Nice, is there such an instruction also for Win 7?

 

u can add all the ram your pc allows but if u don t have a 6bit operating system your pc won t detect more than 3 gb,and 3 gb are nothing in 2011,i d suggest u to install a 64 o.s,possibly not xp since we re in 2011 and no matter what people say,xp did his time now it s time to put it to sleep,on the other hand,if u re one of the stubborn people who still insist on using it,u gotta downgrade all your software to previous releases since recent software requires more resources.Using a notebook as a daw is a bad idea anyway

 

Using a notebook is not a bad idea if you buy a gaming laptop like I did.I just bought an MSI GT683DXR-423US laptop......i7 2630 w/overclock,Nvidia GTX570 1.5Gb,32Gb DDR3(came with 12Gb),2 usb 3.0 ports,etc.....I will agree that you need to put Win XP to rest and try to atleast put Win7 x32......ideally you should be running x64 version of Win 7 with atleast 4Gb of RAM or more.I took my projects from my core 2 duo laptop and loaded them into my new laptop.My core 2 laptop was running my projects at 80-90% CPU usage with occasional dropouts.My gaming laptop runs the same projects at 2-3% CPU usage never a dropout......go figure.I ran 100 instances of Kontakt 4 and my CPU was running only 40%.Also....I ran a series of tests with both 32 and 64bit DAW's/VST's to see if there was any performance differences on laptops.Much to my surprise there is a huge difference.My example song in 32bit was running at 50% CPU while the same example song using all 64bit was running at 3% CPU.If your laptop is 64bit capable you might want to consider rethinking your whole OS/DAW layout.

 

i agree,i rephrase it,using that lenovo as a daw is a bad idea,your msi notebook is a good machine capncrunch,i still think that a desktop is safer anyway,if u break something u just replace it effortlessly,but if i had to buy a notebook i d choose that notebook too,maybe with a wider screen

 

I tried the /3GB switch, but that's actually not my problem because it only allows system not to interfere with applications, giving them more space to run. I don't have this problem, since Cubase crashes when I still have plenty of free RAM.
Instead, I tried JBridge and it looks simply fabulous! Yeah!
I still have to tune it a little bit, and check if every plugin plays flawlessly, but at a first glance this may well be a very good solution for my problem, thanks!
I also tried to uninstall some useless vst plugins, as soon as I saw that Cubase allocates a lot of RAM at the very first start, maybe I can reduce this overhead.
B

 

Well I think that that Lenovo was a GREAT idea, since I got it for free
Anyway I used it also on stage, to play sampled sequences with a MIDI keyboard connected to a Kontakt4 and a .nki with all the samples in it. Great!

 

so is your problem sorted out? or not quite?

 

Yeah, almost. I write it down just to explain everybody and leave a know-how for future reference.

The problem is definitely a consequence of the 2GB limitation on a single application when you use a 32-bit operating system. Cubase crashes when the "Virtual memory" counter shown by Process Explorer goes near to 2GB (and when this happens the "Private Bytes" counter is 1.2GB, the counter I was considering, going wrong). VSTs are just DLLs, so they don't run as different processes, but they are run directly by Cubase and share memory and resources with it. So, when a large library is loaded in Cubase, the 2GB limit can be easily reached, leading to a Cubase crash. By the way, I believe that Cubase is not the only DAW that suffers from this problem.
Jbridge substitutes the original VST with a very small "bridge" VST, that takes a VERY small amount of memory when loaded into Cubase, and talks with an external VST host (say: another .exe) that actually loads in memory the original VST. In this way, you can load very large sound libraries without affecting the Cubase memory size and avoiding the 2GB problem. In other words, before I had Cubase.exe, allocating 1.9GB, now I have Cubase allocating 1.2GB and a few other programs allocating the remaining 700MB or a bit more.
In addition with JBridge you can run 64-bit VSTs on 32-bit software or viceversa, but I don't need it: I use it just to bridge 32-bit vsts with 32-bit software.

I still have to test if there are performance problems when bridging a VST outside Cubase, why some VSTs have not been converted (one for all, Kontakt4), and if there are limitations in Cubase (say, remembering the configuration of the vst, for example, or when freezing a track).

Finally, I want to understand if there is a way to reduce the initial memory load of Cubase, that eats too many hundreds of MBs. I tried to uninstall some plugins, and I'll work on it next.

B

 

Glad to hear it helped!

Another thing I've noticed in my experience with Cubase 5 is that freezing tracks may free the CPU but not necessarily the RAM used by a plug-in. I know you can specify to unload an instrument when you freeze it but you don't get that option when freezing effects on an audio channel. I discovered this when stacking guitar overdubs with Amplitube 3; I couldn't work out why I was using ridiculous amounts of RAM in an otherwise simple project . . eventually I realised Amplitube 3 was using an extremely greedy amount of RAM and this wasn't being released on about 20 frozen guitar tracks . . . .

I don't use Amplitube anymore!

 

So I won the guessing contest :dancing:

Have to try this JBridge as well. So far I thought it is only for using 32-bit plug-ins in a 64-bit host, or vice versa.
Is this like a small programme that runs in the background? Can I use my plug-ins like before, or always have to start this JBridge first?

 

if you use jbridge, you'll have to make it scan your VST folder and it will create a folder of its own where you'll have all the "converted" dll (basically it's just some sort of a shortcut as they are all only a few kb)

in your DAW you'll see a jbridge folder or you'll have [jbridged] as a prefix before the name of your plug-in [jbridged] nexus 1.2.2

...there nothing special to do, once it has listed and created its own dll..just use your plug has you would normally

 

Well, freezing a track with a large library frees a LOT of RAM, but I've got the suspect too that it does not free all of it.
When you freeze a instrument track with an effect you should be given the option to freeze the channel too, that writes into the freeze files the track *after* inserts. For audio tracks, there's only this second option.
As far as I remember, with Amplitube, freezing an audio track channel frees me a lot of resources... unless you have configured the effect as "send" on a FX track or some other way that needs to remain loaded because some other track shares it...

B

 

Exactly. It is very, very simple. It gives some memory overload, but it is out of Cubase memory, so I don't really care. I think that the best way to use it is to keep everything still inside Cubase, and bridge out only 1-2 large libraries.

 

A big THANKS to :

Gulliver (post #12). You rule !
redback (post #17). Brilliant idea for saving Cubase's memory. I'm wondering if a chainer like Xlutop can also do the job ?
CapnCrunch (post #23). Dude, you convinced me to switch to Win7-64 (and spending a lot of cash in a new high-end laptop - I hate you for that )
Beppi (post #28). Very useful explanation for future reference.

 

Windows XP is your first problem lol. 2001 was 10 years ago - move on and get real gear. Not a cubase 5 problem.

 

Did you read the posts, or are you just trolling?

He will have the same problem with Windows 7 32-bit.

 

32-bit - that is 20+ year old technology. l-o-lz both are out of date and have nothing to do with Cubase 5.