early 2008 Mac Pro here in the isolation studio . . .

NOTION 4 works very nicely and significantly better, but the key is for everything to be 64-bits . . .

When I do a series of experiments, I post the results to this FORUM, and I am very happy with NOTION 4, where at present I use MachFive 3 (MOTU) as one of the measures, since with NOTION 3 and everything being 32-bits, it would stress a NOTION 3 score to have only two instances of MachFIve 3, but I already have NOTION 4 scores with three instances of MachFIve 3 and the impact on computing resources is minimal, where at least in the 32-bit universe one instance of MachFive 3 is comparable to perhaps 10 or more instances of Kontakt 5 running in 32-bit mode . . .

However, even though I certainly can have NOTION 4 scores with significantly more instruments, after pondering it for while I am inclined to continue to use the 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments per NOTION score rule, since it makes keeping track of everything easier, where for reference the strategy I use is to have a set of NOTION scores, each of which has 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments, and as I complete the work on one set of instruments I record it in Digital Performer as soundbites via ReWire and then create a new NOTION cloned score, followed by using 20 of its instrument staves for another set of 20 VSTi virtual instruments, where I keep 5 or so of the VSTi virtual instruments common, since I use the common VSTi virtual linstruments as reference points for tempo, rhythm patterns, chord patterns, basic melody, bass, and perhaps a bit of counterpoint . . .

I need to sleep for a while, but if I get some rest and have time later tonight I will do an experiment to determine how many Kontakt 5 staves I can put in a single NOTION 4 score, which should be interesting, for sure . . .

For sure!

When you install Kontakt (4 or 5), you get both the 32bit and 64bit versions, installed in different folders. Unfortunately, NI gives them the same name, which leads to confusion. You need to locate the folder with the x64 version.