I would love to see more options for predictive loading. Right now, it looks like the only option is to load rackspaces/songs around the current one. What would be really useful is an option to load all rackspaces used in a setlist when in setlist mode, and only those. A way to set this option per gig or even per setlist would be cool too, but not as essential.
For context, I play in a band with some originals and a lot of covers that mostly use organs and pianos, so just a few rackspaces and it doesnāt take too long to load those. But sometimes we like to pull out an 80s song or two to get the crowd hyped. We rarely have a set-in-stone setlist, so I rarely know ahead of time which 80s songs weāre doing. I donāt want all my 80s songs just sitting in my main gig file because it takes 3+ minutes to load all those plugins every time I open it, but our singer is getting tired of trying to fill the time with dad jokes if he decides itās time for an 80s song and I have to wait for the 80s file to open.
So I would really like to just have one gig file for everything I might play, have predictive loading on for fast startup, then pull up a setlist with our usual material and make sure everything in there loads before the gig starts so I can jump around and not have to worry about waiting for a rackspace to load and hope those plugins donāt have issues mid gig. Then if we decide to pull up an 80s song I can throw it in the setlist and wait a few seconds for only that song to load, rather than having to switch files.
Iāve done this and unfortunately it doesnāt really work for my use case. If I turn a setlist into a gig file before the show, Iām then locked into that setlist and canāt easily import another song from the main file without either 1) making sure I export every song every time I tweak it or 2) switching files to export and import right mid show, which just takes too long
Predictive loading does work in setlists, but itās still limited to the number of songs you set in the options. So if we decide to jump to a song at the end, it wonāt be loaded. Iād just like to see an option to keep the whole setlist loaded without having to load every other rackspace.
I guess itās limited by the max number of songs GP allows you to set in Predictive Loading, and beyond that it would have to load in at the time.
But, if you have enough ram that you can load in your full setlist PLUS all the extras you might add on the fly, you can just do what Npudar suggested: Create a Gig File from that (expanded) setlist, without even using Predictive Loading.
Letās say you have 60 songs, including the firm setlist and all the extra you might jump to.
As I understand, in terms of ram usage, there is no difference between having all 60 songs/rackspaces loaded in Predictive Loading (letās pretend you could load the full 60 song setlist so they are fully āactiveā in Predictive Loading) versus just saving that full expanded set list as a Gig File.
Which is fine, and is what I want. Iām rarely jumping around in Rackspace view at a gig, so Iām fine waiting for things to load there.
Not yet, I run a macbook with 36gb so plenty of room. It might become a problem later, because we improv a lot during shows and usually when we do Iāll duplicate one of my existing rackspaces and tweak it if Iām feeling something other than a basic rhodes or piano or B3. The issue is how long it takes to start up. If I turn predictive loading off, it loads everything on startup before I can start playing, including all the synth heavy 80s stuff (my Livin On a Prayer patch has 8 synth plugins alone) and experimental rackspaces that arenāt being used for any songs yet and that I definitely wonāt need during the gig. This currently takes 3-4 minutes. Meanwhile our guitaristās digital amp takes 10 seconds to start up with all his patches, and everyone else has to wait for me.
That really isnāt that consequential. It only happens once at the startup, and certainly youāre able to plan for an extra 3-4 minutes of startup time to then have every song at your disposal.
If you arenāt running into RAM issues, I wouldnāt even bother with Predictive loading. That is meant to be a ālast resortā case for those with hardware limitations, giving them a little extra leeway for performance while giving up the flexibility to move around the setlist at willā and its that very flexibility that youāre looking for. So, my advice would be to leave the Predictive loading off and simply plan for a little extra setup time.
I have been doing that and itās getting really annoying. With predictive loading itās OK, but I get a little worried about the possibility that an unloaded rackspace doesnāt load correctly mid show.
Longer than it takes the guitarist and bassist to set up their stuff. Iām also the only one who knows how to work the PA and mixer and all the wiring, the others are learning but right now itās still mostly me doing it. So trying to speed up setup wherever I can.
Ok, yes there are workarounds, but this is still a feature I would really like to see. Seems like it wouldnāt be too hard to add. If GP was open source I probably would have already added it
If you like hacks, I saw what hack was Ray Myers doing in the latest stream here. This allowed him to speed up the loading time of his gig files. Update: his final solution is presented in this post.
No change. Keep current behavior which is āload current rackspace, 3 before, 3 afterā (assuming youāre using the default setting of 7)
Also same behavior. Currently if you switch setlists, it determines what rackspaces are needed for 3 songs before and 3 after and loads those and unloads whatever isnāt needed anymore. With this option enabled it would just do that same calculation but with all the songs in the new setlist, and any that were in the previous setlist and not the new one get unloaded.
Iām a software dev and implement small logic changes all the time. Iām making an assumption that the logic for determining which rackspaces to load goes something like this:
if predictive loading enabled:
if rackspace mode:
load current rackspace + 3 before + 3 after
else if setlist mode:
load rackspaces used by (current + 3 before + 3 after) songs
else:
load all rackspaces
And with a āload all songs in setlistā option it would be:
if predictive loading enabled:
if rackspace mode:
load current rackspace + 3 before + 3 after
else if setlist mode:
if "load all songs in setlist" enabled:
load rackspaces used by (all in setlist) songs
else:
load rackspaces used by (current + 3 before + 3 after) songs
else:
load all rackspaces
If I was writing the logic to determine what to load, this is how Iād do it. That said, I havenāt looked at the code and Iām assuming you havenāt either (along with the vast majority of this forum) so I could be completely wrong about how predictive loading is currently implemented.
Sounds like Iām not the only one looking for a solution for faster startup thatās more reliable than the current predictive loading. But that post was made 3 years ago, yet here we areā¦
