The thread is still active as far as I am concerned, just needed time to run tests, which I'm part way through now so I'll post some info.


First, I want to make it absolutely clear that SSD is not the solution to this problem. The OP is using an SSD based system and he is also experiencing slow preset loading in Ableton Live. Savihost is much faster on the same system, so that gives us some useful info to work with.


In another thread a user posted about a short pause when clicking certain buttons immediately after the GUI is opened. We have identified the problem and hope it is fixed for the v1.50.2 update. We will make a public beta available soon.


It is unlikely that a scan would be running unless it has been initiated from the menu or triggered by installing new sounds. However, it is possible that a zombie process has been left in memory for some reason - it's really rare, but it can happen. Please try rebooting the system to fix this, and let us know if the problem persists.

If you are being prompted to scan for presets each time a new Alchemy session is started, you can fix this by deleting any files in the following folder:
Alchemy\Libraries\InstalledPresets\*.csv


In order to simulate a slower machine I have installed both Win XP and Win 7 to virtual machines running on a regular HDD. The VM has been allocated 4 GB of RAM only and is limited to a single CPU core for one test, and 4 cores for another test. The CPU was set to use 50% of the host machine's CPU.

These conditions should simulate a much slower machine, and since it's using an HDD we can rule out SSD.

In all test cases so far using these VMs Alchemy has been loading presets almost instantly. The only time a short pause occurs is after opening the GUI and clicking on a preset immediately. After the first preset loads the following presets are very quick to load.

Next round of testing is on an AMD system, I will be using a similar setup for this - VMs with limited resources.

Peace,
Andy.

With some embarrassment, I've noticed that I didn't give you much to go on in your troubleshooting efforts.

You asked the OP at the outset for the following information. Here are my [somewhat meager] specs.

1) Have you noticed this since 1.50.0 or 1.50.1? I'm a brand new user, so since 1.50.0.

2) What is your CPU make, model, clock speed? Core2 Duo T6600 @ 2.2GHz

3) Which host and OS are you using? FL Studio 10.0.9c, Windows 8 x64

Additionally, I'm running with 4 GB of RAM on a 5400 RPM/8MB HDD.


I've shut it down every night.


There is no prompt every time an instance is started; in fact, there is no prompt at all (this excludes the initial scan, of course). I just see the status bar occasionally report Scanning... for no apparent reason. (It may be completely unrelated, but I'm reporting the weird behavior.) I double-checked though, and there are no files at all in the ...\Alchemy\Libraries\InstalledPresets\ folder.

I appreciate your attempts to hunt down our problems and expose them as legitimate bugs or help us smack them down -- we all appreciate you!

Hi,

We've now posted a public beta for v1.50.2 - more info in this thread:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5163640

Some beta users have reported the slow preset loading problem is fixed. The GUI should also be opening quicker with this version. Let us know how you get on, thanks.

Peace,
Andy.

Still extremely slow loading times of programs and samples in 1.50.2 beta.
I installed the update on both laptop and PC and loading speed is so sloooow.

After switching back to 1.50.0 loading times are lightning speed again.


Sorry for the bad news,
Joeri Peeters

@ Vstream - thanks for the info. Would you (or anyone else who is experiencing this problem) mind posting a video somewhere. Maybe there is something different you are doing that we are not.

Edit - also the name of the preset(s) you are using for testing. Thanks.

Peace,
Andy.

I have uploaded the presets and multisamples in dropbox.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/42973736/Polymoog280A_strings.zip


These are the polymoog keyboard 280a strings I sampled and looped a few years ago (The Vox Humana is one of them). Still need to assign some parameters in Alchemy before I upload them for the user library.

In 1.50 they load instantly.
In 1.50.2 it takes about 20 seconds and switching between the programs is slow too.

Maybe this helps finding the reason.

Joeri

Thanks for the files, I'll check them out now. First test using Mac VST, the presets load close to instantly. The samples are stored on an external USB-2 HDD which quite slow to access, too.

What OS and host are you using? What are you system specs?

Peace,
Andy.

It's an older PC but still fast enough for my needs.
OS: Windows 7 64 bit.
Processor: Quad core 6600
RAM: 3Gb

I tried several VST hosts, Sonar X2 producer, Flstudio 10, Reaper 4.31, Brainspawn forte 2. All 32Bit and all used vsti's are 32 bit too.
Same result.
My laptop I use for live use is a dell inspiron 11z, 4Gb Ram, dual core SU4100, also W7 64bit using reaper as host MTC slaved to my Roland Fantom X7.
Not the fastest laptop but it's small, stable, and I only use one or two vsti's max at the same time.

EDIT: Send you a PM with link video.

Thanks,
Joeri

I'm out. I bit the bullet and upgraded my hardware. I'm loading quickly now (but that doesn't discount a problem).

Thanks again, Andy!

Thanks Vstream for the info + video link, I'll check that out later.

Still not seeing any pattern with the hardware, this seems to affect 32-bit and 64-bit users equally. It does appear that most people experiencing this problem are running a version of Windows rather than OS X. If that is correct, it's a major clue.

I'll install Windows on an older machine sitting here gathering dust, and run some tests.


Enjoy the speed bump

Peace,
Andy.

Hi,

Anyone experiencing the slow preset loading bug should log in to their support account and download the latest public beta version. The new downloads are labelled:

Alchemy Plugin v1.50.2.3169 - PUBLIC BETA (Mac)

Alchemy Plugin v1.50.2.3175 - PUBLIC BETA (Windows)

The slow preset bug is fixed and scan for new preset times are also improved. Thanks to Vstream and our beta testers for confirming that the loading bug is fixed.

Peace,
Andy.

For me, the slow loading is gone! Just browsed through quickly these >4000 pressets in 2 minutes, and the problem disappeared.

However, at the end of the list, when I clicked
"show presets available to buy",
there was an item called "The Rhythms" ...
I selected it in the list, and the logo picture was Dream Voices...
(i have Dream Voices installed hmm. ... it's available to buy?)

Hi dune_rave!

I know exactly what's happened here. You'll find you already have 'The Rhythms' in your Dream Voices collection, so this one is a duplicate.

Of course you can simply hide this naughty extra preset

We have already made sure it won't escape into the wild in future builds, but if you'd like to open a Tech Support case with details of your user account I can tell how to manually resolve this fairly easily if it annoys you


Martin

Thanx for the quick answer!
I will check this beta deeper and if I find a bug, i will report it!
Alchemy is the BEST!

hi

just wondering.....if i install the beta version will it affect any of current projects that use Alchemy?

thanks