At 1:05 PM -0700 5/3/07, MB wrote:
Do any of you have advice on how to prevent GPO playback from being
garbled? The piece in question is a piano quintet, so four KS
strings plus one Steinway piano are loaded on channels 1-5. Some
measures sound like an old LP with many scratches.
It is possible that this is a memory problem. My system is a Pentium
4, 2.27 GHz, 1 G RAM (the max on this computer), the paging file is
set at the max (1538MB), and when working in Finale, I turn off as
many background applications as seem to be safe to unload.
If not a memory problem, what else can I do to eliminate these
scratchy measures?
Thanks for any advice. Marilyn
I noticed that nobody answered your query from a few weeks ago. This
is an issue that has come up a few times before. (Wouldn't it be
great if this list had an easy to search archive?)
The general consensus is that Key Switch (KS) instruments in GPO use
a LOT more memory than the non-KS instruments. On my system I can
only use 3 or 4 KS instruments in a dense musical texture before I
get static. By using non KS instruments, I can get many more to play
at the same time. The exact number varies from piece to piece and
from computer to computer. (CPU, RAM and hard disk speed are all
factors.)
Here are some strategies that I use in order to play many instruments:
1) Offload instruments to another computer and link to them with MIDI.
2) Use a combination of hardware sound modules and software sound sources.
3) Instead of using a KS instrument in GPO, examine the music to see
if you really need all the options that the KS instrument offers. If,
say, you only need arco and pizz. in the strings, it might be more
efficient to make 2 non KS instruments and have the staff switch
channels for those sounds. (The pizz. expression could have the
channel change as part of the expression itself.)
4) Use sounds that use up little memory and system resources while in
Finale, export the file to a good sequencer program, and then audio
record each staff (or track) with your best sounds and instruments.
You might have to record one track at a time. Mix the result. This is
the most time consuming method, but it gets the best results in the
end.
5) You can get a little more juice out of GPO if you don't use their
reverb, or if you turn the quality of the reverb down. If you want to
record the audio, try adding the reverb at a later stage. (Using
software plugins on the recorded file.)
6) Devote all of your system resources to running Finale and your
sound programs. Avoid background processes and other programs.
7) Throw more money and hardware at the problem. (This is a never
ending solution, so use caution!)
I'm probably missing a few tricks that others might add to the list.
Good luck with your experiments!
-Randolph Peters
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