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Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

Buying or building computers for Hauptwerk, recommendations, troubleshooting computer hardware issues.
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BarryG

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Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostMon Jan 02, 2023 10:15 am

I'm building a new Hauptwerk PC to replace 9-year-old system. Would appreciate advice on how important memory speed is for running Hauptwerk.

Am going sort of all-out. Motherboard is Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX. CPU is Intel i9-13900, 2TB M.2 SSD, with 64GB DDR5 memory (2-32GB sticks).

Ordered DDR5 G.Skill 6000 speed memory that turned out incompatible with motherboard. Returning it and ordering something on official motherboard compatibility list. Slower memories are a bit less expensive, but I'm willing to go higher if Hauptwerk performance will benefit proportionally. Want to be able to run new sample sets offering surround, multiple perspectives, and such.

Currently have this in my Cart at newegg:
G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6000 (PC5 48000) Desktop Memory Model F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5RS

Will appreciate any observations/advice!

Thanks in advance,
Barry
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mnailor

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostMon Jan 02, 2023 11:13 am

I can't answer how much a higher memory clock speed will help, but 96 to 128 GB is necessary to load some of the larger surround samplesets at 20 or 24 bits. I was omitting rank perspectives to load some organs when I had a 64 GB PC.

My i9-12900K with 128 GB of DDR5 3600 MHz memory is good enough for any sampleset I have, all ranks loaded at 24 bit, full releases, with full organ at 96k sample rate using the HW 7 highest audio engine quality.

I set the polyphony limit to 8192 voices and neither the CPU meter nor polyphony ever goes yellow or red during actual playing, although I can force it by mashing forearm chords on Nancy.

My biggest organs include Nancy, Caen 4 Manual Extension, Alessandria, Doesberg, and Billerbeck. All of those can load fully in 96 GB.

So an i9-13900 with 96 GB or 128 GB of DDR5 even at slower 3600 MHz should do better than my machine.
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IainStinson

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostMon Jan 02, 2023 11:26 am

I would recommend having more memory than 64GB as many multi channel sample sets use more when they are loaded in 24 bit quality. Have a look at a motherboard which has less ‘fancy’ audio support as HW works best with semi pro external audio interfaces.

Have you looked at boards like this… https://www.asus.com/microsite/motherboard/Intel-Raptor-Lake-Z790-H770-B760/?

Iain
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mdyde

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostMon Jan 02, 2023 11:39 am

Hello Barry,

I don't have any benchmarks to offer, but for polyphony most modern-ish Hauptwerk systems are likely to be limited by the CPU performance, rather than RAM bandwidth. E.g. for a polyphony of 32768 (the maximum that the polyphony limit setting allows), with stereo samples loaded as uncompressed 24/32-bit audio (the most RAM bandwidth-hungry that Hauptwerk allows), and played at 96 kHz (the highest that Hauptwerk allows), you would theoretically need a memory bandwidth of approximately:

32768 (pipes) x 2 (stereo) x 4 (bytes per sample frame channel) x 96000 = 25165824000 bytes per second.=approx= 25 Gigabytes/second.

That's an upper limit, and in practice, most people would need considerably less than that. Wikepedia lists some example RAM bandwidths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_i ... ess_memory

[As Mark and Iain mentioned, a sufficient quantity of RAM is very important in order to be able to load the largest sample sets. I would go for 128 GB if feasible.]
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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BarryG

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostTue Jan 03, 2023 8:38 am

Thank you Mark, Iain, and Martin!!

You all advise more memory, so I will go to 128GB. Martin's numbers make going with slower (and less expensive) memory also an easy decision.

Thank you, Iain, for your recommendation to consider a different motherboard. I've already started my build, so won't be able to switch, should probably have posted earlier to get suggestions! I plan to use the on-board graphics, but will be using a separate audio interface, a new MOTU Ultralite replacing my original (THE original from MOTU).

I see I've been involved here since 2007. This is my third build of a Hauptwerk PC. I hope it ends up as successfully as the first two.

Again, thank you all for your advice and guidance. This is a wonderfully helpful forum!

Barry
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mdyde

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostTue Jan 03, 2023 8:59 am

Thanks, Barry. You're most welcome.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Organorak

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostFri Jan 13, 2023 4:44 pm

I have a "mere" 24GB on my 12 year old PC. Runs my four manual surround samples in 20bit front and 16bit rear and samples take a couple of minutes to load from SSD.

Were I to get a new PC and fully utilise Martin's recommended 128GB RAM would they take five times as long to load (~128 / 24)? Or does RAM load much faster these days? 10 mins would be tedious!
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mnailor

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostFri Jan 13, 2023 6:26 pm

Most modern PCs would load samplesets faster than any 12 year old PC. Loading from SSD is probably CPU bound on such a "senior" computer. RAM speeds are somewhat faster, but the CPU and SSD are usually bottlenecks for loading, not memory.

I have a 1 year old i9-12900K with 128 GB loading from its internal SSD. Small samplesets load in 10 - 30 seconds, and large ones (around 60 - 90 GB RAM size) load in 2 -3 minutes.

Of course, your smallish samplesets that fit in 24 GB would take my machine less than a minute to load. If you buy a 100 GB sampleset, it will obviously take longer.
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vpo-organist

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostSat Jan 14, 2023 11:40 am

mnailor wrote:I set the polyphony limit to 8192 voices and neither the CPU meter nor polyphony ever goes yellow or red during actual playing, although I can force it by mashing forearm chords on Nancy.

This is the mistake of some people - they limit the polyphony and claim that they can play all sample sets with a mini PC (which is not designed for maximum performance) without any restrictions.
Of course the polyphony never goes into the red area, because you have limited it ;-) Hauptwerk cuts the releases and therefore you can hear how tones drop out especially at low polyphony.
Please set the polyphony to 20000 and do the test with the forearm and the Nancy. It will look different, guaranteed. Then you will see the true CPU performance.
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vpo-organist

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostSat Jan 14, 2023 11:46 am

BarryG wrote:Martin's numbers make going with slower (and less expensive) memory also an easy decision.

I hope for the next Hauptwerk versions that there will be an option to stream the samples directly from a fast NVMe instead of loading the complete sample set into memory. For this case, a very fast RAM could play a role. DDR5 is already the right choice, though.
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mnailor

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostSat Jan 14, 2023 12:01 pm

vpo-organist wrote:
mnailor wrote:I set the polyphony limit to 8192 voices and neither the CPU meter nor polyphony ever goes yellow or red during actual playing, although I can force it by mashing forearm chords on Nancy.

This is the mistake of some people - they limit the polyphony and claim that they can play all sample sets with a mini PC (which is not designed for maximum performance) without any restrictions.
Of course the polyphony never goes into the red area, because you have limited it ;-) Hauptwerk cuts the releases and therefore you can hear how tones drop out especially at low polyphony.
Please set the polyphony to 20000 and do the test with the forearm and the Nancy. It will look different, guaranteed. Then you will see the true CPU performance.


But the polyphony meter does go into the yellow and red when you exceed the polyphony limit, indicating when it has dropped releases or sustain samples. When it's inside the green range, there are no voices being dropped, or perhaps very rarely.

Not a mistake -- Nancy doesn't use the polyphony limit on my machine *unless* I use my forearms. And of course I tested with the max limit of 32k. Yes, that gives me glitches when I play 15 - 20 note "chords" 4 - 8 times a second with literally all stops and couplers drawn, but I don't have any music that calls for that. In tutti playing of actual music on Nancy, the instrument never even gets close to the 8k limit. I set the limit that low so the polyphony meter's high water mark tells me something useful, like giving me a warning that a Windows update has messed up the performance tuning again.

Specifically, a brutal forearm test (a ruler actually to press accurately) of 15 note chords with pedal, at gradually increasing speeds and holding for long releases, with MIDI playback to repeat consistently, on Nancy with 4 perspectives:

At 96k/512 the polyphony limit was 8k to keep the CPU meter below the red.
At 96k/1024 the limit was 10k.
At 48k/256 the limit was 15k.
At 48k/512 the limit was 20k.

During normal playing at 96k/512, the 8k limit doesn't drop any voices.
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vpo-organist

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Re: Advice for DDR5 memory speed, new PC build

PostSat Jan 14, 2023 12:28 pm

OK, thanks a lot for the info. That was important information for me to properly evaluate the i9-12900K.

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