Hi there,

sometimes when loading projects, I get a "Not enough memory to load soundfont" message. The thing is, the soundfont is 72MB, and my memory (RAM) is 3GB (of which are 2.3 free). So, what kind of memory are we talking about here?

Regards,
fladd

Good question - I get this sometimes, too.

i guess no one knows the question, i try to load sound fonts that are 308 kb small and i get the same promt message. i try to load these fonts with sound font z.

same error here

I used to get this when I used sfz+. Assuming it's the same issue, the problem is that the app expects the file memory size to be contiguous. Since your memory (where the SF resides) is fragmented, you need a ram defrag utility.

There used to be a freebie called Fast Defrag2 that worked simply and efficiently... runs for a few seconds, and no more error messages. (I haven't needed to use this in a awhile -- and don't even know if FD2 is still available, but I'd imagine any ram defragger will do).

JD

Is there a fix for this now?
The OS should do defragmenting by itself, shouldn't it?

fladd

No, neither HD nor ram defrags itself.

Did you try the suggestion I posted above?

Couldn't fine a software for this. Fast Defrag 2 is only for up to 2GB of RAM.

fladd

It should still run and give SFZ the contiguous memory it needs.

However, if this is a persistent problem, that's probably not the issue. A 72MB soundfont should load fine most of the time, unless you've been opening and closing lots of applications at random.

Can you load any soundfonts into SFZ?

I can't get SFZ to load any SoundFont at all with sfz197 and DarkWave Studio 2.9.3 (my host). SFZ used to always work in DarkWave, I mean *always*. And now it won't load any soundfont, and the ones I'm trying to load are less than a megabyte in size.

OK, I set the mode of SFZ to PR32 and it works fine. So does PR16 and DFD. Something is broken with SFZ in SF32 and SF16 modes.

Weird. Have you tried a RAM defragger - just to eliminate that possibility, really?

Quite accidentally I can add to the "ram defrag" method. I had no clue this really had something to do with it - but after I bought "tune up utilities 2008" which has a ram defrag the sfz+ problem did not occur again. Now I probably know why .

Sounds as though SFZ isnt aware of the RAM aboove 2GB. Its a common problem with some plugs. Most people just click past the error message, its a red herring. The only fix is through an update to SFZ if one is available. Ram defrag isnt the answer.

Why would "RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY" need to be defragmented? Seriously do you get the idea of RAM, it can be accessed in any order, not like a disk drive which has a seek time.

As for memory access above 2GB, the OS hides that from any 32-bit process which cannot handle more than 2GB. It is just a bug in sfz and sfz+ which Cakewalk do not seem to care about.

Try the DFD (Direct From Disk) mode if you are getting errors with 72MB soundfonts.