Gear ? for 50+ track scores

I do quite a few full orchestral mock-ups.

I use Finale to write the score, and Sonar for the final audio. When I'm in Finale I try to get the audio as decent as I can, so I don't have to spend too much time on midi editing in Sonar. I use EWQSO patches in the Kompakt player in Finale and Sonar.

Problem is, once I get about 45 patches loaded in Finale I start maxing out my computer. I have a dual core sweetwater creation station with 4 GB's of RAM.

I just wanted to know what any of you guys use for fat projects with lots of tracks and huge softsynths.

Thanks for any replys,

Andy

I am not familiar with the patches that you referenced, but I do know that some virtual instruments may only have one midi channel while others may have up to 16. Are you using one synth per track, or do you have multiple tracks going to one synth?

I also know that it's easier for computers to play audio files rather than play a virtual instrument or softsynth. In the case of virtual instruments, we are asking the computer to "perform" the track, rather than "play back" a recorded track. These performances require much more in terms of system resources.

In my orchestra sessions:

* I may start with maybe 10 or 20 midi tracks and try to get the best sound and performance out of each track.

* I then bounce the individual tracks to individual stereo audio files. This frees up room for more soft synths. I make more synth tracks, and bounce again. I repeat the process until I have all of my synths converted to audio tracks.

* My final mixes are usually multi track sessions containing only audio files.

I hope this helps.

That is also the way I do it. I work with Finale 2007 and Ewql gold and Sonar 6 Producer Edition.

I write the orchestral part in Finale. I check if I like it and then I make mini-scores per groups (woods, brass etc) and I assign multi-layers in Finale to create different patches per instrument. Those tracks I record individually as audio files and later on I combine these tracks again in Sonar to mix it.

I bounce my midi to audio quickly in Sonar, starting with the winds and usually don't have a problem there.
It's Finale that seems to be the biggest problem for me, where you can't go to audio- though you can import 1 audio file in Finale '08.

45 Tracks? I do full orchestra recordings all the time, and I never have close to that many tracks! But I lay them all down in Logic, without bothering with Finale. And it sounds like Finale is the bottleneck in your situation.

Ben Messer
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