All Virtual Instruments On A \"SOUNDS\" Drive?
 

Do you think Xpand (and all virtual instruments) should be on it's own dedicated "sounds" drive?

The setup would be Three Drives in total: System Drive, Pro Tools Drive and Dedicated sounds drive.

Is the system drive just a bad place for all that type stuff (ie: Trilogy, Ivory, Xpand, Kontakt, Stylus etc...)?

Re: All Virtual Instruments On A \"SOUNDS\" Drive?
 

Yes. Especially the streaming plugs like Ivory, Kontakt, Elektrik Piano, Akoustik Piano, MachFive, any VI's that use the Kontakt player as their interface. However, when you load all of these instruments on the same "Sounds" drive, you have created the same problem, but on a different drive. I would determine which of my "streaming" plugs I use most often, try not to put more than two of those on the same drive, and then balance the rest. Stylus RMX, Atmosphere, Trilogy, B4II, Sampletank2, Sonik Synth2, etc. are all well behaved RAM based plugs. They can go just about anywhere, and keep a drive open for when the GIGA VST comes out, cause you are going to want it if you don't run GIGA already!

Erik

Re: All Virtual Instruments On A \"SOUNDS\" Drive?
 

Just a caveat here; on a windows machine, it is best to load the plugin itself to the system drive along with Pro Tools. The Sample libraries can be loaded to a separate drive, but it is recommended that the plugins reside with PT.

I'm not sure about the MAC, since I don't have one (yet), but I understand it's different on a MAC, I just wanted to make the point about the PC.

Re: All Virtual Instruments On A \"SOUNDS\" Drive?
 

spkguitar,

Just to clarify, you are correct. I keep the plugs on the system drive. I place an alias (Mac speak for a shortcut) in the plugin folder that represents where the library actually is.

Erik

Re: All Virtual Instruments On A \"SOUNDS\" Drive?
 

Worth mentioning: I am an owner of NI Komplete 3. At first I noticed a lag in Pro Tools after install, a couple of crashes. Note I only have two drives; system and audio. I moved the samples for Acoustik Piano from the audio drive to the system drive and have had no troubles since. I agree with Erik, if necessary just move the most intensive samples around to find a comfortable balance.

Re: All Virtual Instruments On A \"SOUNDS\" Drive?
 

Does anyone have any advice on how to move the sample library of Xpand! to another drive while keeping the plug-in on the system drive for PCs?

I'm sure I read that there's an unsupported (and scary for most people) registry tweak to make Xpand! look elsewhere for its samples - it'd be useful to include it in this thread, but can I ask that it's only added by someone who's actually done it...?