BFD3 Loading Time

thegummy

Not sure if this kind of question will do well here, never checked this section before but thought I'd try instead of having to sign up for a more specific forum.

The drum software BFD3 takes quite a while to load a kit (at least relatively speaking, compared to everything else in the DAW environment which is instantaneous).

I currently have the library installed on a SATA SSD. Does anyone know if installing a new Nvme PCIe 4.0 SSD and moving the library to that will significantly reduce the load time of kits?

stratman3142

How long is it taking? I haven't noticed a real issue.

I just checked on my system by loading a BFD3 kit in Reaper. If it's a kit I haven't loaded for a while then it can take up to about 20s. But then, after the kit has been loaded recently, it's typically up to about 7 seconds.

SSD5 seems similar
AD2 is a bit quicker
The NI kits in Kontakt 6 are very slow when first loading, but then quicker when changing kits after that.
SD2 seems instant. At least, I don't see a loading symbol.

My operating system is on an SSD but my sample libraries are just on an HDD.

WiresDreamDisasters

How big is the kit you're loading? How long is it taking exactly?

thegummy

@stratman3142 do you mean that the load bars in the  mixer have all completed? Do you have BFD set to the highest quality, full samples etc.?

Hard to imagine it could be as quick as you say from a disk when it's slow from an SSD.

What CPU do you have? It could be the CPU limiting the time.

@Wires - it's any kit in BFD. Haven't timed it but it's long enough to be an annoyance and want to reduce it.

stratman3142

thegummy said:

@stratman3142 do you mean that the load bars in the  mixer have all completed? Do you have BFD set to the highest quality, full samples etc.?

Hard to imagine it could be as quick as you say from a disk when it's slow from an SSD.

What CPU do you have? It could be the CPU limiting the time.

The time I measured was how long it took for the load bars to complete in the mixer.

I have to admit I hadn't noticed the Engine Settings before, so I've learned something .  The engine profile was set to "Standard - Over 2GB RAM".  I changed it to the "Full Detail" profile which I assume is the highest quality setting, but it didn't make much difference to the load times. I'm just using the kits that come as stock with BFD3.

As I think I mentioned on another thread, my processor is an i7-6700K @4GHz quad core, which is a few years old now.
 
I can't say I notice any problems with BFD3 compared to loading other sample libraries.

WiresDreamDisasters

CPU wont limit the load time. Disk speeds and RAM speeds are the predominant factors.

thegummy

stratman3142 said:

thegummy said:

@stratman3142 do you mean that the load bars in the  mixer have all completed? Do you have BFD set to the highest quality, full samples etc.?

Hard to imagine it could be as quick as you say from a disk when it's slow from an SSD.

What CPU do you have? It could be the CPU limiting the time.

The time I measured was how long it took for the load bars to complete in the mixer.

I have to admit I hadn't noticed the Engine Settings before, so I've learned something

The engine profile was set to "Standard - Over 2GB RAM".  I changed it to the "Full Detail" profile which I assume is the highest quality setting, but it didn't make much difference to the load times. I'm just using the kits that come as stock with BFD3.

As I think I mentioned on another thread, my processor is an i7-6700K @4GHz quad core, which is a few years old now.
 
I can't say I notice any problems with BFD3 compared to loading other sample libraries.

Ahhh didn't realise it was yourself who I was talking to about the amp sims.

Actually, since that convo and from what you told me I've been pure obsessing over getting a new PC and moving my guitar effects in the box. This thread is to help me decide whether to bother getting a super fast NVMe hard drive for the new system or just stick with the SSD I already have.

My first thought was that, since your CPU is a good bit faster than mine but a hard disk is a lot slower than an SSD, it might be a processor limit. But then I think about it, I haven't timed mine and 20 seconds doesn't sound long when talking about it but it's still a bit of a delay when itching to get on with recording an idea so probably would pay the money to reduce it as much as possible.

Have to thank you for replying to both questions, especially the last one - I'm excited about getting a new system and getting in to PC based amp sims. Been playing through the PC a lot recently and been really liking the options available with effects and I love the idea of being able to adjust the amp tone during the mixing of the song.

One of my favourite things possible on the PC that I've found is sending the amp sim to 2 separate IR loaders, one close miced and the other with room mics - sounds so good.

thegummy

WiresDreamDisasters said:

CPU wont limit the load time. Disk speeds and RAM speeds are the predominant factors.

Where do you get that from?

WiresDreamDisasters

thegummy said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

CPU wont limit the load time. Disk speeds and RAM speeds are the predominant factors.

Where do you get that from?

I work for FXpansion and was the QA Manager on BFD3 and was very involved in putting together the spec. I know how the product works. I also developed and recorded many of the expansion packs for the last 5 years. I also created the engine profiles for the software.

CPU doesn't dictate the speed of the sample loading. It's a factor, but it's a very minor factor. It's mostly down to the speed of your RAM and the speed of the disks. This is because BFD uses a diskstreaming engine to read samples from the drive into RAM in near-real time. It doesn't utilise the CPU for this very much - it does a bit, but not the first thing to think about.

If you happen to turn on the 'load all to ram' feature then all layers are loaded straight into RAM and read from there. Faster than reading it from the disk typically, but with SSD's it doesn't affect the user experience whichever way you do it.

Depending on how many kitpieces you've got loaded, and how large the kit is in terms of GB's, it could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3minutes for a full kit to load. If you're loading a full kit in 20 seconds, that really isn't very long at all.

If you're using SSD's and it's taking 10minutes to load a kit, then your SSD is on the way out. That would be my first guess.

WiresDreamDisasters

Also if you're curious, BFD2 used to load kitpieces one kitpiece at a time. Which meant that you had to wait for the kick to fully load before hearing the snare, hihat, toms, etc. Then you had to wait for the snare to fully load, and etc etc etc.

So basically even if you had fast hard drives at the time, it still took a while to get going.

I spec'd out a small change to this that the devs implemented - load on a per-layer basis rather than per kitpiece basis. So it loads a layer on the kick, layer on the snare, layer on the hihat, etc... etc... then cycles back around until it has loaded all of the layers.

This means your kit is playable and fully audible even during the loading process.

thegummy

WiresDreamDisasters said:

thegummy said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

CPU wont limit the load time. Disk speeds and RAM speeds are the predominant factors.

Where do you get that from?

I work for FXpansion and was the QA Manager on BFD3 and was very involved in putting together the spec. I know how the product works. I also developed and recorded many of the expansion packs for the last 5 years. I also created the engine profiles for the software.

CPU doesn't dictate the speed of the sample loading. It's a factor, but it's a very minor factor. It's mostly down to the speed of your RAM and the speed of the disks. This is because BFD uses a diskstreaming engine to read samples from the drive into RAM in near-real time. It doesn't utilise the CPU for this very much - it does a bit, but not the first thing to think about.

If you happen to turn on the 'load all to ram' feature then all layers are loaded straight into RAM and read from there. Faster than reading it from the disk typically, but with SSD's it doesn't affect the user experience whichever way you do it.

Depending on how many kitpieces you've got loaded, and how large the kit is in terms of GB's, it could take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3minutes for a full kit to load. If you're loading a full kit in 20 seconds, that really isn't very long at all.

If you're using SSD's and it's taking 10minutes to load a kit, then your SSD is on the way out. That would be my first guess.

So let's say it takes 30 seconds at the moment to load a kit and the disk is a SATA SSD; what kind of time would it take to load from a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD?

WiresDreamDisasters

I've not done any comparisons so can't give you a figure unfortunately.

thegummy

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Also if you're curious, BFD2 used to load kitpieces one kitpiece at a time. Which meant that you had to wait for the kick to fully load before hearing the snare, hihat, toms, etc. Then you had to wait for the snare to fully load, and etc etc etc.

So basically even if you had fast hard drives at the time, it still took a while to get going.

I spec'd out a small change to this that the devs implemented - load on a per-layer basis rather than per kitpiece basis. So it loads a layer on the kick, layer on the snare, layer on the hihat, etc... etc... then cycles back around until it has loaded all of the layers.

This means your kit is playable and fully audible even during the loading process.

What's funny is that ever since I got it I've waited for it to load before trying to use it purely because over the years that's always what I had to do with samples so didn't even think otherwise.

Just today when I've been loading kits up to roughly judge the time it's taking, for some reason I thought I'd try and play it while it loaded on the off chance it worked. Of course, it did so I realised it must load it layer by layer.

It's pretty amazing if you're the very person who decided it should do that! And I was thinking it might be a bit hopeful asking the question on a guitar forum. Never thought in a million years someone who actually worked on the software would answer.

That feature quite possibly makes the load time a moot point and might mean there's no point buying the faster drive. Have to thank you, not just for answering the question but for implementing that feature in the first place.

WiresDreamDisasters

thegummy said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

Also if you're curious, BFD2 used to load kitpieces one kitpiece at a time. Which meant that you had to wait for the kick to fully load before hearing the snare, hihat, toms, etc. Then you had to wait for the snare to fully load, and etc etc etc.

So basically even if you had fast hard drives at the time, it still took a while to get going.

I spec'd out a small change to this that the devs implemented - load on a per-layer basis rather than per kitpiece basis. So it loads a layer on the kick, layer on the snare, layer on the hihat, etc... etc... then cycles back around until it has loaded all of the layers.

This means your kit is playable and fully audible even during the loading process.

What's funny is that ever since I got it I've waited for it to load before trying to use it purely because over the years that's always what I had to do with samples so didn't even think otherwise.

Just today when I've been loading kits up to roughly judge the time it's taking, for some reason I thought I'd try and play it while it loaded on the off chance it worked. Of course, it did so I realised it must load it layer by layer.

It's pretty amazing if you're the very person who decided it should do that! And I was thinking it might be a bit hopeful asking the question on a guitar forum. Never thought in a million years someone who actually worked on the software would answer.

That feature quite possibly makes the load time a moot point and might mean there's no point buying the faster drive. Have to thank you, not just for answering the question but for implementing that feature in the first place.

It's egotistical of me to point it out, but I also designed the browser filtering and the 'rudiment tool' in the groove editor!

thegummy

WiresDreamDisasters said:

It's egotistical of me to point it out, but I also designed the browser filtering and the 'rudiment tool' in the groove editor!

I already know you're an egotist from the other thread but your music turned out to be really good too lol

WiresDreamDisasters