Sonar X2 and Memory Requirements

PTravel

PTravel

Senior Senior Member
I compose and orchestrate in X2 and, frequently, can have 20 to 30 tracks. I have a reasonable AMD quad-core under Windows 7 with an SSD but only 4 gig of RAM. When I've finished a piece, I'll export the tracks to wav and then important in Audition 3.0 for final mixing.

Last night, I decided I wanted to break out a drum track into separate instruments -- easier to mix that way. I'm using the Addictive Drums VST for drums on this project. I started adding new soft synths for each drum instrument, i.e. bass, snare, high-hat, tom, etc. and linking the original the part. Everything went fine until I tried adding a fifth Addictive Drums soft synth -- X2 would lock up tighter than a drum and just sit there with the hour glass spinning away. The only way out was a reboot and I tried again. Same result. After a third failed attempt, I got smart and started watching memory use. The original piece, with all drum instruments running into a singe instance of Addictive Drums showed a total use (including, of course, Sonar) of about 2.5 gigs. Adding additional instances of Addictive drums seem to add about 250-500 megs each. By the time I had added four instances, I was almost right on the maximum installed memory for the machine. Adding the additional instance should have forced Windows to place it in the swap file which, on an SSD, should be pretty darn fast (though somewhat slower than system memory). Instead, the machine would just suffer a panic attack and freeze solid.

I immediately ordered more memory on-line (unfortunately, this particular machine will only accommodate up to 8 gig, but that should be enough for now) and expedited shipping so I'd have it for this weekend and not lose another couple of days. However, to my mind, this indicates either a poorly written program, a memory leak or something similar. I have no idea whether the problem is in Sonar, Addictive Drums, or one of the other five or six VSTs I have running for this project. Still, talk about annoying. I'm tempted to connect in my laptop, which is an Intel quad-core with 16-gig, but the physical setup is tight and I like things the way they are.

Word to the wise: watch your memory use in Sonar -- you don't ever want to drive it right up to the line with VSTs.
 
I was struggling on my old DAW running Sonar 8.5.3 under Win XP32

Although, on saying that, I had one project which consisted of 75 tracks, including BFD2 and several instances of Dimension Pro, Rapture & a couple of others, and this thing played no problem. It also had well in excess of 100 plugins all running live, and all the vocal clips were V-Vocalled, all live, none bounced down

The one thing that brought it crashing to it's knees was running more than 14 instances of EWQLSO under the old Kontakt player.

So I think it's unfair to blame Sonar for any shortcoming here - your machine is clearly underpowered for what you're trying to achieve. Adding more RAM is a good move, just be sure the type matches what's already in there.

Just one question, why are you loading multiple instances of Addictive Drums for different kit pieces? Doesn't AD allow you to route separate audio outs from just a single instance (and a single Midi track)
 
I'm not necessarily blaming Sonar. It's just as likely to be Windows or Addictive Drums. My only point was that some VSTs make enormous demands on memory and at least something in the chain caused my computer to freeze solid when memory demands grew too high. The number of tracks shouldn't have as much impact -- tracks are stored on the hard disk and, particularly for an ASIO system, buffer size will have more impact (though I tend to use a fairly large buffer to eliminate stuttering -- I haven't experienced latency issues doing this).

With respect to Addictive Drums, I generally buy VSTs on an as-needed basis. On Saturday, I realized I needed some specific capabilities to compose and orchestrate a bridge to something I wrote years ago. To make the bridge work, I needed to match, very closely, the closed high-hat sound on the choruses. I downloaded the Addictive Drums free plug-in, liked and bought the download of the full package. I suppose I should have spent some time going through its capabilities but I was more interested in staying in the compositional flow -- when inspiration hits me, it's a use-it-or-lose-it kind of thing. So, Addictive Drums may, indeed, allow routing each instrument to separate track -- I'll have to look into it. For that matter, I've never bothered to learn how to do that with any of my VSTs. I just open another instance of the instrument when I want an additional sound.

Edited to add:

Okay, now I really feel stupid, because routing Addictive Drums is not only ridiculously easy, but XLN has an ILLUSTRATED faq that explains how:

http://xlnaudio.usa.s3.amazonaws.com/addictivedrums/manuals/how-to-separate-outputs.pdf
 
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