IK Total Studio Max

[auggybendoggy2]

Are some IK instruments more ideal for SSD or NvME? For example, synths vs sampler? Any help here would be appreciated as I'm beginning to move to faster drives.

[Promidi]

What I would do is put your Total Studio Max content and samples on the fastest hard drive that is not your system disk. (That goes for any Sample based VSTi)

If the VSTi hard wires your content to the C: drive, you can always make what’s called a junction link. A junction link where your operating system thinks and treats the folder as if it's on the C: drive, but the data itself is actually stored elsewhere.

[auggybendoggy2]

So what would you do, put shortcuts in the C: and use a Jlink to retreive the actual plugin on a a faster drive?

Couldn't you just add the new directory to your plugin list?

But my original question is really about vst synths vs samplers - do synths need fast drives?

[Peter_IK]

I would only put the sound libraries on a faster drive. The plugins themselves are fine on your system drive in the default directories. I typically will have the plugins installed into the default folders but any sample libraries will be on another drive, preferably a fast one since most sample libraries use disk streaming. You don't have to set up any simlinks or similar, as programs like SampleTank and such let you tell them where your sound libraries are located.

[Promidi]

As Sampletank 4 allows one to specifically define the content location, I have moved them off the c: drive. (Split between two other drives)

I have also put the VST DLLS files on my D drive. The VST3 files are on my C:\ drive (Some VST3 plugins prefer this).

Physically modelled synthesisers can be anywhere as they do not involve the loading of that much data to load their patches.

The only time I would use junction links (which are not actually shortcuts) are for those sample based synthesisers where you cannot specifically define the content location (a rarity these days)

Physically modelled synthesisers do not really need fast drives.

Note: All three of my PC’s internal drives are SSDs. Only the external backup drive is a spindle drive.

[DarkStar]

The VSTis are not that big (ST4 is ~33 MB) The big disk user in the .pak file in the program installation folder. Over 600 MB for ST4.

-----------
And that started me looking ...
Syntronik has another 600 MB there too. MODO Bass 150 MB TR5 over 1 GB. And, as for AT5

To my simple mind these seems excessively huge. I can only think that it is the resizeable graphics that is taking up the space, but I could be 100% wrong. I cannot imagine that the basic functionality needs that amount of code.

I also think that there is a lot of common code 9Especially for the effects) between the various products and have suggested to iKM that this code is ripped out into a library .pak, accessible by the various products.