EXS 24 Logic Sampler Users Group

Hello Sascha,
I was pretty amazed to. But with playing some EXS-instruments form
this cd my CPU indicator is going above 60% and I can here nasty
glitsches in the sound. Do you have the same? (My PC: PIII 800, CUSL2-
c 512 MB, HDSP Hammerfall Digiface card at 6 ms)
Regards,
Maarten
******
The Xanalog CD Prg are very hungry in CPU, this is due to the Filters,
pratically on every programs...
Try to disable some of them...
Igor

-----Original Message-----

From: Murray McDowall <murraymc@...>

>Do you use the 32 bit sample storage option for EXS24? 

I didn't do this and I have never heard of that option.

How much ram is "a lot"?
I have 512Mb 

Is this a prefernece that goes for all songs or is it songbased?

Is there any reason to not use it in 32 bit if you have lots of ram?

-- 
Arvid Solvang
http://www.viagram.no/

Murray McDowall wrote:
> Do you use the 32 bit sample storage option for EXS24?
>
> On a big drum
> kit like the Stereo Drums this can make a huge difference to the amount of
> CPU resources consumed.

Sorry I have to disagree on that - well, not exactly disagree, but it
actually doesn't exactly have to do with the number or size of samples but
with the other things you described. The EXS has to convert 16 or 24 bit
samples to 32bit float for all processing in case you choose the "original"
option. This will use additional CPU cycles. But then, otoh you're right
again because a higher number of samples usually needs more processing.
Drums might not be such a good example though as you hardly play 8 note
polyphonic voicings with them. Also, very often on drums the EXS won't have
to do any transpositions which is one of the things which still tax the CPU
a lot - you can crossprove that by setting up an EXS set with a single
waveform with a root key of let's say C1 and play some chords in the higher
registers, CPU performance will immediately jump up. With 32bit float the
CPU useage will be pretty much less.
The most important thing on huge sets is that you will (obviously) loose
more RAM (1/2 when using 16bit samples, 1/3 on 24bit ones). The increase of
CPU power however is noticeable - therefore it makes perfect sense to switch
to 32bit float, especially in these days where RAM is dead cheap.

> Of course the other things you can do are A) minimize the number of voices
> for the instruments you are using and B) turn off filters which gobble CPU
> cycles.

Yes, on the Xtreme Analog CD I found quite some patches that don't sound any
different with the filter switched on or off

Arvid Solvang wrote:
> I didn't do this and I have never heard of that option.
>
> How much ram is "a lot"?
> I have 512Mb

For most situations this should be pretty much enough - but of course you
could do the maths by yourself in case you have a RAM checker.
Recently I had to pull out one of my two 256MB chips (the new one still
isn't in) but I experienced no problems, even with more complexed songs
where I used some rather large string samples.

> Is this a prefernece that goes for all songs or is it songbased?

It's a global preference. Maybe songbased would be better - but as said
above, in these days you just pack your computer with RAM and never ever
have to think about it again.

> Is there any reason to not use it in 32 bit if you have lots of ram?

No, not at all. The EXS will just convert to 32bit and be happy about that.
You too because on some sets the CPU performance will drop significantly.

Regards,
Sascha

At 08:53 PM 10/11/01 +0100, Sascha wrote:
>Murray McDowall wrote:
>> Do you use the 32 bit sample storage option for EXS24?
>>
>> On a big drum
>> kit like the Stereo Drums this can make a huge difference to the amount of
>> CPU resources consumed.
>
>Sorry I have to disagree on that - well, not exactly disagree, but it
>actually doesn't exactly have to do with the number or size of samples but
>with the other things you described. The EXS has to convert 16 or 24 bit
>samples to 32bit float for all processing in case you choose the "original"
>option. This will use additional CPU cycles. But then, otoh you're right
>again because a higher number of samples usually needs more processing.
>Drums might not be such a good example though as you hardly play 8 note
>polyphonic voicings with them. 

Hi Sascha,

I noticed that the Stereo Drums patch that came with the EXS24 used a lot
of CPU on my PIII 800 machine and that this was lessened considerably by
converting to 32 bit float. Those samples are all 24 bit so perhaps it is
more work for the CPU than converting 16 bit samples -- I don't know. The
default for that patch is 32 voices.

I have my drums set at 'one shot" so all you need is some cymbal samples
ringing on -- some samples are 10 seconds long --  and you can have quite a
few voices running simultaneously. With the different velocity levels, if
you tend to progam a lot of dynamics in, you can end up with several
samples for the same instrument sounding simultaneously (eg ride for 0-65,
66-95, 96-120)  -- unless you go the high hat route and have the ride
cymbal limited to one voice all these can be ringing for seconds
simultaneously. I often use ride and ride bell together in a pattern which
brings 8 samples into play on the ride alone. I have converted 5 or 6 of
the Wizoo LM4 kits to Exs instrument files and so I work with these sorts
of velocity switching drum sets a lot (The EXS instrument definitions I
built are in the files area at Yahoo).

Regards,
Murray

Hi Murray

>(The EXS instrument definitions I
> built are in the files area at Yahoo).
> 
> Regards,
> Murray

I may be blind but where are your EXS instrument definitions? I have 
looked in the Files section of this group and there only seems to be 
one .EXS instrument there which is called spacious.exs or something.

Any help would be appreciated.

Kind regards,

Soren Riis-Vestergaard
Denmark

At 08:03 AM 19/11/01 +0000, you wrote:

>I may be blind but where are your EXS instrument definitions? I have 
>looked in the Files section of this group and there only seems to be 
>one .EXS instrument there which is called spacious.exs or something.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/logic-users/files

EXS LM4.zip is the name of the little archive of instument definition files
-- no sound files are included, you need to have the LM4 installed for those. 

BTW There are a few errors in the files I have up there -- just in velocity
levels on the cymbals in a couple of them which I have revised on the ones
I use.  Drop me a line if you find a problem and I will replace the file
with the corrected version.

Regards,
Murray