Setting up new M1 Macbook Air

So...it appears you have to keep all of your Logic content files (meaning sample loops, sound/instrument samples, etc.) in the same location. No possibility to have some local and some external. Its an all or nothing situation. I was able to relocated 20Gb of the sound library from local drive to my Thunderbolt external SSD in less than a minute. Currently downloading entire sound library to the external drive. Next test will be unplugging the external drive and seeing what sounds remain (it says in the event that you remove the external drive all sounds will be replaced with "basic" tones). Once I see what that's about, I will relocate from the external drive to the internal drive and see how long it takes.
 
Okay, Logic without the soundlibrary attached is...completely crippled. When it says it uses a basic tone, it doesn't mean like a crap general MIDI tone, it means as basic a tone as it gets - a sine wave. On drum tracks, too.

I then relocated the full sound library (68 gigs) from the external thunderbolt ssd to the internal drive and it took well over 3 minutes. Which is to say not painful, but also not really a thing I want to do on a regular basis.

So as I will start with the full sound library on the local drive and will maybe go back and delete parts that I'm definitely not using as time moves on.

Now on to installing Superior Drummer, EZ Bass, and EZ Drummer...
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
Okay, Logic without the soundlibrary attached is...completely crippled.
Click to expand...

Yeah...

Boudoir Guitar said:
So...it appears you have to keep all of your Logic content files (meaning sample loops, sound/instrument samples, etc.) in the same location. No possibility to have some local and some external. Its an all or nothing situation.
Click to expand...

From all I know, this can be done with symbolic links (which are similar to aliases), but as I've never done it myself, you'd have to look it up elsewhere (fwiw, the forum at https://www.logicprohelp.com/ is pretty decent for any Logic related things).
 
Alright, I am going to need to look into the whole alias/symbolic Link stuff (initial quick search shows plenty of YouTube vids explaining their use).

Installing Superior Drummer was similar, in that if I wanted the Core library on the internal drive, then the other parts of the library also had to go there. So between Logic, SD3 with core, room, and bleed libraries, and EZ Bass, I'm already up to 250ish gigs of space used on the internal drive. I should be able to simply delete 40+ gigs of Logic's sound library easily, but I'd really like to dump the room/bleed libraries of SD off to the external drive as they will only be used during mixing stage which will happen out in the office/studio. No need to carry that 100 gigs of sample data around on the computer itself.

If the simlink approach is a no go, I'll probably just uninstall the room/bleed libraries and re-download/install them only when I have a mixing session requiring them.

Or I may just need to get more comfortable bringing the little SanDisk SSD around with me...
 
fretworn said:
Off topic: i’m new to all these plug-ins that do things for you like Logic’s drummer.

Can you tell me what’s cool (value/utility) about EZ bass for you?
Click to expand...
I got it on sale and haven't used it a ton. The sounds are quite a bit better than the Logic ones I had on my previous Logic install, especially having access to various articulations. I also like being able to set it to DI and run that through HX Native for any dirt/amp/cab/octave sims I wanted to apply, rather than being stuck with pre-processed sounds.
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
So between Logic, SD3 with core, room, and bleed libraries, and EZ Bass, I'm already up to 250ish gigs of space used on the internal drive.
Click to expand...

Can't you just install all the SD and EZ libraries onto your external drive? From all I know, that's an easier process than with the Logic library. Also, they will likely work fine with aliases (which IMO are easy to deal with). Just move the libraries to your external drive and place an alias to them in the location where the plugins are expecting them. But you might not even have to do that:
www.sweetwater.com

How to Install Superior Drummer 3 Libraries from an External Hard Drive - SweetCare

In this guide, we will show you how to install your Superior Drummer 3 libraries from an external hard drive. The hard drive only contains the sound sample libraries, so you’ll need to download and install the core software, presets, and MIDI libraries using Toontrack Product Manager. If you...
www.sweetwater.com www.sweetwater.com
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
I got it on sale and haven't used it a ton. The sounds are quite a bit better than the Logic ones I had on my previous Logic install, especially having access to various articulations. I also like being able to set it to DI and run that through HX Native for any dirt/amp/cab/octave sims I wanted to apply, rather than being stuck with pre-processed sounds.
Click to expand...
Thank you W!
 
Sascha Franck said:
Can't you just install all the SD and EZ libraries onto your external drive? From all I know, that's an easier process than with the Logic library. Also, they will likely work fine with aliases (which IMO are easy to deal with). Just move the libraries to your external drive and place an alias to them in the location where the plugins are expecting them. But you might not even have to do that:
www.sweetwater.com

How to Install Superior Drummer 3 Libraries from an External Hard Drive - SweetCare

In this guide, we will show you how to install your Superior Drummer 3 libraries from an external hard drive. The hard drive only contains the sound sample libraries, so you’ll need to download and install the core software, presets, and MIDI libraries using Toontrack Product Manager. If you...
www.sweetwater.com www.sweetwater.com
Click to expand...
You are misunderstanding what I am hoping to do. I want to have a portion of the SD sound library on my internal harddrive so that I can open and use SD without having the external harddrive, and another portion that I will only use during mixing sessions stored on the external drive. The challenge is that SD stores all installed sample libraries together in a single folder. If each sample libary had its own folder, of course this would all be simple. From what I can tell, I'd have to make an alias for each individual file within that folder, pointing to the file on the external drive, for my hoped for approach to work...which isn't likely worth the effort.
 
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Boudoir Guitar said:
I want to have a portion of the SD sound library on my internal harddrive so that I can open and use SD without having the external harddrive, and another portion that I will only use during mixing sessions stored on the external drive.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I realized that after posting while re-reading your previous post.

Whether that is doable and worth the effort pretty much depends on the internal folder structure of the SD library, I'd say.

Anyhow, just being curious: What happens in case you just move the files you don't need all the time and then load the corresponding patches into SD? Does it just complain or does it also ask you to locate the files? And in case it's also asking for a location, does it, by any chance, automatically remember the location? This is the way Logics Sampler does it. First load might take a while (or you need to point it to the file in case it's on a non-spotlight-indexed drive), next time it'll instantly find the samples. Same goes for the Space Designer IRs, file locations are written into the patches dynamically. Fwiw, I find that to be an excellent way of sample management (in addition to defining a global location) as you can just move samples around as you see fit.
 
Sascha Franck said:
Yeah, I realized that after posting while re-reading your previous post.

Whether that is doable and worth the effort pretty much depends on the internal folder structure of the SD library, I'd say.

Anyhow, just being curious: What happens in case you just move the files you don't need all the time and then load the corresponding patches into SD? Does it just complain or does it also ask you to locate the files? And in case it's also asking for a location, does it, by any chance, automatically remember the location? This is the way Logics Sampler does it. First load might take a while (or you need to point it to the file in case it's on a non-spotlight-indexed drive), next time it'll instantly find the samples. Same goes for the Space Designer IRs, file locations are written into the patches dynamically. Fwiw, I find that to be an excellent way of sample management (in addition to defining a global location) as you can just move samples around as you see fit.
Click to expand...
The file naming system is not helpful. The amount of trial and error that would be involved with any of this is simply not worth it compared to just re-doing the library installation on the half dozen times a year I care to have access to the room mic and bleed samples. Makes more sense to put thought into how to do that most efficiently than thought into how to identify which samples of the 150 gigs I'd like local and which I'd like remote.
 
Okay, I got the Superior Drummer install to work where I have a core library stored locally allowing SD to work just fine without the external drive attached, and having all of the libraries I might ever want to use stored on an external drive and easily accessed when the external drive is available:

(1). Install the SD plugin
(2). Download each of the libraries you might ever want to use. For me, that was Part 1 (Basic Sound Library), Part 2 (Room mics) and the final Additional Bleed libraries. Save a copy of the Part 1 install file somewhere before installing. Now, install the Part 1 library, followed by all additional libraries you might ever want to use.
(3). Find all of these stored sounds (if you installed in the default internal location, its at Library->Application Support->Superior Drummer->SL Superior Drummer 3). Copy/paste this folder to a spot on your external drive.
(4). Run the Part 1 install file again. Choose "uninstall" initially and go through uninstalling all that work you just put into installing the sound library. Then re-run it and choose "install" and install this library in the defaul location internal hard drive. Don't install any of the other libraries.
(5). Run Superior Drummer (I did this as the standalone, but should work fine if you launch it as plugin since same menu option is available). Go to Settings->Libraries/Paths. click "add libary path(s)". Point it to full library you copied over to your external drive (I put this in the same path on the external drive as on the local drive and pointed to a folder before the one I thought I would need to).

When you originally launched superior drummer if you looked through the mixer you would have seen "no mics routed" on a bunch of channels. After adding the path to the more complete library, you should see at least some of those channels (like OH Cond) now active. If you don't, then open a new project to refresh the path. Now if you detach your external drive and go back and launch superior drummer, you'll be back to having those channels listed as "no mics routed" and everything working just fine. If you plug the drive in in the middle of a superior drummer session, you may need to go reactivate the path as a means of getting it to look again and see that it's there. If you plug the external drive in before launching superior drummer, everything should work fine with no need to referesh the path.
 
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Great description - but man, what a hassle!
It's really beyond me why library makers don't care about such things themselves a bit more.

I mean, I know several folks doing it just like you (and I'll be one of them one day in the not too distant future, too), keeping a sort of barebone library set on the internal drives of their laptops while moving all the elaborated stuff to external drives. And all of them are coming up with at least sort of comparable stories, regardless of what libraries they're using. In my case it's gonna be NIs Komplete Ultimate - and while you can actually move individual libraries to another drive easily, it's still not possible for parts of those libraries (which is what I'd actually like to do with some) as every library comes with a huge container file and no sub directories or smaller containers.
It's actually not much functionality that would be needed, just a search option and dynamically self-updating patch files (as with the EXS). You could then move files around all the time if you wanted, the worst that'd happen would be a somewhat longer initial load time after moving things.

Anyway, let's get to the important bits:
Did you find some time to actually fool around a bit with that machine?
 
Sascha Franck said:
Great description - but man, what a hassle!
It's really beyond me why library makers don't care about such things themselves a bit more.

I mean, I know several folks doing it just like you (and I'll be one of them one day in the not too distant future, too), keeping a sort of barebone library set on the internal drives of their laptops while moving all the elaborated stuff to external drives. And all of them are coming up with at least sort of comparable stories, regardless of what libraries they're using. In my case it's gonna be NIs Komplete Ultimate - and while you can actually move individual libraries to another drive easily, it's still not possible for parts of those libraries (which is what I'd actually like to do with some) as every library comes with a huge container file and no sub directories or smaller containers.
It's actually not much functionality that would be needed, just a search option and dynamically self-updating patch files (as with the EXS). You could then move files around all the time if you wanted, the worst that'd happen would be a somewhat longer initial load time after moving things.

Anyway, let's get to the important bits:
Did you find some time to actually fool around a bit with that machine?
Click to expand...
This one -- it almost just seems like the engineer that handled the installer didn't talk to the engineer that handled routing library paths in the software. The Software is written as if its expected that you might put your sample libraries all over the place. Because, ya know, its a program where a full install is like 250 gigs of samples, so expected that you might need to spray them across multiple drives!

But the installer forces you to install any following sample library in the same spot that you installed the first core library. Which means that I've got the core library double-installed, wasting ~40-some gigs on the external SSD that don't really need to be used. But oh well.

Thankfully Superior Drummer and Logic are really the only two libraries I care about in "portable mode" away from the SSD, so any other sample-heavy plugins will just get the entire library installed on the external drive.
 
Boudoir Guitar said:
This one -- it almost just seems like the engineer that handled the installer didn't talk to the engineer that handled routing library paths in the software.
Click to expand...

It's not just with this one, believe me.
I've been involved in quite some audio software betatests over the last 20+ years (omg, it's really that long...), sample based products included. The amount of some programmer's or development manager's ignorance you're sometimes faced with is just stunning. As if they were running a contest in introducing the most trouble for their users.

As a sort of related example that just happened to me recently: I wanted to install the free version of IK's modo drums. After a while of the Product Manager doing *things* (that I couldn't decipher as there was no progress bars or anything else) it told me my machine wasn't supported (due to lacking AVX instructions, which was nowhere mentioned on their site at that point in time, go figure...). Wasn't happy but ok, my machine is in fact aging. So I closed the thing. It was only 1-2 weeks ago that I was cleaning up my system a bit when I stumbled over the entire sample set for the thing. I have not even once been asked whether I wanted to download it (sure, if the plugin would've actually been installed, I would've needed the sample data, but see above, my machine didn't even make it that far) or where I might like to store the files. And as if that wasn't enough, nested inside that IK folder mess I also found some Syntronik samples that I actually *did* install - but the source zip file never got deleted and the installer didn't inform me there was such a thing, either. In the end, the entire IK folder was kicking in with several GB. Pretty much the same thing with Acustica. Rather large files spread all over the place, no way to consolidate or move them without major hassle (if at all).
Really, these "tactics" are all over the place.
 
Incoming…

Juggling Apples GIF by America's Funniest Home Videos
 
Installation of everything else -- Arturia V-collection, Soundtoys, Helix Native, Melodyne Essential, and 1/2 dozen Waves plugins -- all went smoothly. With those, the full Logic sound library and my forced partial sample install of SD3 (full install of EZ Drummer 2 and EZ Bass), my internal HD is up to 190 gigs. I could probably trim 40 gigs off the Logic sound library installation and be fine, but I'm comfortable with ~300 gigs free (keeping in mind that I also do some photo/video editing on this computer). 256gb internal drive would have required some serious thought to get everything installed the way I have it, because I have had 300 gigs of the internal drive full at times during the various installations. Or it would ahve required sacrificing being able to run Superior Drummer without the external HD attached. All of this is to say that upgrading to the 512 drive was absolutely worth the $200.

One thing I would suggest, this being the first time I've really sat down and set up a new computer specifically for music use and involving installation of a fair amount of software all at once -- take the time to get the ergonomics of the computer sorted before you start installing the music software. Get your preferred mouse/keyboard up and running the way you want with the sensitivity/click-functions etc., that you want; get the desktop/wallpaper/dock looking and organized the way you want; first. Because when you hit a frustration installing a piece of music gear/software AND you're frustrated because right click hasn't been enabled on the mouse yet; AND you can't figure out why there is sometimes a scroll bar on a window and other times not, etc., the cumulative frustration adds together to cloud clear thinking that could otherwise pretty quickly solve the actual issue getting the bit of music kit installed.

The positive side of the large Logic installation is that a lot of its sound library has improved significantly -- orchestral and horn sounds on the old version I was running on the other machine were bad enough I didn't really even feel comfortable using them for basic writing/tracking to later be replaced with something else. These are absolutely good enough for that purpose. I wouldn't want to keep them for a final mix, but usable for to get all the MIDI in place/writing done to later replace with a better sample library. So its nice to have those on the internal drive such that any kind of music wiritng/composing I might want to do can be done on the go without any need for the external drive, and I can later add Big Fish Vintage Horns, or some Spitfire collection or something to the external drive for replacing the Logic sounds with.

Glad to be ready to do some actual music making this weekend!
 
I would truly love an endorsement of peoples’ favorite sample based instruments.

Strings, horns, drums, percussion and pianos.

I’m kind of picky in this department in the past. No familiarity with modern products.

Are there a technical standards ie 44.1k@16bits?
 
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