A question concerning the Audio File Player.
When I load a gig file that contains the audio file player with backing tracks it seems to load the prepared audio tracks into the memory first and then I can use them, correct?
The situation is that I’m preparing a gig where I will use backing tracks, but in a more extended amount. I have some playbacks of good quality where the instrument tracks are on my harddisk as seperate stereo files. The arrangements use different instrumentations, sometimes a brass section is present, sometimes no brass but six guitars. This means that I need to manage a total of 17 stereo tracks in parallel where not always the same channels are used but at the end the bass can always be at the same channel of the FOH mixer and the drums, keys, voices, percussions etc. too. I’m using it this way because now I can control the sound of each track and have some flexibility if musicians are present who can play some of the tracks live.
This means that I am using five instances of the eight-track audio file player per rackspace. I have placed the widgets for the start and stop buttons in the same groups so the synchronization between the players is fine.
To be able to auto-load track folders at once per player I have created silent track files for audio channels that are not used in some arrangements. This way I can use one wiring template for new songs without thinking too much about the track placement and output routing.
But this needs some loading time when opening a gig file. Currently I have prepared 8 songs with 17 tracks each. This means Gig Performer first needs to load 136 audio files before I can start operation. This is not yet the end, currently I have to prepare 30 songs with 17 tracks each which would mean that the system needs to load 510 tracks first if I would like to have some flexibility when using the playbacks. I’m not sure but this might take 15 or 20 minutes for initialization. In case something happens during a show that would cause me to reload the set this would result in a certain phase of no audio for the audience.
I have a Presonus console which I can switch to DAW integration to the Studio-One-Software. When checking out how to connect my mixer to the scenario I found that Studio-One now has a show mode that can be used for stage scenarios. Not completely like Gig Performer with all the sophisticated possibilities, but an option where I also have the possibility to control VST plugin parameters and media file playing besides the audio channels. Has more options than controlling an environment by HUI or Mackie Control and is prepared by the manufacturer.
Even with 17 stereo tracks assigned per song the prepared files load much faster because they just refer to the audio files on the disk instead of loading them into the RAM first.
Is there a specific reason that Gig Performer loads all the audio files of a gig file first? Might it be possible that the loading behaviour of the media file player is changed in the future?