Quick question about DKFHS and hard drive options

[chadsxe]

I just bought DKFHS and I need advice on a hard drive to store it on. I need to get an external drive. Would it really matter if it was USB or Firewire being that all I am doing is using it for loading samples into memory? I am guessing speed is not an issue. Correct?

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

USB 1.1 or 2.0 ? 2.0 should be ok, 1.1 probably not. Firewire is more reliable anyway... I don't know DKFHS but usually (Kontakt, HaLion...) you don't load the whole kit in memory, and use "Direct From Disk" : only the first (ms) seconds are loaded into the memory, the rest is streamed from the HD, so yes, speed is an issue.

 

[chadsxe]

2.0 obviously........

But come to think of it I don't want to chance anything so I will just get a firewire drive.

Next question.

External drive really don't get much faster then 7200rpm. This should be enough, correct? What about buffer size? Is 8MB going to be good enough? What about seek times? Obviously the quicker the better, 8.5?

ANy suggestion on a model I should look at? I want 160gigs?

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

You can go for Lacie external hard drives. Personnaly, I just have 2 or 3 empty cases (USB 2.0 / Firewire) where you can put any regular HD into, because I have quite a lot of HDs for archive storage and this solution is cheaper (I never nead to use more than 3 HD at the same time ).

Oh and yes, 7200rpm 8MB cache is good.

 

[chadsxe]

Well this is straight from TOONTRACKS support

"there is no contraindication to use an external drive, no. HD performance has no impact on Superior during normal operation. "

"The Superior sampler streams samples from read-access memory (RAM) only. The number of voices output by Superior far exceeds the capabilities of the current hard disk technology therefore making this option non viable for this product.

Toontrack Percussive Compression TPC introduced with Superior 1.5.0 is the logical step from DFD capabilities and will perform on-the-fly compression/decompression to help minimize the memory footprint of the sample pool. This new technology trades RAM for CPU and removes on most systems the previous memory addressing bottleneck.

We endeavour to optimize and improve this new technology over time and truly believe the future of samplers lies in that direction. We are extremely pleased to pioneer the approach and deliver excellence at modest cost to resources. "



So i guess it would not even matter if I went with USB 2.0.....

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Yeah, thanks for the infos !!!

 

[kev]

Can you not just load the parts you need?

 

[chadsxe]

Can you not just load the parts you need?

You have to load the whole 35+gis on a hard-drive at once. Then the DKFHS loads the parts you are using into the RAM.

 

[kev]

You have to load the whole 35+gis on a hard-drive at once. Then the DKFHS loads the parts you are using into the RAM.

blimey lol.

 

[STINNETT]

I don't think the HD would be an issue for performance. But don't forget that you still have to save 35 gigs onto the drive to get started. That took me all day with an internal hard drive. It would take a good while on a USB drive I bet. Then again, it's a one time thing so no big deal really.

 

[DNW]

You have to load the whole 35+gis on a hard-drive at once. Then the DKFHS loads the parts you are using into the RAM.

Well, you need the entire of Drummer loaded on the HDD for it to work properly, but if you're not using Percussionist or Cocktail, you don't have to load them on.

And yes, DFHS loads into RAM. With the newfangled compression and 16-bit modes, the amount of RAM used can be brought down to a fairly small figure.

That said, my DFHS is loaded on to my normal C:, which I think is 120Gb. All my apps go on there, my audio goes on to a separate internal drive.

 

[-Gavin-]

I use DKFHS with an external drive from Envizage.

I have ALL my samples on there come to think about it. It's USB 2.0 and has never given me trouble!


I'm new here by the way

 

[chadsxe]

So it is settled I just ordered a USB 2.0 external drive.....

As a side note...


I have been using DKFH2 for a couple years now and love it....only problem is it is a resource destroyer.........I have a 3.2ht P4 with 2 gigs of DDR-RAM.......I am guessing this should be enough for DKFHS.....word of mouth is DKFH2 is way worse on the system then DKFHS.....

 

[DNW]

So it is settled I just ordered a USB 2.0 external drive.....

As a side note...


I have been using DKFH2 for a couple years now and love it....only problem is it is a resource destroyer.........I have a 3.2ht P4 with 2 gigs of DDR-RAM.......I am guessing this should be enough for DKFHS.....word of mouth is DKFH2 is way worse on the system then DKFHS.....

My kit in DFHS, which is a pretty large kit, usually is over 1Gb worth of files (close mic'd samples, bleeding only in the OHs). I only have 1Gb of RAM, so naturally I use the tools provided to bring that figure down a bit. The "Cached" mode usually brought that down significantly to begin with, but now with the 16-bit and compression features, I'm down to (from memory) something like 300mb or so. I don't even run the "cached" mode anymore, I just let all the samples load up when the project loads.

If you can't manage with 2Gb of RAM, you're either not using DFHS' handy features as best as possible, or you're doing something insane with the rest of the project.

 

[chadsxe]

If you can't manage with 2Gb of RAM, you're either not using DFHS' handy features as best as possible, or you're doing something insane with the rest of the project.

I am talking about DKFH2 which does not have those features......I am sure I will be able to handle it when I switch over to DKFHS