Logic Pro 9 Logic 9: Duty to use an external drive for Sample Libraries?

b-pole

b-pole

Logician
Dear fellows,

my new iMac arrived.

Before my new install I have an important topic:

Is it duty to use an external drive for Sample Libraries (e.g. Apple Loops, Kontakt, Spectrasonics Stuff)?

Or is it sufficient to use another partition (seems not logical because it is the same drive)?

Or could I use all on the same drive because the new i7 is fast enough?

I would have the possibility to use an external FW800 drive.

Greetings from Germany

Marcus
 
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b-pole said:
Is it duty to use an external drive for Sample Libraries (e.g. Apple Loops, Kontakt, Spectrasonics Stuff)?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call it duty (Pflicht?) rather, an option or, depending on how large your sample libraries are going to be, and how much other stuff you may have on your Mac, a recommendation.

b-pole said:
Or is it sufficient to use another partition (seems not logical because it is the same drive)?
Click to expand...

I personally would not partition the system drive on an iMac with the OS and Apps on one partition and samples on another.

b-pole said:
Or could I use all on the same drive because the new i7 is fast enough?
Click to expand...

It will work well in a lot of cases, but if you start getting disk too slow messages, than it may be time to consider just this:

I would have the possibility to use an external FW800 drive. [/QUOTE]

HDs have gotten faster over the years, at the same time, Sample libraries have gotten a lot larger.

kind regards

Mark
 
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Necessary or beneficial to use secondary drive for samples?

If the samples are actually streaming from disk, as they do with Gigastudio, then a different drive than your program drive may be necessary. But if the samples are loaded into memory, then it may not be beneficial.

You could certainly benefit from using the FW800 drive to save your projects and record your audio files. The Glyph FW drives are recommended for Protools, not sure if they are necessary for Logic. If you save your projects on a separate hard drive from your Applications disk drive, then any loops you use should end up being stored on a different drive anyway.

As far as partitions, I use them for housekeeping. I have two 1 TB drives in a G5, both loaded with Leopard, and both partitioned in two 500 GB partitions. One drive has Protools 8 installed, and writes its sessions to the other drive A's second partition. And one of the drives has Logic 9 installed, and writes its projects to drive B's second partition.
 
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minding my "Ts" and "Gs"

I stand corrected. Will edit prior post. Allow me to explain: my first hard drive was for an Apple IIe. It was a 5MB Prodrive, and booted under the Pascal OS. I have computers with hard drives ranging from 2GB to external RAID arrays running in SCSI configurations inside of external Dell PowerVaults with eight drives.

Plus, I was thinking about Logic, not my hardware. Please excuse my short term memory loss... 😉
 
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Sample libraries on the iMac drive and saving my music on the FW800 drive, or samples on FW800 and my music on iMac drive? Or my music and samples both on FW800?
 
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Logic's EXS24 sampler will stream samples to disk. Under its parameter window, the options button gives you access to its virtual memory settings. With 32 bit Logic and more than 5GB of memory, you can adjust how much memory EXS24 eats up. Under 64 bit Logic, all memory is available. The EXS24's samples can be moved around, or stored with the rest of your project stuff, i.e., your FW800 drive. Info is in Logic's help file.
 
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I use EXS24, but not in multiple instantiations, so for me it doesn't really make that big a difference where my samples are. The only issue might be keeping track of where you put everything. If you let Logic put stuff in the default directories, you can duplicate the samples when the install is done, if you want them to stream from your FW800 drive. My recommendation would be use the default install, because you can change stuff around later. In any case, for sure I would put my projects on the FW800 drive, and make backups onto the system disk.

*Logic makes copying the samples to the project folder easy. Once installed, you select (from the main Logic menu) "File --> Project Settings --> Assets" Then you can select which items you want to move to your project folder. Selections include both the EXS instruments as well as the EXS samples, the Space Designer impulse responses, the Ultrabeat samples and even movie files, if you are using them.

(There are also options to copy external audio files to the project folder, and to always convert the sample rate when importing.)
 
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Spectrasonics makes virtual instruments now, which I have not used. I do have some of their drum loops/samples, including BackBeat and RetroFunk. Those loops can be copied into the arrange window tracks and consequently get stored with the audio tracks in the project folder (in your case, your FW800). During the install, applications sometimes give you an option to place the samples in an alternate location.

Not sure how large a project you will undertake, but the new Macs are very powerful, so I wouldn't worry until you hit the system's limit. For larger projects, I link two different computers together (with wordclock), running Logic on a Mac and the samples on a different computer entirely. The second computer is actually a PC, not a Mac, and its application runs on a SCSI RAID array, its samples on a second drive, and its ambient reverbs on a third drive. That setup is a carry-over from when CPUs had less power and when the programs ran within 2 GB. Plus my sample program was PC only. Things are different with 64 bit OSX and the i7 CPU.
 
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Sorry, I wrote it not good to understand.
I meant PlugIns with Sample Libraries like Kontakt, Omnisphere, Trilian and Stylus RMX.
I could install the PlugIn on system drive and the included samples on FW800. But is the i7 not fast enough to store them in the standard root folder?
 
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I can't tell how complicated your projects are from your post, but I think you will be fine either way.

What you might consider is, will the FW800 drive be used more for recording/playing audio files? ...or will most of your projects use virtual instruments? Maybe if you are doing stuff like 256 tracks with lots of virtual software instruments, it will make a difference.

My son runs Logic on a 27" Imac with the i7 CPU. I can't remember if it has 16 or 32 GB of RAM. He uses Vienna Orchestra and East-West Symphonic, but he runs the samples on a PC, not on the Imac. His template is for full orchestra, with articulations for the individual instruments nested into arrange window folders. He has also begun using solid state drives. They are much faster for reading, but not recommended for recording. You could maybe add a solid state drive if you want to separate your samples from your audio -- and also from your applications. I think he swapped a DVD drive for an internal SS drive, not sure about that. But Glyph now makes an external SS drive that connects with FW, USB or eSATA.

http://www.glyphtech.com/products/portagig50ssd/

What will they think of next?
 
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Dear Juan,

thanks for all intensive replies.

Perhaps you look at my webpage at
www.b-polarity.de

I use only PlugIns and samples, no external hardware.
I thought about the SSD, but too much money for me.

Perhaps I will install all on my iMac system drive and use the external FW800 for recording. I think for Dance Music it would be more than efficient.

Before my new 27"iMac I had a 24"iMac with only one system drive. This was the main reason for asking, because this setup was a little bit fluttering.
 
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I run everything on one drive and have no problems whatsoever. I'm running Logic, Kontakt 4, Spectrasonics, etc. in both 32-bit and 64-bit and have seen a system overload message only once.
 
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I run everything on one drive and have no problems whatsoever. I'm running Logic, Kontakt 4, Spectrasonics, etc. in both 32-bit and 64-bit and have seen a system overload message only once.
Click to expand...
thanks for reply.

So I will do it, all on system hdd, recording on FW800 hdd🙂
 
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