Horrific load times in Keyscape (on SSD)

[daniel7334]

Hey gang. Looking for some help. I just installed Keyscape (latest version) and I'm getting horrific load times on patches. Like 30-45 seconds to fully load.

Here is a video to demonstrate: https://youtu.be/twhjT-XqxEY

PC Specs: Win 10, 250GB SSD, 16GB RAM, i5-8500 (6 cores @ 3.0GHz)

As you can see, I'm only running Reaper (latest version), and Keyscape is the only track in the project. No other plugins. I tried rebooting but that didn't help.

As you can see in the video, according to Task Manager the issue does not appear to be disk related. But for grins I ran a disk performance test on the SSD and the read times were fast as expected.

This can't be normal, right?

(I did email Spectrasonics, haven't heard back yet)

[Dencheg]

Hey.
I happened to notice similar behavior for all big sampled instrument.
Some pianos in Kontakt might also take considerable time to load; I think 30 sec is more or less normal and almost not annoying.
I tried Keyscape, the instruments there definitely have BIG RASTER DATA

[Echoes in the Attic]

Pretty normal unfortunately. Preview ready means you can play a few notes to hear the patch though.

[noiseboyuk]

Yup, just did a check here - 37s for that patch, preview in under a second though, and I find in practice that works pretty well.

The C7 is absolutely mahoosive - as Denchbag says, huge instruments take a long time to load on most platforms.

[tuzemec]

If Keyscape is on external drive - check its format.
I had similar issues with an ExFat drive, which is suitable for both mac/windows, but SLOW for sample libraries.
I'm on mac and had to switch to APFS. I guess you have to switch to NTFS.

Spectrasonics were quite helpful with diagnosing the problem.

[noiseboyuk]

If Keyscape is on external drive - check its format.
I had similar issues with an ExFat drive, which is suitable for both mac/windows, but SLOW for sample libraries.
I'm on mac and had to switch to APFS. I guess you have to switch to NTFS.

Spectrasonics were quite helpful with diagnosing the problem.

Yes, ExFat is very slow. In my case though, it's an SSD formatted with NTFS in Windows, and it's 37 secs.

I'm pretty sure the APFS would be considerably quicker on a Mac though - I don't have Keyscape on my MBP, but Trilian has always been noticeably snappier on it than Windows. At some point Windows improved a lot - can't remember the version number - it's possible things have gone backwards a bit since then performance-wise (I've noticed this tends to happen with Omnisphere stuff). I should do some proper tests again at some stage.

[Spitfire31]

I have Keyscape on a 1TB external Samsung SSD, Mac OS Extended format, and the LA Custom C7 Piano preset loads in about 15" in my iMac 2019, Mojave 14.6.

[noiseboyuk]

I'm pretty sure the APFS would be considerably quicker on a Mac though - I don't have Keyscape on my MBP, but Trilian has always been noticeably snappier on it than Windows. At some point Windows improved a lot - can't remember the version number - it's possible things have gone backwards a bit since then performance-wise (I've noticed this tends to happen with Omnisphere stuff). I should do some proper tests again at some stage.

I just checked this. The Trilian acoustic is pretty big on disk, but in fact it is loading equally quickly on my MBP and Windows 10 rigs - about 7 seconds for both instruments, so the general performance in Windows is as good as it has ever been.

The Acoustic Bass is listed in the app as being 3,745 mb. Keyscape's C7 Piano, by contrast, is an absolutely colossal 52,228mb. That is so huge it makes me disbelieve it. 52gb?! The entire library is 72gb on disk! One instrument accounts for 72% of it? I guess the size on disk could be a compressed figure and that reported in the Spectrasonics apps is uncompressed.

Anyway, there's your answer. The C7 is an absolute beast. It's interesting though that you can load it in 15 seconds on an iMac, Spitfire31 - one possible explanation is that this is about the time it takes mine to RE-load (slightly more actually). Did you by any chance already load it, load something else and then re-load it to time it?

There is a large part of me that thinks all this is academic though. That time to preview for me is near instant, and it plays just fine in that time.

Oh, and one other tip - the Lite version takes 3-4 seconds to fully load on my rig. I notice a lack of softer samples in particular doing this, but for a lot of parts it wouldn't matter much. Oddly though, it doesn't offer that preview after a second in Lite mode, you have to wait so in practice it actually feels more sluggish! Guess it only makes sense for when you're tight on RAM.

[LoveEnigma18]

I just added a new 1 TB NVMe (PCIe 3.0 x4) SSD to my Windows 11 PC (with 32 GB DDR4) and I was surprised that it still takes a while to load the bigger patches. I was hoping for a bigger improvement. I am a little disappointed, but looks like I am not alone.

LA Custom C7 Grand Piano patch, for example, took 30 seconds to load completely. Based on the FL Studio memory meter, the patch size seems to be about 3500 MB. Looks like this may be the biggest of any patches across entire Spectrasonics portfolio, so all other patches should take less than 30 seconds.

With thinning ON, the C7 patch took only 7 seconds to load!

[CristianP]

I have pretty bad load times as well, I’m gonna make a switch soon on my ssd and gonna format it to MacOS APFS to see if this improves.

[noiseboyuk]

I just added a new 1 TB NVMe (PCIe 3.0 x4) SSD to my Windows 11 PC (with 32 GB DDR4) and I was surprised that it still takes a while to load the bigger patches. I was hoping for a bigger improvement. I am a little disappointed, but looks like I am not alone.

LA Custom C7 Grand Piano patch, for example, took 30 seconds to load completely. Based on the FL Studio memory meter, the patch size seems to be about 3500 MB. Looks like this may be the biggest of any patches across entire Spectrasonics portfolio, so all other patches should take less than 30 seconds.

With thinning ON, the C7 patch took only 7 seconds to load!

FWIW - here I'm 18s to fully load the C7, preview in under a second.

Just checking you've excluded everything from Windows Defender?

[LoveEnigma18]

I just added a new 1 TB NVMe (PCIe 3.0 x4) SSD to my Windows 11 PC (with 32 GB DDR4) and I was surprised that it still takes a while to load the bigger patches. I was hoping for a bigger improvement. I am a little disappointed, but looks like I am not alone.

LA Custom C7 Grand Piano patch, for example, took 30 seconds to load completely. Based on the FL Studio memory meter, the patch size seems to be about 3500 MB. Looks like this may be the biggest of any patches across entire Spectrasonics portfolio, so all other patches should take less than 30 seconds.

With thinning ON, the C7 patch took only 7 seconds to load!

FWIW - here I'm 18s to fully load the C7, preview in under a second.

Just checking you've excluded everything from Windows Defender?

That's still decent. I am indeed able to preview immediately after clicking on the patch, but the preview bar goes to complete after 30 seconds for C7 patch.

If I understand you correctly, I have added all the Spectrasonics instruments .exe files as exceptions in Windows Defender Firewall. However, Windows Security is all green and is active. I wonder if I need to change anything. Are you on Public or Private network setting? Mine is set to Public by default. This doesn't make any difference, but just asking.

Btw, I see Windows 11 contradicting on network type. In Control Panel, and what I used to have in Windows 10, it kinda recommends Private network, but in Security Settings it recommends Public. Not sure if I am missing anything here.

[noiseboyuk]

LoveEnigma - I'd also try adding the entire sample drive to the exclusions, see if that helps any.

[LoveEnigma18]

LoveEnigma - I'd also try adding the entire sample drive to the exclusions, see if that helps any.

Thanks, but don't think that's possible. Only application files are allowed to be added as exceptions. Or did I misunderstand you?

[noiseboyuk]

LoveEnigma - I'd also try adding the entire sample drive to the exclusions, see if that helps any.

Thanks, but don't think that's possible. Only application files are allowed to be added as exceptions. Or did I misunderstand you?

In Windows Security / Virus and Threat Protection Settings / Exclusions / Add or Remove Exclusions you can add folders. So I just add the roots of all my sample drives in there. (this is W10, hopefully W11 doesn't change it?)