Ivory II slow audio mixdown on mac?

Hello,

Has anyone else experienced a slow speed of audio mixdown using Synthogy’s Ivory II? The VST sounds great, and plays back fine with no glitches, but on trying to create an audio mixdown, it hangs for much longer than normal (a two minute song will take over three minutes, for example). If I chose “real-time export”, the audio is fine, but it’s weird that the normal setting takes even longer than real-time.

The audio mixdown works fine on PC, but on two different macs (a MacBook Air mid-2011 and a brand new MacBookPro quad-core i7), the VST hangs. For contrast, the PC would crunch the same MIDI file and VST in about a minute.

Also, on both machines, I’ve had no delays when mixing down multiple VST instruments (even sample-based ones like Native Instruments Komplete or Steinberg’s own Halion Sonic series).

Here are some technical specs of the machines for those interested:
Cubase 6.5.4 installed.
MacBook Air (mid-2011, OS 10.7, dual-core i5 with 4 GB RAM (samples loaded off external HD)
MacBookPro 15" (2012, OS 10.8, non-retina quad-core i7, samples loaded off main HD)

I’ve tried both computers with my two main interfaces; the RME UFX and the RME Babyface.

Any help would be greatly appreciated–Thanks in advance!

Although I don’t know what causes it, I’ve also had some mix-downs take longer than the song length. This only happens when I am running a ton of plug-ins on my MacPro 1.1 - 12 gig RAM.

The only remedy I’ve found is to ‘freeze’ all the offending tracks – which brings with it its own set of restrictions; viz. no editing unless you unfreeze, edit, refreeze. I found the simplest solution is to real time export.

While this is not a solution, maybe it’s a help to know that you’re not alone.

Best,
Ashton

Thanks, Ashton! The weird thing is that there are no other tracks… just the single instance of Ivory II and the MIDI. Also, strangely, this isn’t an issue on the PC.

I can deal with the real-time export in a pinch. If I do that, it allows me to mix it as audio instead of MIDI and get a fast audio mixdown again, but that isn’t an ideal workflow.

I searched a bit, and no one seems to have reported this, so I’m thinking this post might help others who get frustrated.

Thanks again.

Ivory II is a pretty large sample library. If you are using convolution reverb, and some thick MIDI data, long mixdowns are the nature of the beast. I’ve had some pretty hefty export times with The Grand 3 on my Vista, although it’s not quite the size of Ivory II.

Freezing takes forever too-even on short tracks. All I’m saying is that this may be totally normal!

Maybe there is a difference in rendering resolution between realtime (performance) and off line (quality) some plugins do this.

All are correct that apparently it’s normal to experience LONG freeze times with Ivory II. Even after bouncing the midi (consolidating the midi track) it takes 3 minutes for a 3:30 song. Lots of midi info on 1 Ivory track. I’m running a OS 10.7.4 Mac Pro Intel Quad Core 2.66 10 gig ram, Cubase 6.5.4 64 bit.
I will say Ivory I froze MUCH faster, it seems, usually about a minute.

BTW, IMO, ALL music mixes should be rendered in real time, especially if you are doing any sort of sample rate conversion. I just hit the men’s room for 4 minutes. :laughing: