Logic Pro 9 Too Many Plug-Ins?!

ChiRilla

Logician
Hoping someone can help answer this question: How many instances of Omnisphere/Trilian/Slate Drums SSD4 Platinum can be run at the same time?

I know the answer is "depends on your system and any other plug-ins running", but I am curious to know if I have an issue with my hardware or simply using too many instances. So want to get some feedback from other users. I don't want to freeze tracks necessarily as the song may be in early stages....

Running Logic Pro 9.1.8
iMac 3.4GHz, Quad i7
16GB RAM
6TB Lacie Thunderbolt RAID (for projects)
Logic and plugins are on internal hard drive

I started running three separate instances of SSD4 (kit, BD, Snare) to give me greater options when processing effects etc....not sure this is the issue? Also running 2 instances of Omnisphere and 1 instance of Trilian generally in the same project.

Other plug-ins I am using are 2C-Audio Aether, Cakewalk CA-2A (not sure how taxing these two are)

Thank you in advance for any feedback, suggestions, or sharing of experiences.
 
You don't mention wether you are in 64 bit or not, wether you are streaming from which drive (you do mention 1 drive, and if it's having to stream all that stuff at once you might have a problem there), but I can tell you ALL the plugins you mention take up a lot of CPU, depending on the patch.

Have you taken a look with Activity monitor in your Utilities folder to see if you are running out of ram (which can also bring a system to it's knees).

I know you have 16 GB, but unless you restart your system before each session (and sometimes during each session if you are working on 3 or 4 songs) you can end up with very little ram to use.

I would suggest you take a look at running something like Vienna Ensemble Pro to take the Spectrasonic stuff out of Logic (that can really help).

But like you said in your post: it really depends, and the only way to be sure what is doing what is to use something like activity monitor to see exactly what is going on CPU and ram wise.
 
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George, thanks for your reply. I think I'm running in 32bit mode actually. Would 64 be faster or more taxing? I used the activity monitor, and surprisingly when I load up on the plugins, the system is barely working. I created a test project to see how many instances I could run concurrently. I can get 2 Spectrasonics and 3 slate drums then it crashes. I will probably start bouncing the drum tracks I guess. I will take your advice on restarting the Mac; unused memory is possibly part of the problem even though its not active.

Re: Vienna. Will that replaced Spectrasonics plugins? Thanks again
 
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well there is a big past of your problem: 32 bit mode can't begin to access all your ram.

Go into your apps folder, click on Logic and press command and the i key to get info, and uncheck the 32 bit box.

The thing to remember about 32 VS 64 bit: if you install new plug-ins, you are going to have to boot in 32 bit more to get the recognized by Logic, then switch bak to 64 bit mode.

In your plugins settings make sure they don't use the memory server stream engines, and you are good to go.
 
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Yes I do use the VEPro 5 app to host things in my Mac but not in Logic. Takes a bit of advanced preparation, and can be a little intimidation at first, but it really helps to get around Logic's "I only use 1 CPU for all live inputs and busses" issue.

Plus you get a pretty cool orchestra library with it. Cost is about $350 though.

I'd say keep going as is now that you have 64 bit going and see how that works before you try anything else.
 
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If for some reason you don't want to run in 64-bit, there is another option.
You can Omnisphere in Server mode and it uses memory outside of Logic. In Omnisphere, click on the System tab, then under [Streaming] select Server.

You can read more in Omnisphere's help...
 
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Thanks Colin for the advice. I actually started running in 64bit and have not had a problem yet! :) one reason I was running 32bit was because my 2CAudio Aether reverb plug in only runs in 32. So now I need to deal with the audio bridge until they release the 64bit upgrade. 😁 Worth it though. It's a beautiful reverb.
 
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