Roland Cloud

[Septic Underground]

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you.

Yeah, we know Roland is aware, coz it is a "feature' of the DRM check of the myriad of presetpacks/expansions that get checked when loading the Z in. It has been reported, by me and others for quite a few years now...

Better check the list, it must be somewhere on it

[ChamomileShark]

Anyway, if Jon is reading this, I'd like to see the cloud plugins to load quicker. I can tell which of my Bitwig or Cubase projects have one of the legendary plugins (doesn't matter which) in them because they take alot longer than my other projects to open.

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you. When it comes to updating our instruments our aim is always to improve on these things, but I'll make sure to advocate for a serious focus on long load times and lighter CPU usage when we look into updating plug-ins. Thanks for the feedback.

I think I'm having the same issue with JP4. Generally I don't use Zenology much.

[N 4 LIFE]

thanks IB i'll take a look over there for the D50 stuff

[vulpes777]

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you.

Yeah, we know Roland is aware, coz it is a "feature' of the DRM check of the myriad of presetpacks/expansions that get checked when loading the Z in.

You know, I used to think that was the reason as well...except now I have canceled my subscription and all I can run is Zenology 'Lite' with, like, one or two factory banks and no expansions.

And it still takes far too long to load.

Oh, and of course now I'm once again in demo mode

Regards,

--
Marco

[Septic Underground]

well, you can buy expansions/presets regardless of your sub status, so my guess is that RCM will check every available pack, whether it is installed or not.

[D-Fusion]

Hey ChamomileShark. ZENOLOGY can be the worst offender for sure. We are aware of this issue and I will pass along this criticism for you.

Yeah, we know Roland is aware, coz it is a "feature' of the DRM check of the myriad of presetpacks/expansions that get checked when loading the Z in.

You know, I used to think that was the reason as well...except now I have canceled my subscription and all I can run is Zenology 'Lite' with, like, one or two factory banks and no expansions.

And it still takes far too long to load.

Oh, and of course now I'm once again in demo mode

Regards,

--
Marco

I have mentioned it Earlier in this Thread and it doesn't matter how many Soundpacks Expansion you have installed.

I have tried both scenarios and the loading time is the same when I have it fully loaded with all my Synth Models and sound Expansions vs Barebone Zenology Pro installed with No synth Models or sound expansion added to it.

It is The Zenology/Copy protection itself that is behind the Loading time but i do believe that they have Lowered the load time of it.

In the beginning it used to take around 45 seconds to load and after a update it was around 22-25 seconds and now it only take Max 7 Seconds to start up the first instance.

I have also changed my HW a few times over the years so it might be System dependant and I have other plugins from various companies that takes longer time to Load than Zenology Pro these days on my PC.

[IvyBirds]

I have mentioned it Earlier in this Thread and it doesn't matter how many Soundpacks Expansion you have installed.

I have tried both scenarios and the loading time is the same when I have it fully loaded with all my Synth Models and sound Expansions vs Barebone Zenology Pro installed with No synth Models or sound expansion added to it.

It is The Zenology/Copy protection itself that is behind the Loading time

I am almost 100% certain that every time you launch Zenology in a new session it has to scan you system for any and all soundpacks and expansions you may have on your Hard Drive, make an inventory of that, make a temporary database file of what you have installed, reference that file with what you are allowed to have, create a new temporary Database file that lists everything you have, where it's at and is authorized for you to have and then loads that into Zenology. It does this for copy protection and to build the preset list

If you then load another instance of Zenology in that same session the new instance can then just reference that database file and it loads almost instantly

Once you exit out of that session the whole data file gets deleted and you have to start over

The speed of your hard drive and system determines how fast that process happens, and it doesn't matter if you have expansions or samples installed or not, it still looks for them and either finds them or not

Again I am about 99% certain this is what is happening. I actually think it happens with all of the Roland Cloud instruments, the rest of them however don't have the giant library of potential assets that Zenology has

My guess is this is why all the SRX content is separate from the XV5080, as that avoids the issue and of course let's Roland Cloud's marketing people pretend they have about a dozen more different instruments then they really do

They could fix this tomorrow quite easily if they wanted. If you have an active subscription for Zenology Pro and everything in it, just create a single datafile that expires when your sub does and then let everything through, there would be no need to do a scan

If you don't and own Zenology outright and/or have a few expansions it creates a permanent file for all of that content

And if you just have the core plan it makes a file just for that

The main issue is that, Roland thinks all of their paying customers are thieves and treats you like you a criminal who is guilty until proven innocent, all to protect sample content that was make 20-30 years ago

[vulpes777]

well, you can buy expansions/presets regardless of your sub status, so my guess is that RCM will check every available pack, whether it is installed or not.

Thank you, your post gave me an idea: it's not exactly clear where the assets for Zenology are stored, but

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Roland Cloud

looks like a good candidate, as it contains (mostly) empty folders for the RC instruments plus a rather large one for Zenology.

I have renamed the latter and started a fresh instance of Zenology Lite, and now I'm down to the 7-10-ish seconds from D-Fusion's post; while not lightning-fast is far more acceptable. Still kind of slow for just the 'Lite' banks, though

(And so I'm also back to my earlier opinion that the license validation is badly unoptimized.)

Regards,

--
Marco

[samlletas]

@IvyBirds Zenology might actually be loading the samples to RAM, the Resource Monitor on my PC shows a bump of around 500 MB when loading Zenology the first time, with new instances adding only 70 MB. But I think you are spot on about Zenology validating every preset bank, and installing more banks increases the load time (at least on my system).

@vulpes777 Zenology stores factory banks as .exz files in:

Code: Select all

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Roland\ZENOLOGY\Patch

While user banks(.bin), favorites (.fzi) and sound packs at:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Roland Cloud\ZENOLOGY

I'm not sure where model expansions are located though, I don't have any installed atm but they probably are in the above folder as well.

[IvyBirds]

@IvyBirds Zenology might actually be loading the samples to RAM, the Resource Monitor on my PC shows a bump of around 500 MB when loading Zenology the first time, with new instances adding only 70 MB. But I think you are spot on about Zenology validating every preset bank, and installing more banks increases the load time (at least on my system).

I have lots of software that loads bigger sample libraries than 500mb into RAM that loads significantly faster than Zenology did for me, that may be part of it however

[vulpes777]

@IvyBirds Zenology might actually be loading the samples to RAM, the Resource Monitor on my PC shows a bump of around 500 MB when loading Zenology the first time, with new instances adding only 70 MB. But I think you are spot on about Zenology validating every preset bank, and installing more banks increases the load time (at least on my system).

@vulpes777 Zenology stores factory banks as .exz files in:

Code: Select all

C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Roland\ZENOLOGY\Patch

While user banks(.bin), favorites (.fzi) and sound packs at:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Roland Cloud\ZENOLOGY

I'm not sure where model expansions are located though, I don't have any installed atm but they probably are in the above folder as well.

The AppData location is where I found what looks like an .fzi AND a separate folder for every expansion I had installed. The folders for the EXZ expansions also apparently have some sample content within them, as they add up to 1.5GB (the remaining folders are pretty much a few KB each).

So, after I let Zenology regenerate just the 'Lite' assets, all that is gone, except the fzi for the 'Lite' factory banks. I'll probably go ahead and try and do a cleanup in the VST3 folder, although things seem more...delicate there, just renaming the patch folder doesn't work and crashes Zenology.

On second thought I guess I can leave it be. For now, I'm happy I was able to remove the biggest culprit for the long load times.

Cheers,

--
Marco

[D-Fusion]

I remember now that I forgot to remove the Factory Presets when I tested the loading time so that might be why i didn't see any difference.

Zenology Pro is still only using 7 seconds to boot up the first instance and I have Synth models JD800, JX8P, Jupiter 8 and the Juno 106 Installed and the SRX Expansions Installed in Zen Pro are Dance Trax, Orchestra, Symphonique Str, World Instruments and Vintage Keys.
On top of that I have the Zen pack 0-99 that was sold as a bundle a while back installed.

I always have the Roland Zenology Pro Preset folder on my Pcie X4 m.2 drive and use symbolic link to point to it since I make my own presets sometimes that I add to my Roland Boxes.

That way I don't have to worry about loosing anything if i need to re-install the OS which has happened a few times in the past when I forgot to Copy the folder before New OS Install + It also saves time since I don't have to Download all the presets again since they are already in the preset folder.

Softube Model 80 and some of the Arturia Plugins takes longer time to start up on my system than Zenology Pro these days (Analog Lab is being the worst of them).

[Examigan]

All: does anyone have the D50 user banks from back in the day? I believe they came on a card or cartridge. any help would be appreciated. i'm looking for a specific bell type patch that had chase play on it. used it on sessions for years and even on my D550 after my D50 bit the dust from years of use. Also, does anyone know if Roland ever put any of the Combi/Performance patches anywhere to download. I sure could use those for my JV.

Also, there is this site.. but I'm not sure if the one IvyBirds recommended has all of those and more (?).
https://bobbyblues.recup.ch/roland_d-50 ... banks.html

[damoog]

As a none Roland cloud subscriber (but lover of Roland instruments) I sometimes check this thread and pretty much leave within 2 minutes as it all just seems like a pathetic experience overall and just a complete PITA

[WatchTheGuitar]

And that’s just reading the thread.