Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards taming Garritan CFX in using RAM?

Hi friends,

As I extensively use the Garritan CFX Concert Grand on standalone, I discovered something rather disturbing.

My laptop is a Dell Precision 3540 running Windows 11 Pro, 32GB of RAM. The software in theory should use about 180 to 190 MB of RAM. At least that's how it began according to the "Advanced" page. However, I would look in my task manager after playing for sometime, or if I leave it sitting idle for a few moments and return. Then I notice two things:
1. There can be occasional drop outs / crackles in the audio;
2. My ram usage would jump up quite a bit. My initial over all ram consumption is around 15% or 16%, with 26 to 27 GB of remaining ram. When Garritan CFX runs for an extended period of time, the ram usage jumps up to around 50%, with a half of my ram consumed.

The solution is to end Garritan CFX's process from the task manager and restart the software, then everything becomes normal again.

I believe this is a memory leak? Is there a way to solve this problem?

Thanks!

David

Is that computer dedicated to running that software only? Could try a computer with all unnecessary services disabled.

I only have one computer, and I can't possibly disable too many services. My over all system ram consumption is from 4 to 5 GB, and the only abnormal RAm is with the CFX. The other programs that I have, like Ivory II American Concert D, have very normal RAM usage and no audio drop outs. Just this Garritan can have problems without restarting the software.

Thanks david. In that case ...... you could be onto something with the garritan cfx.

I'm afraid so...

Can you run two copies of the program and use one, close it when that process leaks and then you've got one open to continue with?
If it takes ages to close down, you could use vba to instantly shut it, if you needed to reboot to get your RAM usage reduced.

E.g., plonk this in an excel VB editor module and assign a button to run it:


Sub TerminateApp1()
'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Terminates the exe process specified.
' Uses WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) to query all running processes
' then terminates ALL instances of the exe process held in the variable strTerminateThis.
'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dim strTerminateThis As String
'The variable to hold the process to terminate

Dim objWMIcimv2 As Object, objProcess As Object, objList As Object
Dim intError As Integer

'Process to terminate – you could specify and .exe program name here

strTerminateThis = "Creative Cloud.exe"

'Connect to CIMV2 Namespace and then find the .exe process

Set objWMIcimv2 = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\cimv2")
Set objList = objWMIcimv2.ExecQuery("select * from win32_process where name='" & strTerminateThis & "'")
For Each objProcess In objList
intError = objProcess.Terminate 'Terminates a process and all of its threads.
'Return value is 0 for success. Any other number is an error.
If intError <> 0 Then Exit For
Next

'ALL instances of exe (strTerminateThis) have been terminated
Set objWMIcimv2 = Nothing
Set objList = Nothing
Set objProcess = Nothing

End Sub

This might help: seems to be lots of hits on it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=wha...04j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

David,

What RAM/disk settings do you use for Garritan CFX?

I'm not sure if this will be helpful to you as I'm on a Mac, but what I've observed is that while Garritan CFX CAN use a lot of RAM if you allocate it, it really doesn't need it to function well. In fact, I found that for best results (zero cracks, pops or dropouts), the best setting is to give it the bare minimum of RAM needed. 1 to 1.5GB total, with 16kB disk pre-caching. This way, Garritan is streaming most of the data it needs straight from SSD, and avoiding the use of RAM storage, which in my case seemed to be subjecting it to OS-level buffering and disk caching that added to the latency.

I discovered this solution after noticing that when I allocated 8-16+GB of RAM to CFX, it would play flawlessly as it was filling up RAM, but once the RAM buffer was full, it would start to experience cracks. So the arguably slower initial load of samples from SSD to memory for real-time play was effortless for it, but once the majority of the sample set was in RAM, THEN it couldn't keep up. By starving CFX of RAM by only allocating 1GB, I could force it to fetch directly from SSD, thus avoiding the problem.

Hope that helps!

Rebooting is your friend. Expect leaks from all your software.

So far, your solution is the most helpful, Gombessa! I've got now 1.25 GB ram and 16KB caching. So far I've been intentionally letting it sit idle, and no pops just now after 20 minutes or so of sitting idle. Maybe I could just use 256 MB of RAM, because the samples that I load is about 180 MB or so, according to what Garritan CFX's interface says.

Thank you!

David

Thank you for this. But the problem is, I run it on standalone, not on the VST host.

I shut down my laptop from time to time, yes. What I was talking about was having to restart Garritan CFX the standalone software.

So - there is an important difference when the software is operating ------ as in no idle is occurring. As in operating flawlessly - and indefinitely (without idle coming into the picture). And then some issues occur after an idle, right?

Right. When it starts up, everything is good. However, if I just left the software running for sometime without touching my VPC1, and then after, say, 15 minutes, I touch the keyboard and play for a while, it starts to eat my ram up.

I see. Thanks David. No info.

I found that when I allocate less than 1GB RAM (say 512MB), the smallest disk pre-caching setting of 16kB was too large to fit in RAM, and this itself caused cracks/pops/dropouts. So for me, the smallest amount of RAM that could support the minimum size of 16kB was 1 to 1.5GB. Maybe on PC it'll work better, or you may have an option to use even less of a sample pre-cache size?

Best of luck!

Typo --- 'nice'

lolatu discussed the memory leak with Garritan's tech support but I think nothing was changed, unfortunately. The thread is interesting in any case:

http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/2716043/stable-garritan-cfx.html

Here are some popular solutions:

- Extremely low "Engine RAM allocation" & "Inst Disc Pre-Caching" as recommended by Gombessa.

- Exit and relaunch Garritan CFX every few hours to purge RAM

- Unrelated to memory leaks but to reduce crackles try:

-- Increasing "polophony" in the Advanced tab

-- Minimize the Aria player so it is not showing on the screen. On the upper right corner of the player there is the typical windows dash, box and X; pressing the dash would minimize the player

-- Oddly, I thought a few people found better performance using an external SSD. Your internal nvme drive should be so much better but enough people found the external drives to work great it is worth considering

-- I thought you had optimised your laptop for VIs so did not offer any of the typical Windows tweaks (feel free to ask).

Fun but impractical idea: A RAMDisk might run Garritan best but I never heard of someone using that. It is a bit painful to setup and use and would require at least 64GB of RAM. Not practical.

I’d recommend downloading Latencymon. It’ll measure what resources are in use. It also has instructions on which services you can safely disable (temporarily, if needed) in order to run the piano software smoothly.

https://m.majorgeeks.com/files/details/latencymon.html

I think David has a thread where he is in fact using Latencymon?

A couple of replies here.

1. Yes, I've tuned my laptop so that all my music programs run as expected -- that is, normally. I also have an external audio interface, where now all audio goes out of. The issue at play here is where Garritan CFX eats away at my ram.

2. I've used Latencymon before, thinking I might be able to reduce the buffer size from 64 to 32. However, when I posted it to the forum, you all recommended me to stick with 64 if it runs well and not change, so that's the path I took. I've since uninstalled Latencymon.

3. I'm using all my piano VST's standalone in my internal SSD.

Have a nice day!

David