pa4x PCM USER Ram 400mb or 800mb ??

[ahirori]

256 MB (equivalent to 512MB linear data) with the optional EXB-M256 memory expansion board. this came with the korg pa3x ...... i was wondering if it's the same thing with pa4x which in this case will be 400mb 800mb linear data ... does any body know this for sure or has anybody tried to load more than 400mb ?

thank you

[Bachus]

256 MB (equivalent to 512MB linear data) with the optional EXB-M256 memory expansion board. this came with the korg pa3x ...... i was wondering if it's the same thing with pa4x which in this case will be 400mb 800mb linear data ... does any body know this for sure or has anybody tried to load more than 400mb ?

thank you

The pa4x has data compression which was added in an update, the compression is not lossless but allows for storing 800 MB in the 400MB memmory

[mstodola]

What a pitiful amount of memory in this day and age. I can buy 128 Gb of memory for $30. It must have cost them 50 cents for 400 Mb..... then charge us $4000. Pitiful.

[musiccankill]

mstodola you are talking about flash memory of 128gb or maybe even cheaper designs..Flash memory has 2 "features" it is TOO slow and it has LIMITED read/write cycles per bit.The 400mb of the pa4x are actually a part of the 1gb RAM memory it has.RAM is many times faster and doesn't get bricked no matter how many times you rewrite it.These are pretty basic computer stuff info...So no, its not 50cents for 400mb and it would cost WAY more to upgrade the system ram above 1gb as the processor inside the system may not even be able to handle more than that.
That said, changing cpu architecture, ram and rewrite the os for the new architecture would make the arranger cost almost double as much as today and wouldn't have been out yet...
Costs would be significantly lower if the current cpu supports more than 1gb as only the ram and a part of the os would have to be changed but still the price would be higher.
At the end of the day i don't think there is much use for more than 800mb of sample data in any instrument given that the factory library is way better than the older one...Even if there was no factory library ,800mb are more than enough for everybody that knows at least the basics of sound design and not just loads whatever he can find online and never use it...

[Nemik]

The 400mb of the pa4x are actually a part of the 1gb RAM memory it has.RAM is many times faster and doesn't get bricked no matter how many times you rewrite it.

Is the reason All Samples must be stored in RAM?
Just wonder.

[musiccankill]

Well Nemik yes, this WAS the reason till kronos and pa4x...
In pa4x (and kronos) a small part of the sample (a predefined attack) is only loaded in the ram so the system to be able to seek the location on a hard disk or flash memory and continue the playback of the rest of the sample from there without clicks or pops...This is what we call streaming!
Now on pa4x my opinion is that it hasn't been enabled for the user to stream samples cause , creating a new sample/multisample would require rebuild of the attack file that has to be loaded into ram at startup , so if they had enabled it for the user, every time you would add or delete a single sample you would have to reboot the system so it will update the attack file with your new sample and then do it again!You can see that to load a full multisample you would need 1-2 hours rebooting and rebooting and rebooting..I don't think this is acceptable and it also wears the Flash memory with rewriting the same location over and over again so it would go faulty too easy and in almost no time!
Maybe on next model they will have reprogrammed the way the attacks are loaded into ram so it will be possible to enable for users too!
Also just to note it , RAM is NOT a non-volatile memory , it is erased when you turn the power off and that's why the time needed to boot is so long.It actually reloads the contents (factory and user) in RAM from the flash memory!

[mstodola]

Kurzweil Forte is playing gigabyte samples from a hard drive with no problem. How do they do it and keep the price down? It's been proven by Kurzweil that it CAN be done.

[Nemik]

I understand in Kronos, because support SST (Smooth Sound Transition ), but in Pa you got only 4 + 8 (plus 4 Pads) sound at time
You not use all samples same time.

[musiccankill]

Kurzweil Forte is playing gigabyte samples from a hard drive with no problem. How do they do it and keep the price down? It's been proven by Kurzweil that it CAN be done.

By yamaha too (but too slow).It CAN be done but not on the current program code, it needs reprogramming.
Also korg japan has done it in kronos lol!But the systems have nothing in common except for the company name!

[musiccankill]

I understand in Kronos, because support SST (Smooth Sound Transition ), but in Pa you got only 4 + 8 (plus 4 Pads) sound at time
You not use all samples same time.

Well you got it a bit wrong!!Pa can actually play up to 128 samples (128voice engine) in parallel , don't you think this is a huge load for the slow flash to handle directly?!!
Excuse me if i am being too technical here , i just try to explain!

[Nemik]

I understand in Kronos, because support SST (Smooth Sound Transition ), but in Pa you got only 4 + 8 (plus 4 Pads) sound at time
You not use all samples same time.

Well you got it a bit wrong!!Pa can actually play up to 128 samples (128voice engine) in parallel , don't you think this is a huge load for the slow flash to handle directly?!!
Excuse me if i am being too technical here , i just try to explain!

128 means not all
is limitation

[musiccankill]

Well nothing is infinite!But 128voices is a veeery huge number.If you do the math with 16bit 44.100khz samples @ 128voices you need almost 100mbps continuous data transfer rate.Bring in the seek time of the disk , it is a very hard task to do it realtime (if possible).The 128voices is a limitation of the DSP i think though, not of the memory bandwidth.When you preload the attacks on ram then the disk(i call it disk but can be any non-volatile memory) load is reduced significantly as most of the time less than 30-40 notes will need to be read in parallel from the slow disk which is an amount it can handle!

[AntonySharmman]

Is the reason All Samples must be stored in RAM?
Just wonder.

In a few words :
The fastest SSD of 2016 is still 1000 slower than the speed that is required for samples to be played in real time with no latency !!!

Let's make something clear ... no sampler in the world , can play custom samples in real time reading the whole sample portion
directly from a HD !
Up to 2000 , keyboards industry was using on board Rom for factory samples (like Macronix type) , with extensive speed close
to DDR SDRam and all users custom samples were dropped into consuming Ram memory since it's 1000 faster than an SSD !
After 2000 , DFD (direct from disk) innovation began from PC/Mac VST R&D and Native Instruments , that invented the way to
read partially a sample from a slow media like HD/Flash memory and save Ram space , the new introduced to you
"streaming from disk" , rather old already , for VST industry.

Every keyboard brand applies the same DFD technique using different methods , like reading library after booting , or while
choosing the particular sound , but the most efficient method with high speed and reliability is that we met in Kronos and now
in Pa4X that surely needs to be further improved due to meet at least VST features of 2008 !

[Nemik]

Is the reason All Samples must be stored in RAM?
Just wonder.

In a few words :
The fastest SSD of 2016 is still 1000 slower than the speed that is required for samples to be played in real time with no latency !!!

Let's make something clear ... no sampler in the world , can play custom samples in real time reading the whole sample portion
directly from a HD !
Up to 2000 , keyboards industry was using on board Rom for factory samples (like Macronix type) , with extensive speed close
to DDR SDRam and all users custom samples were dropped into consuming Ram memory since it's 1000 faster than an SSD !
After 2000 , DFD (direct from disk) innovation began from PC/Mac VST R&D and Native Instruments , that invented the way to
read partially a sample from a slow media like HD/Flash memory and save Ram space , the new introduced to you
"streaming from disk" , rather old already , for VST industry.

Every keyboard brand applies the same DFD technique using different methods , like reading library after booting , or while
choosing the particular sound , but the most efficient method with high speed and reliability is that we met in Kronos and now
in Pa4X that surely needs to be further improved due to meet at least VST features of 2008 !

You 100% right Tony.
My question was to try understand, why I can use DAW VST with loaded 10 different plugins and only those VTS is loaded to RAM, then if replaced them, they are release from RAM, but keyboards holds all the time.
I understand samples must have super high speed, but in my opinion having all in RAM even not used at moment is kind not making sense, at least for me,.... maybe I am wrong. .....

[AntonySharmman]

My question was to try understand, why I can use DAW VST with loaded 10 different plugins and only those VTS is loaded to RAM, then if replaced them, they are release from RAM, but keyboards holds all the time.

I'll give you an example to understand it :
If you use a DAW with 16 VST is just like you load a Custom.SET in Pa4X with the equivalent custom samples !
When you unload VSTs from DAW and reload some others , it's the same like loading another Custom.SET in Pa4X ,
therefore Ram is replaced by new samples and the Ram is released in the same way in both PC/Mac and PaSeries ,
the difference between them is the samples management and not the method !

Even in DAW , changing a VST , a time interval is required and certainly this can't be done in real time performing ,
so we come to the same point !
At present time Kronos has the best sample management but still outdated compared to VST !
A PC/Mac hardware is at least 50 times faster than Pa4X and they can patrially release and reload new samples
instantly without be noticed , that's why I said before that keyboards must meet 2008 VST features since they are
at least 10 years outdated compared to PC /MAC hardware !