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Mavericks osx 10.9

A Forum to Discuss NOTION

Re: Mavericks osx 10.9

Postby Andree » Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:39 am

Surfwhammy, thanks for your help.

I have now tried to play some pieces with other VST instruments (like Notion's internal sound library) and Notion can play them without crackling, so there must be something wrong with Miroslav. However, I have noticed that the crackling noise appears also for the internal library when I turn the "pre-delay" wheel in the reverb setting, which is quite strange. Again, before I downloaded and installed Mavericks there were no problems at all. I guess IK multimedia has to release an update for Miroslav. I think the latest version is from 2009, which is unacceptable. Perhaps, Notion music should make a deep compatibility check for the latest OSX as well.
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Re: Mavericks osx 10.9

Postby Surfwhammy » Sun Dec 08, 2013 2:16 pm

Andree wrote:Surfwhammy, thanks for your help.

I have now tried to play some pieces with other VST instruments (like Notion's internal sound library) and Notion can play them without crackling, so there must be something wrong with Miroslav. However, I have noticed that the crackling noise appears also for the internal library when I turn the "pre-delay" wheel in the reverb setting, which is quite strange. Again, before I downloaded and installed Mavericks there were no problems at all. I guess IK multimedia has to release an update for Miroslav. I think the latest version is from 2009, which is unacceptable. Perhaps, Notion music should make a deep compatibility check for the latest OSX as well.


Glad to help! :)

For some of this stuff, the only way I know to determine what is happening is to do experiments, and after doing a few experiments, clues begin to emerge and you get a better sense of which things are associated with a problem and which things appear to have nothing to do with the problem, which then leads one to devise "workarounds", where the key aspect here in the sound isolation studio is that so long as there is a "worakaround", I am happy, because NOTION 4 provides so much useful functionality that it is the foundation for my current digital music production system, and some of the "workarounds" are very simple and work nicely, which is fine with me . . .

In some respects, I like the NOTION reverb, but I always set the Pre-Delay and Damping to 0, and when I am doing the ReWire 2 step, I disable the NOTION reverb, because you can add reverb in the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application, but you cannot remove reverb when it is part of the raw audio or "soundbite", so I prefer to do the reverb and echo work in the DAW application where I can adjust and fine-tune it based on what I want to hear . . .

Regarding SampleTank, IK Multimedia has announced that it is showing the new 64-bit version (SampleTank 3) at NAMM in January 2014, so the 64-bit VSTi functionality will be available sometime over the next two months, and all the current sampled sound libraries work in SampleTank 3, but SampleTank 3 has an additional 2,000 new instruments and sampled sound libraries, which among other things support "round robin" and "articulations", where "round robin" refers to there being several variations of each sampled note, such that if you play the same note and use the "round robin" option instead of the exact same sampled sound being used for each repeated note, a different variation is used in a circular or "round robin" sequence, which gives the performance a more "human" or "real" quality as contrasted to the more "mechanical" or "robotic" quality that comes from using the same sampled sound repeatedly . . .

At present, I am not so certain to what "articulations" refers, but it probably is useful, and the IK Multimedia folks are describing it as an exciting new feature, as they are with "round robin" . . .

Sample Tank 3 is not a free upgrade or version, but the IK Multimedia folks are saying that the pricing will be reasonable, and they tend to have good discount promotions, so I think that the initial pricing will be attractive . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
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Re: Mavericks osx 10.9

Postby Surfwhammy » Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:00 pm

As a bit of follow-up, I have been working on a new song and at present am doing everything within NOTION 4, including VST effects plug-ins, and the song became a bit more complex when I added a Salsa percussion section from "Cuba" (Native Instruments), which is a collection of instruments for Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments), at which time there were some problems similar to what happens with NOTION 3 when the total memory usage nears the upper limit of the 32-bit application workspace . . .

So, I ran the Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) "Activity Monitor" application, which has been upgraded, and the amount of system memory used was 18.75 GB out of the 20 GB total, so I am revising my recommendation on system memory, where based on this new information I think maxing it makes the most sense . . .

NOTION 4 was listed as using only approximately 2.5 GB of memory, but as best as I can determine the various third-party virtual instruments and effects plug-ins in the NOTION 4 score were using a lot of memory, although in a way that is not so easy to determine directly based on the information provided in Activity Monitor, where for example there are no processes for Addictive Drums (XLN Audio), Cyclop (Sugar Bytes), Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments), MachFive 3 (MOTU), and Twin 2 (FabFilter Software Instruments), or any of the IK Multimedia and FabFilter Software Instruments VST effects plug-ins, although there approximately 57 threads for NOTION 4 . . .

[NOTE: The primary clue was the the total number of disk reads was zero during this time, so all the sampled sounds were loaded into memory, which makes sense, because it takes approximately 45 seconds for the VSTi virtual instruments and VST effects plug-ins to load, which as best as I can determine does not include time for loading sampled sounds, which I think happens on the fly as the song is played, at least initially, because otherwise why have an "Audio Buffer Size" parameter in NOTION 4 Preferences . . . ]

At present there are 11 VSTi virtual instruments and 19 VST effects plug-ins in the NOTION 4 score, which might appear to be a lot, but all the VSTi instruments are "heavy" and most of the VST effects plug-ins are "heavy", so it actually is a lot of stuff, even though everything running in 64-bit mode and the Mac Pro (Early 2008) here in the sound isolation studio has 20 GB of memory . . .

[NOTE: To put this into perspective, NOTION 3 could handle one or at most two instances of MachFive 3, and it was running everything in 32-bit mode, so being able to handle 9 "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments is a significant increase, and there are 9, because 2 of the total 11 virtual instruments are NOTION 4 native virtual instruments, hence are not "heavy" resource users, which is one of the advantages of the NOTION 4 native virtual instruments . . . ]

This is the song, which at present is a basic rhythm section, and the next step will be to record the 11 instruments as soundbites in Digital Performer 8.05 (MOTU), which then makes it possible to clone the current NOTION 4 score and to replace some of the 11 current instruments with a new set of instruments, which is the strategy I use to build a song in layers without exceeding resource limitations . . .

[NOTE: I added a Kontakt 4 Salsa percussion section from "Cuba" (Native Instruments) yesterday, and while it is an ensemble, there are a lot of Latin percussion instruments; and I did some of the work with individual or "solo" Latin percussion instruments, although the Maracas and Guiro are NOTION 4 native virtual instruments, and they were there already . . . ]

"The Cock-A-Doodle-Oodle Dance" (The Surf Whammys) ~ Basic Rhythm Section ~ Salsa Version ~ YouTube music video

Summarizing, I think the more memory the better, so I need to start planning and saving to get more memory, specifically two more 8 GB memory pairs (2x4GB each pair), which is fabulous

Fabulous! :ugeek:
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Re: Mavericks osx 10.9

Postby Brian2 » Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:40 pm

Quick question,
What was your experience when adjusting the "Audio Buffer Size" settings in Preferences->Audio?

Thanks.
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Re: Mavericks osx 10.9

Postby Surfwhammy » Sat Dec 28, 2013 4:38 am

Brian2 wrote:Quick question,
What was your experience when adjusting the "Audio Buffer Size" settings in Preferences->Audio?

Thanks.
Brian2


Overall, my experience is that the Audio Buffer Size setting makes a significant difference in performance and audio quality for real-time playback both in standalone mode and in a ReWire 2 session, but I am not certain that it makes any difference when exporting audio via the "Export Audio . . ." menu item on the "File" menu. The reason for the latter assertion is that I have an experimental 64-bit NOTION 4 score which is right at the upper limit of what will fit into a single 64-bit NOTION 4 score, and this makes it easy to crash NOTION 4 during real-time playback. What I have observed is that while the generated audio might sound terrible during real-time playback, when I do "Export Audio . . . ", the resulting audio in the WAVE file is pristine, hence the assertion or hypothesis that the Audio Buffer Size is important for real-time playback rather than for exporting audio, which makes a bit of intuitive sense, because exporting audio is not subject to time constraints . . . :)

I tried different values and "1024 Samples" works best for the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (Early 2008) with 20GB of memory and a Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM ST3000DM001 primary hard drive . . .

Image

When possible, which usually is the case, I use the same setting for DAW applications when doing ReWire 2 . . .

On a related note, Apple released Mac OS X 10.9.1 (Mavericks) recently, and I did the update with no problems, hence I am running Mac OS X 10.9.1 (Mavericks) at present . . .

Another thing I noticed is that Mavericks is able to use all the available system memory in one way or another, which became apparent when I was monitoring a ReWire 2 session with Activity Monitor to get information on memory usage and observed the total system memory usage increase to 18.75 GB when Digital Performer 8.05 (MOTU) was the DAW application and ReWire 2 host controller and both NOTION 4 and Reason 7 (Propellerhead Software) were ReWire 2 slaves, with everything running in 64-bit mode, of course . . .

Of course!

Activity Monitor was updated for Mavericks (10.9), and I like the new graphic design, but the key bit of information is that Mavericks makes better use of system resources (processors, memory, and so forth) . . .

THOUGHTS

The optimal NOTION 4 Audio Buffer Size will depend on the specifics of your Mac, and the best strategy is to do some experiments, which are easy to do . . .

Try it at the factory default setting of "256 Samples" when there are some "heavy" or "resource intensive" VSTi virtual instruments loaded in a 64-bit mode NOTION 4 score, and then try it at "512 Samples", "768 Samples", and "1024 Samples" . . .

The setting that works best will depend on how many processors and cores your Mac has; the speed of the processors and cores; how much system memory you Mac has; and so forth . . .

The setting which works nicely for the Early 2008 Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio might not work for a newer and faster Mac, so the best strategy is to do some experiments . . .

If the Audio Buffer Size is too low here in the sound isolation studio, then then audio has skips and various noises, as well as occasionally just not working, so it is not difficult to determine when the buffers are set correctly . . .

Based on the information provided by Activity Monitor for hard drive activity, which consistently is zero, I think that all the samples are loaded into memory and that nothing is being read from the hard drive in real-time on the fly most of the time, and this tends to explain why a higher Audio Buffer Size value works nicely for the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :)

P. S. The experimental 64-bit NOTION 4 score referenced above has 11 "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments and 21 VST plug-ins, 7 of which are "heavy"'; and while this might not appear to be a lot of anything, it is a lot, and it is approximately 5 times as much stuff as fits into a 32-bit NOTION 4 score, where for example one instance of MachFive 3 (MOTU) is the practical upper limit for a 32-bit NOTION 4 score . . .

For reference, these are not 11 standard types of instruments, although 1 of them is a pair of NOTION 4 maracas and is not a "heavy" resource virtual instrument . . .


Instead, these are (a) synthesizers that do a bunch of stuff via scripts, oscillators, and so forth; (b) intensely sampled instruments like a Fender Jazz Bass or Fender Stratocaster; and (c) automated Latin percussion rhythm sections and drumkits, all of which maps to a lot of real-time computing, for sure . . .

For sure! :ugeek:
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