Logic Pro 9 Adventures in 64-bit

R

Rosamund

Logician
Just started my adventures in 64-bit land and thought I'd post some experiences.

we do a lot of Film and TV work and some of it the dreaded all-consuming memory gobbling orchestral simulation. As many I was shocked at LP9's memory issues and so I was very excited at the prospect of 64-bit - and despite issues I remain so. We are running LP91 on several macpros although my experiences here is on a dual 3 xeon with 16 gig ram. I'm not the most tech-savy guy so some of the things I have done might just be bone-headed but here they is.

With a little extra time on a TV opening cue I loaded...

3 multi 16 instances of Kontakt 4 (a full LASS bank)(a tonehammer heavy bank) and a mixed bank including Symphobia/Heavyocity (bridged)
3 multi 16 instances of Omnisphere - loaded (64bit native beta)
10 instances of play with various platinum orch inst. (bridged)

I guess all the picture guys already know that there is no "export audio to movie" in 64 bit... yet. and my mp3 bounce is unavailable. And I seems their are QT sync issues (stutter, minor freezes etc) but this only seemed to occur when the CPU is stressed.

Omnisphere beta 64 worked great. Other than a few graphical issues when switching between views. I was able to load three full banks of sounds. that was impossible 32. Of course I didn't use all the sounds but having them there to easily audition parts was a great.

Play seemed a little unstable. A few sounds loaded but would not play from recorded midi until I restarted. Also there was lots of graphic problems.

Kontakt - here's where it seemed to get a little dodgy. Thanks to the great sounds from audiobro and TH I have come to rely on this. I was never a big fan of NI stuff but realled loved the KS feature in Kontakt 4. Bridged there is no ability for me to save banks. And if you have KS activated deactivating inside logic will cause the bridge to crash and then you are unble to load the sequence again as K4 crahses it on startup. A workaround is to load K4 standalone then reactivate and you're OK. K4 bridged really sucks the CPU too.
And NI has taken a wait and se approach to a 64 bit native version so I really wonder what LASS people and TH are thinking. I would really re-consider any heavy K4 library right now.

Jim

Always looking for talented composers/songwriters to team with. Check my profile and drop me a line...

IMDB profile here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0349763/


www.jamesguttridge.com
jamesguttridge@gmail.com
 
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Rosamund said:
Just started my adventures in 64-bit land and thought I'd post some experiences.
Click to expand...

Great rundown Jim! Thanks for sharing! :thmbup:

One idea, if you've got money to spend:

Play seemed a little unstable....Kontakt - here's where it seemed to get a little dodgy.
Click to expand...

Many composers are using Vienna Ensemble Pro as an external 64-bit host for their 3rd party AU sampler instruments. It is compatible with 64- and 32-bit AUs and works well with Logic. Some composers prefer doing this to running plug-ins inside Logic because using VEP they can keep a single "orchestral template" always running in the background, and swap between Logic projects very rapidly because Logic doesn't need to load all those samples for each project.

I'm not a composer so I can't share experiences using 64-bit Logic with VEP, and if you don't have a few hundred dollars to spend, this might not be a viable option. But you might want to consider it.

Take care,
Orren
 
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I advise my clients to consider a few thing with their composing DAWs:
1) have more than 1 computer.
2) Play 1.25, Kontakt 3.5 and above, and the current versions of VSL all have 64 bit engines that do not make Logics ram requirement go up to a large degree. VSL does need to have multiple instances going though for them to work, Play and Kontakt all work fine in one instance.
3) Play doesn't seem to work that well with others. I suggest you have a second computer to run VSL/Kontakt, and use play on your main DAEW, or the other way around. I have one guy who has a 51 part single instance of play running on a Mac with no issues at all. He uses Midi Over Lan and a hardware 2408 to get audio back into the main DAW's system.
4) VEPro works much better on a PC running Vista 64 or Windows 7 that an a Mac.

I will be able to add more about VEPro on a Mac in a while. I'm doing some serious testing with VEPro Mac to Mac over the next while. In my experience though, the PC VEPRo slaved to a Mac is best.

George Leger III
 
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Thanks George,

By the way, the PC you built for me is really turning out to be the PowerHouse computer of my whole system.

Nothing seems to be going wrong!!

al :):)
 
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Thanks Al,

Good to hear. I'm making a dual Xeon server for Terry Huud now, for VEPro, 12 gig ram, W7 in 64 bit mode. Just getting it set up now. I feel like Dr Frankenstein. Maybe Frunkesteen would be a better name for me ;-).

Take care,

George Leger III
 
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