Tips: getting the most MMV per CPU cycle

[Meffy]

Hello, all. It's been about three decades since last I laid my paws on a Mg modular. Even if this one's an emulation, it brings back fond memories and provides a welcome creative blast from the past.

True, it's not quite the same as the semi-updated III-C I used to play. But for the money it can't be beat. Add in polyphony, patch storage and retrieval, reliability, compactness, low power requirements... well, this old progger is moderately pleased. Congratulations to the Arturia team!

To the matter at hand: I run MMV 1.1 on a Sony Vaio (1.7GHz P4). When I first installed and ran it, many of the included preset patches wouldn't run for me. As soon as I selected one of the offending patches, the CPU meter would go to 100% -- before I (or the sequencer) even played a note.

Here's how I'm getting around it.

First, I looked at my hard drives. Not a lot of spare space, so I deleted some old files. The unused space was scattered in tiny pieces all over the drive (it was fragmented), so I ran "Speed Disk" from Norton Utilities to defrag. Recent versions of Windows have their own defragger; you can use that if you haven't got Norton. After hard disk cleanup, I could load most of the patches that gave me trouble before.

Next I turned off a program that I usually forget about: the SETI@home client. It uses the floating point processor, just as MMV does. It's never given me any difficulty before but MMV makes far heavier demands on the processor than any other synth I have, so I gave SETI a Ctrl-C for the time being.

Now I'm able to load all of the patches, though a few of the particularly CPU-hungry presets still run the meter nearly to 100% before I start the sequencer or play a key. On two or three of the toughest nuts, one note is all I can play without getting that horrible overload breakup noise. But it's a start.

Another thing that might be giving trouble: I have just 256Mb of RAM. Must buy another 512 meg! No idea whether that will help the MMV but it couldn't hurt and it will definitely be good across the board.

Anyone else got effective ways of jazzing up less-than-state-of-the-art computers to run Mg Modular V? I'd be interested in hearing other users' war stories.

Thanks,

Meffy

[Meffy]

Nobody's offered any other experiences or tips so here's my two more cents.

A local computer store had a remarkable deal on PC2100 RAM (something like US$25 for 512Mb after $15 MIR). Got two; just one rebate but the in-store price cut was amazing enough. So now I've a P4, 1.7GHz, with a gig of RAM. Hardly state of the art, but... well, spacious.

Friends, Romans, countrymen: that RAM made all the difference in the world. The little Vaio now runs multiple apps the way it's supposed to have done all along.

And MMV just purrs! The most demanding factory presets can still put a crimp in my CPU, but only if I let the released note count go too high.

All in all I have no complaints.

Wishes and suggestions? Heh, don't get me started...

Meffy
(Oh, all right, since you asked: proper ring modulator; Bode freq shifter; option to make _all_ cables visible, including triggers, etc; knobs whose pointers actually match their settings [!!!]; fixed filter bank you can use IN PATCHES instead of as an effect; optional single-screen vertically scrolling display of the whole synth at once [good with visible trig cables]; banana jack interface module -- eeep, I told you not to get me started...)

[Anonymous]

And a couple of tips from a mac user:

Ive tried running my virtual synth studio on both an ibook and a G4 cube but no joy. so...

I've totally wiped a powerbook G4 1Ghz and started from scratch, 1Ghz ram and got a separate drive to store samples and patches, this has made a big change in running everything smoothly. I'm running Logic, Reason, Absynth, Reaktor, MMV, FM7, ProB53 and a whole load of other stuff.

Ive given Logic as much ram as I can. Using Mac OS9.2 and so far so goood! No need to run the frozen tracks as yet. This is great news for me because I was spending half the day restarting logic and sorting out crashes. The culprit seems to have been Reaktor but now with the recent update I'm in virtual synth heaven.

ok, this isnt a low end computer but after selling a load of hardware synths Im still quids up (uk expression for money in the bank).