Is this template realistic for the gear I have?

[Steve_K]

Hi all,

 

I'm hoping you guys can help me to make some realistic decisions and to better understand the capabilities of the gear I have. First, here's the rig:

 

Mac Pro Quad-core (3.0 Ghz)

4GB RAM

4 HDD

OSX Leopard

Kontakt 3

Logic 8.0.2

 

Here's the set-up I've found works well:

 

I've been experimenting with splitting ERs and Tails from some Altiverb IRs, and I find that I really like the effect of sending the ERs and Tails for different hall lengths out to buses to control them independently.

 

To that end, I've got:

 

6 Altiverb instances on 6 separate buses in 3 pairs of ER+Tail

 

Bus 1: 3ms ER

Bus 2: 3ms Tail

 

Bus 3: 8ms ER

Bus 4: 8ms Tail

 

Bus 5: 11ms ER

Bus 6: 11ms Tail

 

Then, what I like to do is to use Kontakt 3's Multi 16 Stereo out and load up instruments to fill an instance. I'm assuming this is all pretty standard fare...

 

Recently, I noticed, though, that when I loaded up 7 instruments inside of one instance of K3 and cued them all to Record at once so I could play and hear all of them without changing the midi routing, I got some serious DFD issues.

 

Does this mean that when I try to write out parts for the 7 instruments and then play them back, I'm going to have the same DFD issues?

 

The big questions are:

 

1. Given my hardware, how many instances of K3 should I be able to run, and generally, how many instruments per instance? (only seven instruments out of 16 per 1 instance seems low to me.)

 

2. Does splitting up the instrument load between more than one K3 instance decrease the DFD issue?

 

3. Given that, even after reading argument after argument about it, I still don't have a good understanding of the whole "Is Logic 8 64 bit" question, would simply grabbing another 4 GB of RAM actually help?

 

Hopefully this question was clear, and folks can provide some insight!

 

Thanks very much!

 

Steve