Drive Space & Presets Ineffeciencies, misleading release notes with V17

[kidslow]

When I read the release notes for V17, especially these two bullet points,

* It features a new virtual file system, resulting in fewer files on your hard drive and faster installation.
* Packages are highly optimized to save your internet connection and disk space.

I thought it was too good to be true. As it turns out, yes it is.

I backed up presets and /Library/Application Support/MeldaProduction and ~/Library/Application Support/MeldaProduction and then removed all Melda from the system. Reinstalled from scratch with the V17 MPluginManager.

V16-Install:
590.2 MB /Library (after I cleaned out a bunch of cruft)
39.9 MB ~/Library

V17-Install:
448 MB /Library
475.9 MB ~/Library

So the system library usage went down and the user library usage spiked. What?

I had a closer look.

Seems that part of the so-called internet connection optimizations are to leave a PKG directory in the user library with 404 MB of packages. I tested what would happen if I moved that out of the way, and MPluginManager didn't seem to care.

I assume it will download it again if it can't find it?

Calling it what it appears to be, a cache, please add an option in MPluginManager, perhaps under settings, to remove this cache.

Moving that out of the way, and taking a closer look at the folders again sorted by size, things are little better than they were. I mean yeah, MCabinetDevices/ and MTurboAmpDevices/ and MeldaProduction MXXX/ directories are no longer in the system melda library (I don't have those installed), so that is a step forward. You're no longer installing devices for every plugin. Bravo. I take that back. I see MDrumStrip.devices, MTurbuReverb.devices ... neither of which is installed. So the big honking folder devices are not installed but the single file ones still apparently are.

But Melda, you are still spamming my drive with presets for every one of your plugins and then some. Now, not only are they spammed into the system melda library, but also into the user melda library. That's right, now I have 37.1 MB of MGuitarArchitect.presets (not installed) ... not once, but twice. 74 MB of just wasted space, and I can go down the list. I'm sure it totals into the 100s and 100s of MBs just on presets installed for uninstalled plugins. I know some of those files are smaller but they add up.

So tell me what about this "new virtual file system" has resulted in "fewer files on my hard drive" exactly?

Thank you for the updates, and for the continuous improvement. I applaud you for considering user drive space and internet connections, but your release note statements ring false in practice. To be blunt, your installation is still full of lazy cruft. I had hoped one of the benefits of the new plugin manager would be that I don't have a mess (literally) of presets for plugins that are not installed. Now I get them twice.

Ai yi yi

[martin-meldaproduction]

Your findings are generally accurate, but I can add more information that will shed better light on MPluginManager. The initial installation size on the HDD is more or less the same for both the v16 and v17 installers if you install all plugins. V16 installs more than 10,000 files and 1,500 folders, while the new v17 installer installs "only" 6,000 files and about 670 folders. This is significantly less.

However, if you install just a few basic plugins, the occupied space is lower by few hundreds of MB with the new installer.

You're right that there is a PKG folder in the user data, which contains the installation packages (you can consider it a cache). This cache can be deleted after installation, just like you can delete the older v16 installer setup, which is about 630 MB. We keep this folder for future installations/updates to avoid downloading the same data repeatedly. Here is a major advantage of the new MPluginManager: you don’t need to worry about checking the website and manually downloading and installing the plugins you have. You simply launch it, and it will download updates just for your plugins (usually a few MB to 150 MB, but not the full installer) and update everything automatically. You won’t need to delete the 630 MB installer again. MPluginManager will keep the cache as small as possible, but I can imagine that for some users or on certain systems, this could be important, so we will add an option to delete this PKG cache after installation.

Regarding the installed files, can you tell me which plugins or bundles you are installing? Some files are duplicated to prevent users from accidentally corrupting presets, so we always have an original copy in the program data as a backup. Additionally, some files are installed even if a plugin with that name is not installed because they are shared by multiple plugins. I’ll check into this further; possibly, this can be optimized more as well.

[kidslow]

Thanks for the additional information Martin. I run my system drive on the small side, so I tend to be a bit more attentive to space than the average user. But I also recently noticed that there was a lot of cruft inside the Melda heirarchy and so was on high alert just as you released the new plugin manager.

I do appreciate your responsiveness and the level of transparency you provided here ... and to be clear I definitely like the new MPluginManager better than the old method. To be fair to Melda, I discovered Arturia does the same - writing presets for every plugin whether installed or not.

No packages, except MFreeFx (some of which installed and some not), but otherwise installed were the following (which one needs MGuitarArchitect.presets?):

MAutoPanMB
MBitFunMB
MCenter
MCombMB
MCompare
MDistortionMB
MDynamic EQ
MGranularMB
MHarmonizerMB
MPhaserMB
MReverb
MUltraMaximizer
MUnison
MVocoder
MWaveshaperMB

[jan-sandahl]

It's a good thing to be cautious with users HD space, as well as CPU optimizations etc. Me, I don't have to worry about space (for now) but I'm all for taking care and optimize everything as far as possible. The ratio of quality/cpu efficiency was a big reason I finally went all in on Melda. No regrets.

Now if it was possible to optimize things more, like modulations reaching deeper into the parameter belly of the beast, I won't shed any tears.

[martin-meldaproduction]

Thanks for the additional information Martin. I run my system drive on the small side, so I tend to be a bit more attentive to space than the average user. But I also recently noticed that there was a lot of cruft inside the Melda heirarchy and so was on high alert just as you released the new plugin manager.

I do appreciate your responsiveness and the level of transparency you provided here ... and to be clear I definitely like the new MPluginManager better than the old method. To be fair to Melda, I discovered Arturia does the same - writing presets for every plugin whether installed or not.

No packages, except MFreeFx (some of which installed and some not), but otherwise installed were the following (which one needs MGuitarArchitect.presets?):

MAutoPanMB
MBitFunMB
MCenter
MCombMB
MCompare
MDistortionMB
MDynamic EQ
MGranularMB
MHarmonizerMB
MPhaserMB
MReverb
MUltraMaximizer
MUnison
MVocoder
MWaveshaperMB

Found a bug here in on of our package, non of these plugins needs MGuitarArchitect.presets and similar to other presets from this package. Will be fixed w/ next release, of course this will save few MB's. Thank you for your finding.