NOTION Music Forum

Miroslav is still a 32bit VSTi, so make sure you're running Notion in 32bit mode

I know that, I use jBridger for conversion. thank you

carlosetmenezes wrote:Notion4 I use in Windows 8.1, my notebook Intel I7 with 8 gigabytes of memory. I have had problems when use with VST Miroslav scores.
The memory usage becomes 80%, and in some Notion4 aborts.
Is there any solution to this problem and in setting or otherwise.
I have always sent the abort dump the internet but did not get a solution to this problem.
Thanks and greetings

One of these strategies should provide some help, where using custom COMBIs is a possibility, as is spreading the instruments over several NOTION 4 scores. Another possibility is to get more memory for your Windows computer, since NOTION 4 definitely will use more than 8GB of memory if it is available (at least on the Mac) . . .

The primary problem is that all the IK Multimedia VSTi virtual instruments at present are 32-bit only, which requires either (a) running NOTION 4 in 32-bit mode or (b) using a "bridge" utility that puts a 64-bit wrapper on the 32-bit VSTi virtual instruments, thereby allowing you to run NOTION 4 in 64-bit mode . . .

This is the case both on the Mac and Windows, and there are "bridge" utilities for each operating system platform, where perhaps the most commonly used "bridge" utility is jBridge . . .

jBridge for Windows

jBridge for the Mac

When you run NOTION 4 in 32-bit mode, its application workspace is limited to 4GB (at most) and probably less in practice, but when NOTION 4 is running in 64-bit mode it has a much larger application workspace, which in some respects is limited only by the available memory on your computer, although there are "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments that can overwhelm NOTION 4 running in 64-bit mode when there are just a few instances, with one example on the Mac being MachFive 3 (MOTU), which has a few instruments that have 10,000 or so samples and takes approximately 1 minute to load . . .

There are two general strategies that provide useful "workarounds" to the 32-bit application workspace limitation:

(1) Create your own COMBIs for Miroslav Philharmonik and avoid using the NOTION 4 mapping (or at least make a copy of it and modify it to work with your custom COMBIs). In this scenario, the key bit of information is that each instance of Miroslav Philharmonik can have as many as 16 parts, voices, or articulations, which can be for the same instrument or for a set of different instruments. The practical aspect is that since there is a limitation imposed by memory restrictions, this strategy is based on eliminating all the parts, articulations, or voices that are never used, so that what actually is loaded into memory is what is needed and used by the instruments in the NOTION 4 score . . .

It is helpful to understand that you can use one instance of Miroslav Philharmonik to provide the sampled sounds for a set of different instruments, and this is done by starting with a staff to which an instance of Miroslav Philharmonik is assigned and then by using specific channels of that instance of Miroslav Philharmonik to provide the sampled sounds for other staves, which is done via SHIFT+i and is explained in the NOTION 4 User Guide as well as in a video tutorial provided by Notion Music . . .

[NOTE: There are video tutorials on creating custom rules, which is another useful strategy to use in conjunction with custom COMBIs, where for reference a "COMBI" in IK Multimedia terminology is a set of parts for an instance of a VSTi virtual linstrument, where as explained above there can be as many as 16 parts, articulations, or voices, and they can be for a set of different instruments, where there might be 4 articulations for solo trumpet; 4 articulations for solo trombone; 4 parts for ensemble strings; and 4 voices for solo bassoon. To be clear on the terminology, I use "parts", "articulations", "voice", "dynamics", and "styles" as the same thing in this context, although it probably is easier and simpler to use one of them depending on which word makes the most sense from your perspective . . . ]

NOTION 4 Video Tutorials (Notion Music)

[NOTE: Another way to "bridge" is to use Vienna Ensemble Pro 5 (Vienna Symphonic Library), which runs as a server and can "host" or "bridge" 32-bit VSTi virtual instruments and stream them to NOTION 4 when NOTION 4 is running in 64-bit mode . . . ]

NOTION 4 Instrument Change (Notion Music) ~ YouTube video tutorial

This is an example showing one instance of Miroslav Philharmonik as the source for several voices, and it is done with NOTION 3, which runs in 32-bit mode, but applies the same way to NOTION 4 running in 32-bit mode . . .

N3 MP Multi-Channel Multi-Staves ~ YouTube music video

This is the COMBI for the Miroslav Philharmonik flute that is loaded when you use the NOTION 3 mapping for Miroslav Philharmonik, which is the same or similar to what happens in the 32-bit version of NOTION 4, where I use NOTION 3 since it is 32-bit and it is easier, since I have NOTION 4 set to run in 64-bit mode here on the Mac Pro in the sound isolation studio . . . .







As you can see, there are unused parts in this COMBI; and depending on the articulations and dynamics that you use in your NOTION 4 score for this flute, some of the parts that are specified might not be used even though they are loaded into memory, where part of the strategy is to determine exactly what you need and to package it optimally to keep the total number of instances of MIroslav Philharmonik to a minimum . . .

It also is useful to know that you can examine the predefined COMBIs by switching to the NOTION 4 mixer and clicking on the name of the Miroslav Philharmonik instrument, which causes the Miroslav Philharmonik user interface to be displayed, at which time you can examine it and make changes if you desire, although it is best to avoid altering the predefined mappings, where instead you will create your own custom mappings and so forth . . .



(2) The other strategy is to have more than one NOTION 4 score for a song, which is the strategy I use since I like to have a lot of instruments and even when NOTION 4 is running in 64-bit mode it is not possible to fit all the instruments into a single NOTION 4 score . . .

This strategy requires more planning or at least a good understanding of composing songs in layers; and it requires using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application that supports ReWire 2 accurately and reliably, where on the Mac this includes Digital Performer 8 (MOTU), Live 9 Standard/Suite (Ableton), Logic Pro 9/X (Apple), and Studio One 2.6.1 Producer/Professional (PreSonus) . . .

[NOTE: I have tested and verified the 64-bit ReWire 2 interactions with NOTION 4 and these DAW applications on the Mac running Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) on a 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (Early 2008) with 20GB of memory; and I am in the process of doing the verification for Cubase (Steinberg) but have not done it yet. I have no idea how this might work in the Windows universe, but there are folks who can provide insights into doing ReWire 2 in the Windows universe with NOTION 4. I do everything on the Mac, and when I write about something I can prove that it works on the Mac, because I do experiments and tests to verify everything, which I think is important . . . ]

In this strategy, I begin with a NOTION 4 score that has perhaps 20 staves, although if I am using MachFive 3 (MOTU), I limit it to 10 staves and then only allow two staves to use MachFIve 3, because as noted (see above) MachFive 3 can be vastly "heavy" in terms of resource usage, depending on which instruments are selected. The MachFive 3 instruments sound very good, but part of the reason is that they are heavily sampled, which includes being chromatically sampled, which means that every note is sampled rather than every other note or whatever, where when an instrument is not chromatically sampled, some of the notes are computed based on nearby (lower or higher) actual samples, which depending on the specific articulation or playing style can be fine, but for articulations and playing styles that include tremolo, vibrato, and other time-based amplitude or pitch modulation is a bit problematic . .

~ ~ ~ Continued in the next post ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ Continued in the next post ~ ~ ~

Once I have the basic rhythm section, I record the NOTION 4 generated audio as soundbites in Digital Performer 8 via ReWire 2, where DIgital Performer 8 is the ReWIre 2 host controller and NOTION 4 is the ReWire 2 slave . . .

When that is done, I clone the original NOTION 4 score and give it new name, followed by using the newly cloned NOTION 4 score for another set of instruments (typically from 10 to 20 staves, depending on which VSTi virtual instruments I decide to use); and I use a naming convention that makes it easy to determine which NOTION 4 score I am using, which is something like the set {"N4-Song-PT-1.notion", "N4-Song-PT-2.notion", . . . , "N4-Song-PT-n.notion"}; and I keep all the NOTION 4 scores in a single folder with a meaningful name, where the advantage of beginning with a NOTION 4 score is that everything then is well-defined and all the NOTION 4 work can be redone or revised as needed, although it is easier to have the structure for a song in terms of verse, chorus, bridge, interlude, and so forth defined in advance, but regardless it is not so difficult to add stuff later, even when there are real instruments and voices recorded in the DAW application . . .

Done this way, I can have hundreds of instruments for a song, which can be as many as 500 to 1,000 instruments, although technically there is no arbitrary upper limit other than the time required to do the work, which includes doing submixes in the DAW application, since it is not practical to have 500 to 1,000 tracks in a DAW application, hence the need to do merges and submixes, all of which is part of "layering" songs, where for reference this is the strategy devised by Les Paul in the early-1950s when he and Mary Ford where doing songs for the radio and television shows using one-track analog magnetic tape recorders that they got from Bing Crosby's company, Ampex, which involved recording to one tape machine and then playing that tape while adding more real material and recording all of it to the same tape machine which was possible because Les Paul had Ampex add a fourth tape head to the transport. Later, a second tape machine was added, which made things easier and led to the strategy called "ping-ponging". This general strategy was adapted by Phil Spector for his "Wall of Sound" and later was used by George Martin when he was producing the Beatles, although using more modern tape machines which by the time of the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album were four-track analog magnetic tape machines, several of which were used . . .

It also is important to understand that I do not use any VST effects in the NOTION 4 scores, and this includes removing the default NOTION 4 reverb. I peg all the volume sliders to 0 dB; and unless I am "sparkling" an instrument, I level the stereo panning at the default "full range" setting, where for reference, "sparkling" is the name I use for the technique where the notes for one instrument are spread over as many as 8 staves, with each stave panned to a different location in the "rainbow panning arc", which is a nice way to put notes into motion and takes perhaps a few hours for a typical three minute songs to do all the music notation work . . .



[NOTE: This was done with NOTION 3 and IK Multimedia VSTi virtual instruments, where the Psaltery Harp from the World Instruments Collection is "sparkled" and SampleTank 2.5 is the engine, hence the "Synth" name. It works the same way in NOTION 4, but I use 64-bit virtual instruments in NOTION 4 . . . ]



[NOTE: It is easier to hear the motion when you listen with headphones. Doing the arithmetic, if there are 50 instruments and each one is "sparkled" with its notes spread over 8 staves, then this requires 400 staves, hence one of the reasons for using a set of synchronized NOTION 4 scores . . . ]

"Sparkles" (The Surf Whammys) ~ MP3

This is one of the songs I am developing at present, and it has instruments spread over 20 NOTION 4 scores, although I did a bit of consolidating, which reduced it to a handful of NOTION 4 scores, since the song evolved over time and I made significant structural and instrumentation changes . . .

"The Cock-A-Doodle-Oodle Dance" (The Surf Whammys) ~ Basic Rhythm Section, Salsa Percussion, Horn Section, and Cuban Trumpet ~ YouTube music video

THOUGHTS

IK Multimedia showed SampleTank 3 at Winter NAMM in January 2014 and at present have suggested that it might be released this summer, so yet another strategy is to wait until SampleTank 3 is released, since SampleTank 3 will use the sampled sound libraries from all the current IK Multimedia virtual instruments, as well as have another 2,000 new samples and other stuff . . .

I like the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, but I decided to do everything in 64-bit mode once NOTION 4 was released; and instead of running NOTION 4 in 32-bit mode or using a "bridge" utility, I decided to have a bit of FUN with 64-bit virtual instruments like Addictive Drums and Addictive Keys (XLN Audio), Cyclop (Sugar Bytes), Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments), MachFive 3 (MOTU), Twin 3 (FabFilter Software Instruments), which is what I have been doing for over a year now; and I augment this with a few sampled sound libraries from Bolder Sounds, which provides sample sound libraries for unusual, non-standard, or antique types of instruments that work with Kontakt 5 as the host engine . . .

Bolder Sounds

Lots of FUN!

carlosetmenezes wrote:Thanks Surfwhammy,
I will read and try to understand, it is now clear to me the high memory consumption of Notion4.

In Philhamonik Miroslav using the Combi. Example riding a Combi wind instruments as I do to have all my music instruments distributed in the Notion4.

Thanks and greetings.

Glad to help!

EXPERIMENT

This might be what you already are doing, but if not then as an experiment, you might try having one COMBI for woodwinds; one COMBI for brass; one COMBI for strings; and so forth, where if necessary you can have two COMBIs for instruments that require more articulations. This will reduce the number of instances of the Miroslav Philharmonik engine that need to be loaded and managed by jBridge; and this might help. Since you are using the VSTi virtual instrument version of Miroslav Philharmonik, I think that NOTION 4 will use its default rules, which might be more optimal although perhaps not so detailed . . .

However, to get the most realistic sound I think it works best to use a specific sampled articulation when it exists rather than to use computed articulations, where if there is a legato violin sample set, then use it rather than doing some type of computed legato. The difference is that when there is a sample set for the articulation, the real musician was recorded playing the notes in the specific articulation, which then was digitized, and this will be the more realistic sound possible . . .

AN OVERVIEW OF WHAT NOTION 4 DOES

NOTION 4 is doing a lot of work, but there also is a lot of work done by VSTi virtual instruments and their audio engines, so it is not just a matter of NOTION 4 needing a lot of resources . . .

This is something made clear to me when I started using MachFive 3 (MOTU) and some of its heavily sampled instruments like the Telematic electric guitar, where the complete version has 9,562 keygroups and takes approximately 55 seconds to load on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro with 20GB of memory and 7200 RPM internal hard drives with wide, high-bandwidth I/O buses . . .

For practical purposes, NOTION 4 is the controller application and it has two primary roles during playback:

(1) translate music notation into MIDI notes and commands . . .

(2) coordinate and manage the audio generated by the various VSTi virtual instrument engines . . .

NOTION 4 also has secondary roles:

(3) it handles the real-time visual display, but when resources are tight it skips doing visual updates to conserve computing capabilities . . .

(4) it handles keyboard and mouse interactions, which includes NTempo and other features . . .

When there are External MIDI staves and when there is a ReWire 2 session, there are two more primary roles added to the list:

(5) coordinate and manage MIDI interactions with external MIDI devices (real or virtual) . . .

(6) participate in real-time ReWire 2 interactions . . .

[NOTE: There is a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes in a ReWire session, as is evident in the following diagram of a running ReWire sesion, which is from the public area for ReWire at the Propellerhead Software website . . . ]


Diagram of a Running ReWire Session

THOUGHTS

It is all heavy in one way or another, where "all" maps to NOTION 4, AU and VSTi virtual instruments, AU and VST effects, DAW application, MIDI devices, ReWire, and so forth and so on . . .

When everything was running in 32-bit mode with NOTION 3, the upper limit on the Mac was approximately 50 VSTi virtual instruments with only one part per instrument and no VST effects plug-ins, but the practical limit was approximately 20 VSTi virtual instrument staves, where each staff had its own VSTi virtual instrument rather than one VSTi virtual instrument providing the audio for several staves . . .

[NOTE: The importance of using COMBIs, which in Kontakt 5 and MachFIve 3 are called "Multis", is that there is only one instance of the respective engine, where in contrast if you allow only one part per instance and one instance per staff, then for 20 staves you have 20 instances of the engine running. Everything depends on the specifics, but intuitively it probably is more efficient to have few instances of the engines, since one instance of an engine can handle several different parts, where for COMBIs the upper limit is 16 parts but for Kontakt 5 the upper limit is 64 parts of instruments

Intuition suggests that the limits should be less stringent when everything is running in 64-bit mode, but based on my observations I continue to use the same limits and actually lowered the limit to 10 staves per NOTION 4 score when there are one or two "heavy" MachFive 3 (MOTU) VSTi virtual instruments (like the Telematic, Jbass, Upright Bass, and some of the pianos) . . .

What I find is that instead of the limits decreasing and mapping to fewer limits, what happens is that in 64-bit mode everything sounds better and runs smoother, hence instead of changing the overall system I developed when everything was running in 32-bit mode, I continue to use the same system but now it sounds better and works better, which is fine with me . . .

Another benefit of everything running in 64-bit mode is that now I usually do all the work in a ReWire 2 session with Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) as the ReWIre2 host controller and NOTION 4 and Reason 7 (Propellerhead Software) as ReWire 2 slaves, where I do the AU and VST effects in the DAW application rather than in NOTION 4, since (a) this focuses NOTION 4 on doing the virtual instrument audio generation based on controlling and managing the various VSTi virtual instrument engines and (b) this focuses the DAW application (Digital Performer 8) on producing and mixing, which includes doing advanced signal processing and special effects via AU and VST effects plug-ins, although there is a bit of overlap in the Reason 7 part of the system, since Reason 7 does everything, except not using music notation unless one of the Reason 7 synthesizers is being controlled by music notation on a NOTION 4 External MIDI staff . . .

So long as I do not zone-out and forget one of the handful of odd rules (like never rewinding the transport to the first beat of the first measure in a ReWire 2 session when Digital Performer 8 is the ReWire 2 host controller, since this crashes Digital Performer 8), everything is stable for two to four hours, and possibly longer, but I save everything frequently and quit and restart the applications every two to four hours to clear all the memory buffers and to reset all the global stuff, which usually takes just a few minutes, during which time I take a break or make a new pot of coffee . . .

For all practical purposes, this is the digital equivalent of the analog system that Les Paul devised in the late-1940s and early-1950s where songs are composed, recorded, and produced in layers; and it works very nicely once you do it a few times and begin to understand the various rules, which is fabulous . . .

CLASSIC TRACKS: Les Paul & Mary Ford “How High The Moon” (SOS [Sound on Sound, January 2007])

"How High The Moon" (Les Paul & Mary Ford) ~ YouTube music video

Fabulous!

As a bit of follow-up to the idea of having custom COMBIs for each section of an orchestra or musical group, where depending on the set of articulations and dynamics required you might want to have several COMBIs for some sections, it also is useful to understand that you can create your own custom templates using the custom COMBIs and then you can create a new NOTION 4 score by first opening one of your custom NOTION 4 templates and then doing a "Save As . . . " to create the new blank but already setup NOTION 4 score . . .

[NOTE: Doing it this way maps to needing to do all the detailed setup and configuration work just one time, which should include testing and verifying that everything is working correctly; and this is part of establishing what I call a "complete system" for doing digital music production . . . ]

The easy way to do custom NOTION 4 templates is to create them and then save them to a special folder that you designate for storing custom NOTION 4 templates. There also is a way to add your own custom NOTION 4 templates to the NOTION 4 template menu, but if you do that, then you need to remember to save it to a different folder each time there is an update to NOTION, because updated versions NOTION 4 will overwrite the factory defined templates . . .

Keeping everything in a separate folder that you control is easier, and it just takes a few seconds to clone a user-defined custom NOTION 4 score template via "Save As . . . ", which makes this a practical solution . . .

And for some instruments, you might want to create a more elaborate set of COMBIs to get the most realistic sounds possible, where for example there are over 150 unique articulations, dynamics, playing styles, and so forth for the French Horn in Miroslav Philharmonik, which I know because I decided to count them but stopped counting sometime after 150, since (a) I was a bit amazed that there were so many different articulations, dynamics, playing styles and (b) I had been counting for quite a while and was a bit bored with enumerating what appeared to be much longer list of stuff than I had realized or expected . . .

From a practical perspective, when the full orchestra is playing, I suggest that devoting a lot of attention to detailed articulations and so forth generally is a waste of time, because the instruments naturally will tend to blur, but everything is different when there are solo instruments and when one section is in the forefront or doing something that merits more detailed focus . . . .

When this is the case, it probably is not going to be possible to do everything in a single NOTION 4, even when all the VSTi virtual instruments and everything else is running in 64-bit mode, but this is where using a DAW application and ReWire 2 becomes vastly useful, because you can have more than one NOTION 4 score for a song or whatever, at least when you are doing recorded songs rather than using NOTION 4 for real-time accompaniment . . .

And if you are using NOTION 4 for real-time accompaniment, the smart strategy is to use the NOTION 4 bundled or native instruments, since they are optimized specifically for this purpose and have the smallest and most reliable footprints with at minimum reasonably good sounds, and in some instances remarkably good sounds, which is the case because in a real-time accompanying scenario everything will be played through a professional sound reinforcement system, and once you run the audio through a professional sound reinforcement system you enter the unique universe of popular music, at which point most of the usual rules for dynamics and a lot of other stuff essentially become nonsense, because in this scenario the important aspect is that the audience can hear both (a) the virtual instruments and (b) the real instruments and singers, and the reality is that it might be nice to have an oboe playing some type of texture at pianississimo ("ppp"), nobody will be able to hear it when there are other orchestral instruments and a choir doing something at the same time, and what happens is that instead of contributing useful texture to the performance, it just adds to the background noise and makes everything else all the more difficult for the audience to hear, which I suggest is the case even when everyone in the audience is an highly trained listener . . .

In contrast, if the same oboe is playing a solo, then you probably want to devote attention to all the details of the finer aspects of playing an oboe, were the practical aspect is that the amount of attention depends on what makes the most sense for the music . . .

[NOTE: Based on the first part of the pattern {piano ("p"), pianissimo ("pp"), pianississimo ("ppp") . . . }, one might guess that "pppp" maps to "pianissississimo", which is a bit mind-boggling. For reference, there is an additional bit of information which is not provided in the following chart of dynamic levels, and it is that this applies when the loudest volume is 85 dbSPL or perhaps as high as 100 dB (SPL) when measured using dBC weighting rather than dBA weighting when there is a deep bass subwoofer, which is one of the reasons that final mixing and mastering needs to done with a calibrated full-range studio monitor system at 85 dB (SPL), where "calibrated full-range" the way I define it maps to a flat equal loudness curve at 85 dB (SPL) running from 10-Hz to 20,000-Hz, where 10-Hz to 20-Hz is subsonic and typically is felt as vibrations rather than heard as sound . . . ]



[NOTE: These are standard equal loudness curves, but they are not normalized or drawn on a scale that renders them flat. This is done to emphasize the fact that to be heard or perceived as being "equally loud", deep bass frequencies need to be at a considerably higher volume level than frequencies in the midrange and high-range. In practice, the equal loudness curve is made flat, because it is easier for audio engineers to adjust equalizers when the ideal "curve" is a flat horizontal line, and with a graphic equalizer what happens is that the line displayed on the real-time analyzer is flat but the individual sliders on the graphic equalizer look more like the equal loudness curves shown below. The example following this one shows the results of a real-time analysis and equalization run using the ARC System 2 (IK Multimedia), which does this type of calibration under computer control . . . ]



[NOTE: For reference, this iteration of ARC System 2 calibration is the result of an initial run here in the sound isolation studio which was done specifically to determine the sonic characteristics of the sound isolation studio, which are shown by the orange "before" lines and indicates that there was a set of standing waves in the range of 30-Hz to 150-Hz, which maps to the deep bass being "boomy", and while the ARC System 2 was able to do the required corrections, the better way to make the corrections was to use rolls of fiberglass insulation and cubes of compressed cellulose, which absorb deep bass frequencies; and in this instance it required 6 rolls of fiberglass insulation and 5 cubes of compressed cellulose insulation, with the result being the elimination of the "boomy" aspect, which in turn maps to the having "punch" or simply being "dry", with this in turn significantly reducing the amount of corrections required to achieve a flat equal loudness curve as well as increasing the clarity of audio across the full spectrum. This is relevant to determining how to select and create COMBIs, MULTIs, and so forth, because the only way to make sense of everything is to be able to hear it accurately; and this only happens when you have calibrated full-range studio monitor system, as explained in my ongoing topic on studio monitors in the IK Multimedia FORUM . . . ]



The Fabulous Affordable Studio Monitor System Project (IK Multimedia FORUM)

Fabulous!

carlosetmenezes wrote:Surfwhammy, sorry for the delay
Well, I got success in creating "Combis" and creating music.

Excellent!

carlosetmenezes wrote:I sometimes abortion of the application and do not know why it happens
Thanks and greetings

This is what I do to minimize hardware and software crashes:

(1) [All the time]: Save the work frequently (every 5 to 10 minutes) . . .

(2) [Mostly when doing complex work]: Save all work; close and quit all applications; and reboot operating system every 2 to 4 hours to clear all buffers, cache, temporary files, and so forth. After reboot, start applications and continue working . . .

The more complex the work, the more frequently I do (2) . . .

I also make backup copies on different media, which is another important activity . . .

Lots of FUN!