Kronos Memory- Confused

Mercuryyyy · Post by **Mercuryyyy** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:12 am

I was reading about the new EX expansion libraries getting released soon and im confused as they say it will use the SSD drive. What do we use Ram for if it all can be on the Harddrive? I know Ram is used for samples and stuff but could someone explain how it all works?

How much free space is on the Harddrive and do we have to upgrade our Ram to get these expansions ?

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:22 am

The technology used is often referred to as "streaming". Basically, only the first part of every individual sample file is put in the RAM. When you then play the sample from the keyboard, the engine has time to look up the rest of the sample on the SSD, and "stream" it from there. Since only a part of the sample has to be loaded for this to work, you can load much bigger samples with much less RAM. The longer the individual sample, the greater the gain, pretty much.

So the EXis you mean stream samples from the SSD, but still use RAM. How much is anyone's guess, at this point. I'm assuming details will become available soon.

The SSD in the Kronos is 30GB in total, but close to half of that is already being used by the OS, ROM, EXis and EXs.

michelkeijzers · Post by **michelkeijzers** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:25 am

I don't have answers to all questions, but the samples can only be used by the processor if it is in RAM.

Regular hard drives are too slow, so normally the samples are transferred from the hard drive to RAM.

The builtin samples are 'streamed' from the SSD directly, meaning, only a very small portion of RAM is used as buffer space. For other samples (own), the samples are completely copied from the SSD to RAM. Probably streaming own samples is not possible, because the builtin samples have extra optimalization data attached how to stream it in realtime.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Mercuryyyy · Post by **Mercuryyyy** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:31 am

So that means that aprox 15 gigabyte is free in the SSD ? As it is right now, do we have 1GB of free RAM if we dont sample our own sounds?

Or do we have to unload sounds that are automatically loaded from the get go? Can we unload every sound in the Kronos and how do we unload it?

michelkeijzers · Post by **michelkeijzers** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:39 am

Mercuryyyy wrote:So that means that aprox 15 gigabyte is free in the SSD ? As it is right now, do we have 1GB of free RAM if we dont sample our own sounds?

Or do we have to unload sounds that are automatically loaded from the get go? Can we unload every sound in the Kronos and how do we unload it?

I remember there are some posts about it, I think there is 700 MB RAM left normally, and you can remove EXS sample libraries, I think one of the two piano sample sets is gaining quite a bit. It's also needed to unloaded sample set(s) if you want to use the wood/wind sample set on the SSD (not loaded by default).

Neko · Post by **Neko** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:59 am

Or you can upgrade your K to 4Gb but you have to get into it (open it and add RAM).

michelkeijzers · Post by **michelkeijzers** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:01 am

Neko wrote:Or you can upgrade your K to 4Gb but you have to get into it (open it and add RAM).

Advice is to read the other posts (made recently) about RAM usage and RAM increase (for warranty issues etc).

kid_nepro_2002 · Post by **kid_nepro_2002** » Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:00 pm

The way it stands now, if you want to load in more then 150 megs of new samples you have to unload one of the ex's. This will change with the 1.5 OS and RAM upgrade.