Why are some FX plugins so big?

[kritikon]

First off, I mean big as in huge memory. Last night I downloaded that free giveaway of RX elements here at KvR. Noticed it was 800+ MB, which almost made me stop - likely only going to use to clean up drumloops, maybe some vocal samples, but tried it in the end. That made me think - check some other plugins & have a tidy up of ones I don't use. Next up Fire the Clip freebie, got rid of as I never use it (not bad as a distortion but 1 trick pony and never use as a clipper and ridiculous CPU when oversampling, also awful inscrutableGUI, but it was free...)

I found it was just under 500MB after I hunted down all the folders/files (no Uninstaller ). Loads of large files that were. 2NV or .2VR or something similar. Made me suspicious it was samples, but no, looked it up...apparently video files for GUI. Seriously? 1 yellow box with a meter on it takes hundreds of MB? I'm going to go through my other plugins and check them out and purge ones I rarely use if they're memory hogs. When you consider something like a lush Valhalla reverb only takes 15MB or similar...why are some simple FX plugins so huge? I'll give some leeway to Izotope - loads of modules and fancy graphs, but it makes me suspicious some of them are sloppily coded. 1.3GB for just 2 FX plugins...WTF?

[martiu]

well unpack the installer of the plugins you are wondering about and look the folders
if you take Arturia for example, the large size comes mainly from graphics, huge amount of png files
some FX like convolution reverbs have samples and that will contribute, reasons vary

[martiu]

i hate bloated plugins, they are slow and take a lot of memory

[kritikon]

Yeah, I get why some graphics can be hogs. But when it's just a box picture with one dial, 4 buttons and 1 simple meter with flashing lights, I'm thinking they've gone seriously wrong somewhere.
Samples, I understand though I avoid them. Laptop with only 250GB SSD (or was it 500- can't remember) so space really matters to me. Next time I upgrade laptop, definitely getting bigger memory.

[egbert101]

Arturia are one of the worst offenders. As others have said, huge number of GUI files, taking time to load each instance in a project, and also huge CPU load from their effects. Yes, their sound engines are why we buy them in the first place, which are usually top notch. But I generally admire extremely efficient plugins such as Sylenth1 or Valhalla Reverbs.

[YesYeah]

Echoing the sentiment on Arturia plugins, I like the sounds but the load times and memory usage make me want to die. They also take longer to update
I ended up reaching for stock effects and Kilohearts Essentials 99% of the time

P.S. I haven't tracked down RX's uninstaller but it exists because it shows up in my program uninstall list

[AdvancedFollower]

I can wait 1 second while opening a plugin for the first time (after that they open instantly). Even with lots of Arturia plugins my projects never come close to using all my 32 GB of RAM.

Another reason plugins might use a lot of memory is because they load a lot of libraries etc.. The days when software was programmed from scratch directly in C or Assembly are long gone. These days it's layers upon layers of libraries, frameworks and API's.

[Daimonicon]

First off, I mean big as in huge memory. Last night I downloaded that free giveaway of RX elements here at KvR. Noticed it was 800+ MB, which almost made me stop - likely only going to use to clean up drumloops, maybe some vocal samples, but tried it in the end. That made me think - check some other plugins & have a tidy up of ones I don't use. Next up Fire the Clip freebie, got rid of as I never use it (not bad as a distortion but 1 trick pony and never use as a clipper and ridiculous CPU when oversampling, also awful inscrutableGUI, but it was free...)

I found it was just under 500MB after I hunted down all the folders/files (no Uninstaller ). Loads of large files that were. 2NV or .2VR or something similar. Made me suspicious it was samples, but no, looked it up...apparently video files for GUI. Seriously? 1 yellow box with a meter on it takes hundreds of MB? I'm going to go through my other plugins and check them out and purge ones I rarely use if they're memory hogs. When you consider something like a lush Valhalla reverb only takes 15MB or similar...why are some simple FX plugins so huge? I'll give some leeway to Izotope - loads of modules and fancy graphs, but it makes me suspicious some of them are sloppily coded. 1.3GB for just 2 FX plugins...WTF?

Wow what a fantastic life you must have if this is a problem for you. Millions of ppl fight for their life and then we have a random guy like you who whine over a free plugin on the net.

[swilow11]

First off, I mean big as in huge memory. Last night I downloaded that free giveaway of RX elements here at KvR. Noticed it was 800+ MB, which almost made me stop - likely only going to use to clean up drumloops, maybe some vocal samples, but tried it in the end. That made me think - check some other plugins & have a tidy up of ones I don't use. Next up Fire the Clip freebie, got rid of as I never use it (not bad as a distortion but 1 trick pony and never use as a clipper and ridiculous CPU when oversampling, also awful inscrutableGUI, but it was free...)

I found it was just under 500MB after I hunted down all the folders/files (no Uninstaller ). Loads of large files that were. 2NV or .2VR or something similar. Made me suspicious it was samples, but no, looked it up...apparently video files for GUI. Seriously? 1 yellow box with a meter on it takes hundreds of MB? I'm going to go through my other plugins and check them out and purge ones I rarely use if they're memory hogs. When you consider something like a lush Valhalla reverb only takes 15MB or similar...why are some simple FX plugins so huge? I'll give some leeway to Izotope - loads of modules and fancy graphs, but it makes me suspicious some of them are sloppily coded. 1.3GB for just 2 FX plugins...WTF?

Wow what a fantastic life you must have if this is a problem for you. Millions of ppl fight for their life and then we have a random guy like you who whine over a free plugin on the net.

Think about what you're whining about

[kritikon]

Wow what a fantastic life you must have if this is a problem for you. Millions of ppl fight for their life and then we have a random guy like you who whine over a free plugin on the net.

Oh the irony. What a fantastic life you must have if you can waste time reading the whole of this thread, read my whine and then whine about my whining. Do you know how many people fighting for their lives have died in the time you whined about my whining?

Next up: first world problems, because obvs none of us are living in the first world, we're all starving in the drought-blighted wastelands of Africa. Not any one of us here including you have enormous amounts of free cash and free time to fritter away in the utterly world-saving hobby of making music for our own pleasure.

Not sure quite how to phrase this. I'll try with...do you realize what a pretentious dick you sound like?
Mirror. Take a long look in it.

[runagate]

I was curious so I checked what I have installed. RX 7 Elements for some reason = 182 MB
RX 10 Advanced = 1.87 GB

Which is not all that surprising given that it does a hell of a lot of different things, including Text Navigation and Speaker Detection (makes a track of whatever people are saying on the recording and can tell different speakers apart, which is why I got it when some loyalty offer popped up for some absurdly low price to get the "everything" bundle)



I would imagine Elements has most of the guts of the code for Advanced in it just disabled

[CinningBao]

Lazy programming as a result of assumed excess computational resources.

Very few pieces of software will be coded to actually be _truly_ efficient, most are compiled, tested to see if they work on the 'current' systems without too much greediness, and that's that. Huge lumps of code like DAWs, or enterprise-level database software will have efficiency _requirements_ so they'll make a concerted effort to reduce the load. Most smaller software companies will have a framework from which they develop their wares, into which they build their chosen efficiencies. Some will _not_ want efficiencies in some areas (like sound quality for example) but are happy to let GUI code be bloated (read: use large source files instead of coding elaborate interfaces need more calculations).

For example, you have a load of resource files you need to use in your software: do you a) leave them uncompressed and read them as they are (less overhead) or b) compress the resource files (to reduce space) and develop a routine to read and uncompress the data as you need (more computational overhead).

It's all a bit of give-and-take, and they (the developers) all make different decisions.

[jens]

Wow what a fantastic life you must have if this is a problem for you. Millions of ppl fight for their life and then we have a random guy like you who whine over a free plugin on the net.

pot/kettle

[RunBeerRun]

Yo dawg whats wit deez free plugins I git and then do shit wit

Theyz a conspiracy against me, i'm da king

[jens]

If you actually compare (say) Valhalla with Arturia, loading each several instances of several of their respective plugins, memory-useage is not at all a day and night difference...

...just saying.