Vital's preset sizes very large - my disk space!!

[JollyBoih]

I noticed the sizes of Vital's presets can be quite large (a pretty basic preset is about 180-200KB - and then above if the preset has some more complex stuff). Some presets are even closer to 4000KB (4thousand for 1 preset)!

Any advices how to fix these sizes to smaller? These are REALLY starting to demand some disk space when creating more sounds for Vital

Sorry if this is wrong place to ask.

[WasteLand]

I noticed the sizes of Vital's presets can be quite large (a pretty basic preset is about 180-200KB - and then above if the preset has some more complex stuff). Some presets are even closer to 4000KB (4thousand for 1 preset)!

Any advices how to fix these sizes to smaller? These are REALLY starting to demand some disk space when creating more sounds for Vital

Sorry if this is wrong place to ask.

the vital presets contain the wavetables you use. 4mB for a preset, isn't that much.. nowadays...

100 presets, 400mB.. (or is mB, megabit, or megabyte, of course i mean megabyte..).

as with reason, you can do wordplay, it is vital, that the presets contains the wavetables, for more reasons (aha! a double wordplay??) than one.

EDIT: problably contains also info about LFO's you draw yourself, but that is a minor data mining...

i have vaporizer2, it can go higher, if you also use a sample. quite normal i think.

[] Peter:H []

I have adressed this topic as well on the forum.vital.audio forum after finding out that each and every patch has the "whitenoise" sample contained as binary blob even when the sample player is switched off.
By 1.) copy/pasting the white noise original sample 2.) reducing it to just a few samples length and 3.) switching all patches to my new "whitenose very short.wav" and 4.) deactivate the SMP again, I was able to reduce size.
Following my post Matt chimed in and promised to take a look onto that. may be he's gonna fix that in a upcoming release.
See: https://forum.vital.audio/t/patch-size- ... ed-of/4112

There were a few other guys that contributed tipps to reduce size. but there are some factors that will always keep vital patches rather big. By the nature of the file format which is text based JSON rather than binary and by the nature of using samples...

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I remember this came up with U-he when Hive added Wavetable support. Some people asked that the Wavetables be included in the presets, but I recall one reason they didn't go down that road was the above. Why create a bunch of unnecessary, additional copies of the wavetables rather than just reference them from a single location? Matt, on the other hand, took the other approach.

Vital's approach is more idiot-proof in that the presets will always work, but the downsides are file size and the fact that users can accidentally share commercial wavetables. I could see people who sell wavetables being pissed off when their work is shared for free ("hey, I created that wavetable, and now you just give it away to a bunch of people who don't own a license"). Hive's approach saves disk space and makes it a bit less likely a commercial wavetable would be shared inadvertently, but then you've got the disk space issue to contend with.

[AdvancedFollower]

I highly recommend upgrading to one of the new IBM XT models. They come with dual floppy drives for twice the amount of storage, with no disk swapping!

[fmr]

Vital's approach is more idiot-proof in that the presets will always work, but the downsides are file size and the fact that users can accidentally share commercial wavetables. I could see people who sell wavetables being pissed off when their work is shared for free ("hey, I created that wavetable, and now you just give it away to a bunch of people who don't own a license"). Hive's approach saves disk space and makes it a bit less likely a commercial wavetable would be shared inadvertently, but then you've got the disk space issue to contend with.

It may be idiot-proof but in the end is idiotic. Customers should know their stuff, or at least the basics. What would you think a synth that would store IN EACH PRESET a sample of a saw wave, a square wave, and noise? Pretty much any wavetable synth I'm aware of store their wavetables in a wavetable folder, and then reads them from there.

This way, ANY preset that uses the same wavetable will not waste disk space by embedding it in the preset. IMO, of course.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Vital's approach is more idiot-proof in that the presets will always work, but the downsides are file size and the fact that users can accidentally share commercial wavetables. I could see people who sell wavetables being pissed off when their work is shared for free ("hey, I created that wavetable, and now you just give it away to a bunch of people who don't own a license"). Hive's approach saves disk space and makes it a bit less likely a commercial wavetable would be shared inadvertently, but then you've got the disk space issue to contend with.

It may be idiot-proof but in the end is idiotic. Customers should know their stuff, or at least the basics. What would you think a synth that would store IN EACH PRESET a sample of a saw wave, a square wave, and noise? Pretty much any wavetable synth I'm aware of store their wavetables in a wavetable folder, and then reads them from there.

This way, ANY preset that uses the same wavetable will not waste disk space by embedding it in the preset. IMO, of course.

I don't want to label anything idiotic [that's BONES job] - a choice was made, there's some benefit to it, there's downsides - I don't agree with it. Such is life. But yeah, at a high-level, I agree. I do not favor the embedded wavetable approach.

[zvenx]

So with a tiered system where users do not have all the factory wavetables, how would not including the wavetables in the preset work, for third party designers who want to sell their presets and say using some wavetables from the Pro version (bearing in mind some of their potential customers may be core or free users?
rsp

[Teksonik]

I've collected some but not all of the patches posted at the Vital forums on this system just to see what other people are doing with it and including the Factory content my Vital folder is over a Gig in size with 1240 files and that includes both patches and wavetables:

Vital 011421-3.png

Is one Gig a big deal in 2021 ? No not really but I guess it depends on the system.

Of the patches I've checked the larger ones either use an Audio File Source in the WT editor or have an actual sample loaded in the SMP osc.

One of Yuli Yolo's patches is only 43KB in size and does have a simple Sine loaded in the SMP osc.

[BlitBit]

I have to admit that I would find 400 MB for 100 patches also wasteful especially if the same data is used over and over again in these patches.

Here are some ideas that might be implemented in Vital to save some lots of disk space. Obviously this is not trivial to implement and will take quite some time:

• Add an option per patch to decide whether its samples/wavetables are stored as references or directly in the patch file. That way patches can be made small if you only use factory files that every user has installed.
• Give the users an option in the general settings to select what's the default for a new patch (reference vs. storage).
• When switching to a patch for which one or more referenced file cannot be found show a warning to the users. Use silence in the affected oscillators. Alternatively you can use white noise if you want to make it more noticeable during playing.
• Add an option to bulk convert patches from using references to using direct storage to make sound designers lifes easier. This way they could design using references and once they want to create a bundle the patches will be converted to a foolproof format. Alternative: support bundles (patches together with files) as first class citizens.
• Add an option to bulk convert from storage to references. This will save space in case a commercial sound bank makes repeated use of the same wavetables/files.
• Create and store a hash of each referenced file so that missing references can potentially be search on the drive, e.g. in case the wavetable collection is moved to another place.

I can imagine that the current implementation in Vital was chosen to keep the number of tickets of the type "My patch is broken" low.

[Teksonik]

So with a tiered system where users do not have all the factory wavetables, how would not including the wavetables in the preset work, for third party designers who want to sell their presets and say using some wavetables from the Pro version (bearing in mind some of their potential customers may be core or free users?
rsp

That's a good question. Is ease of sharing more important than disk space ? What if a third party wants to release a set of Wavetables for sale but doesn't want them shared in every patch?

Does including the WT data discourage third party development ? I don't know.

I think it's a very complex issue whether or not to include sample or wavetable data in patches.

[EvilDragon]

Pretty much any wavetable synth I'm aware of store their wavetables in a wavetable folder, and then reads them from there.

Surge doesn't. Nobody really objected to this.

[JollyBoih]

Silly question maybe; are the song/project files (FLS project file) bigger which include Vital than projects with some other VSTi?

If we play the idea that the song is same (let's say there is 2 bass lines, 2 lead lines, 2 plucks all with Vital or then a same project with some other instrument that has smaller preset sizes)? Are the sizes the same or is project with Vital bigger?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Pretty much any wavetable synth I'm aware of store their wavetables in a wavetable folder, and then reads them from there.

Surge doesn't. Nobody really objected to this.

Well that does it!

[glokraw]

I noticed the sizes of Vital's presets can be quite large (a pretty basic preset is about 180-200KB - and then above if the preset has some more complex stuff). Some presets are even closer to 4000KB (4thousand for 1 preset)!

Any advices how to fix these sizes to smaller? These are REALLY starting to demand some disk space when creating more sounds for Vital

Sorry if this is wrong place to ask.

Disks need empty space, nothing good happens when they start to fill up. Burn some dvd's, get some SD cards/usbsticks to store things that are not vital. I myself consider a disk 'full'
when filled to 80% capacity, and it's proven lucky
over the years
Cheers