Halion sonic SE "More preload memory required"?

[attaboy_jhb]

I am trying out the Iconica Library for 30 days as a trial on my new macbook pro in Cubase 12 and today I got this message while working on a template that uses a lot of instances of Halion sonic in the project because it is a whole entire orchestra. Does someone know why I am getting this message?

[Markus_Leuthel]

Hi @attaboy_jhb,

this problem should be relatively simple to resolve.
(I do remember that I’ve had the same problem when trying out Iconica Library)

Please open “Options” and modify the value in "Max Preload, just try to set a significantly higher amount of usable RAM, of course depending on how much RAM is still being unused (“free”) on your Macbook.

You can also play with that tiny switch (left side) between “Disk” (data streaming) and “RAM” (data streaming).

Also, you can check how much RAM is actually being used for samples, under “used preolad”.

Hope this helps.

Greetings,
Markus

[attaboy_jhb]

@Markus_Leuthel

modify the value in "Max Preload, just try to set a significantly higher amount of usable RAM

THank you, very helpful

Here is what I did

I adjusted the Max preload to 12000 MB and the message goes away but look at my “Available memory” Is this a problem? It looks almost depleted out of 16gb there is only a couple hundred megabytes available. Can this decrease my Macbooks performance?

[Markus_Leuthel]

Hi @attaboy_jhb,

not much system memory left, as it seems.
I’d never use that much of any machine’s available RAM just for HALion (Sonic).

Perhaps you can increase your physicall RAM to 32 GB, or is that RAM soldered and therefore of fixed size?

In any case, for a (recent?) MacBook Pro and heavy duty DAW work, those 16 GB may not be enough anyway (in the long run).

And if I remember this correctly:
when starting up Iconica for the second time I’d checked the Max Preload value again and then came up with ca. 8.5 GB, down from 10 or 11 GB.

In any case, this was considerably less than your currently chosen 12 GB RAM value. Of course the ideal preload value always depends on project context, on how many tracks there are, and how many fully used HALion instances, etc. Last resort would be to freeze tracks (+ effects) to save (temporarily unload) as much RAM as possible, in a more demanding project.

Best,
Markus

[attaboy_jhb]

@Markus_Leuthel

Perhaps you can increase your physicall RAM to 32 GB, or is that RAM soldered and therefore of fixed size?

In a macbook pro, I think you are pretty much stuck with what youve got. I just got this laptop thinking it was good enough for my music needs. It is the 2022 model but I should probably mention that I have 50 instances of Halion running in the project. The project is actually not my own but a tutorial that steinberg sent me to help me see how the library works in use. It has an entire orchestra with loads of VST Halion SE instances loaded. One for each instrument fo the orchestra.

Would you mind reading this?

Is there any benefit in using Track instruments in Halion when composing a whole orchestra?

THank you for the reply. What do you mean by this exactly? Won’t cubase overload the cpu by having so many instances of Halion running? Also, what you mean about “each plugin can be treated individually” Do you mean when using FX like reverb or for EQ?

I posted it yesterday because I had some concerns about using so many instances of Halion in my project and was trying to understand why the template didnt use less instances of Halion SE and rather load more instruments into the slots to save ram and for better cpu performance. The other member told me that it matters not whether you use less instances of Halion SE and load instruments into the 16 slots available. But now I wonder if that is true… what do you think?