Gear limit with virtual amps ?

[chesterfieldblues]

Hi, it's been a long time since I use virtual amps like amplitube or Guitar Rig, but not recorded with them until some weeks.

My problem is that with these plugins, if I want, let's say, five different guitar tones on the same project, I'll have to launch five virtual amp plugins, I've got 2 Go of Ram, so no problem about memory, but I think my CPU (Athlon 64 3500+ @2.2 Ghz) can't stand it.

My last project (with Reaper) crashed and it was impossible for me to go back in order to remove one of the plugins.

My questions are:

Are there some tricks to arrange this ?

Do I absolutely have to upgrade my rig (multi-core CPU...) ?

When a track with an unique tone is finished, could I, let's say, "lock" it, in order to get back some system ressources ?


I'm french, sorry if there are strange expressions here and there !

 

[Torniojaws]

The locking you talk about is called Freeze. It does what you want to But the problem is, freezing takes a longer time than just rendering the emulator tones in a temporary project and then importing the rendered waves into the main project.

 

[Mutant]

My last project (with Reaper) crashed and it was impossible for me to go back in order to remove one of the plugins.

In Reaper you just have to open the .rpp file in any good text editor and manually it (delete the plugin) and it wll load (most probably).

 

[Kenneth R.]

Suppose in a similar problem, loading a particular sample set for a VST instrument runs out of memory. I'm sure there's a way to run it on virtual memory instead of RAM but I can't figure out how to do that. Using Cubase SX 3, and NI VSTs. I've got 2 machines I'm working with, one is an old 2.6ghz single core with 1GB ram, the other is a new duo core 2.0ghz with 2GB ram. Both have absurd hard drive space.

 

[Kenneth R.]

No ideas, or maybe it's just a dumb/uninteresting question?

 

[Zuranthus]

No ideas, or maybe it's just a dumb/uninteresting question?

there's a problem with that though, the computer has to swap the files on virtual memory into the RAM anyway, your program will become very sluggish...if you have 2 gigs & are having problems it sounds like you're piling on too many things...what the hell could you be loading that's so huge?? i use a symphony suite & it doesn't stress my memory much with 1GB

i think it's something else affecting your performance, try looking in your task manager, turn anything you don't need to run your OS off

 

[F.E.T]

If you have two computers, you might want to try a plugin such as FXTeleport. I had similar problems with my former setup, especially running a project with several libraries at once. I bought FXteleport and ran all my VSTi´s and some of the plugs through the slave and tada! Problems almost solved... It did work pretty well and I was able to run a lot more plugins than on one computer. The main issue was that, the more plugins I loaded into the slave computer, the more CPU spikes I would have. Appearently, there are some wraps you can use to send all the loaded plugins from the slave as a single one, but I haven´t tried it. However, the biggest advantage was that my old 1,6 ghz / 1gb RAM DELL came to good use sending 10-15 heavy plugins including one library.

The bottom line is, if you have a second crappy computer lying around, you might want to try this option especially if you´re on a tight budget.

 

[Kenneth R.]

Sounds good, I'll give that a try.

Nothing else was running when I was loading the plugins, I've noticed that it's only certain ones - stuff like piano patches that have a lot of samples.