Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards can you run a vst from an sd card?

This may be a dumb - or even nonsensical - question, but I cannot find a definite answer, despite looking on some forums such as gearslutz.

I've expanded the sound range offered by my Roland DP by connecting a laptop with VSTi's.

The system is running fairly well on a 4gb RAM, 2.2ghz dual core Acer laptop. The recording program is Reaper, and I have some Native Instruments & EWQL plug-ins (VSTi's?).

The thing is, I'm already running low on hard disk (there are just over 70gb left) so I was wondering if I could run some sampled instruments from an SD card - those used for cameras etc, which now have up to 64gb.

SD cards are way too slow for this purpose.

ahh, what a pity. Thanks anyway.

Looks like the only solution's going to be a pc 'tower' type just for music. This laptop is barely coping as it is, and there's only 1 USB port that works - everything has to go through that: usb audio, midi, the dongle etc.

And isn't the internal hdd going to get over-used (and possibly breakdown more quickly) through constant audio streaming - or are the current sounds always in RAM?

Just wise up and get a Mac.
Remember....a Mac on credit is better than 10 PC's for cash.

Yeah - that's been a plan for years now - ever since I demoed my brothers macbookair a few years ago with my gear and found zero latency (or as near as makes no matter). No messing about for hours & hours (or in my case years) with drivers and system conflicts.

I was just thinking that a desktop pc would be more flexible, adaptable and cheaper

Check out the Mac Mini...

Yes Mac mini. The new i7 mini is really powerful. Just add the extra ram to top it up to 16gb with a fusion drive and you set.

If toddy is seeking to run from an SD card, it seems that economy is his goal.
If so, why buy a Mac? It's the very antithesis of economy.
All he needs is a bigger disk drive. $100 or less.

Yes - I've just been looking on ebay (Uk) and there are 100s of offers with 'refurbished':

-2.8 or 3ghz dual or quad core CPU
-500 gb or 1tb 7200rpm hdd
-4 or 8 GB RAM
-good sound & video cards
-several USB ports etc.
-Windows 7

These cost between £100 - £200. There are so many, so relatively cheap because of the multitudes of midnight gamers, probably. So you can get a good deal off the back of those gentlemen.

This will perhaps be the best solution.

Do soundcards make a difference? Are they worth investing in on a laptop for this sort of thing?

Yes, that's the way it seems. Until you gain experience. Always been like this.
PC's initial cost is less. Cost much more in the long run. Keeps grabbing money and time from you. Never quite doing what you want it to do. Always fooling around.
Mac's initial cost is more. Less in the long run. Doesn't grab your time and money in your life just to make it work for something.

I understand having to keep cost down. I'm on a cheap PC right now because of that. From the time I bought it. I knew it wasn't anything permanent. I wouldn't have bought Ivory if it didn't include disks for Mac.
I've got an old Power Mac sitting in a bedroom. The only thing wrong with it is that it's obsolete. That's all.

That doesn't make sense.
How is a Mac less expensive? They're ALWAYS more expensive. Much more.

You need to re-read what I wrote.

I did. It still doesn't make sense.

DOH!

Well, although I fall on your side of the argument, Macmacmac, I can certainly see what rnaple is saying, and even agree with that point of view, up to a point. It's the Fairy Liquid thing, isn't it?

The adverts used to say: Ok you pay more for Fairy Liquid, but look at all the extra plates it's washed....so it works out cheaper in the long run.

But frankly, I never believed it, and I wouldn't dream of buying Fairy Liquid when I can buy the white label stuff for less than half the price.

The only time that I completely circumvented my usual cheap-skate attitude was exactly here, in buying a DP. The extra money I paid for the Roland was worth it - and then some. But not for anything else, though - not shirts & trousers, not breakfast cereals (no way!!) , not toilet paper, not bottled cola, not even computers: I always end up with the cheapest on offer.

Toddy.... Have you noticed that since they came out with windows8. That windows 7 is starting to goof up? That is not a coincidence. I've seen it over and over. Those updates? ms knows what they are doing. They are very good at what they do.

Read his second post....

"This laptop is barely coping as it is, and there's only 1 USB port that works - everything has to go through that: usb audio, midi, the dongle etc."


He needs more than a hard drive..

You are right Plinky88 - the computer works, but on a shoestring. The USB problem is serious - I've already repaired the one existing port - there was another one but it is defunct physically and doesn't even work when soldered to a terminal either (software or internal problem).

There are frequent crashes (midi failures usually) because the one USB port is having to handle all these data streams. Also, this USB is probably going to fail at some point (re routed soldered terminals in laptops are bound to fail sooner or later - and I use it as a portable for work as well).

Re W7, rnaple said: Have you noticed that since they came out with windows8. That windows 7 is starting to goof up? That is not a coincidence. I've seen it over and over.

Well that sort of thing happened with W95/98 but they were ALWAYS crap, remember? Ditto Windows 2000. But XP has held up better - especially since SP2.

I do hope you are wrong on this in the case of W7 because it has been much better than all the previous ones, XP included. Windows 7 is brilliant really as an all purpose, virtually universal o/s. I've been very impressed with it, to be honest. But I don't feel like changing to W8 at the moment.

Either a Mac or a PC will be more expensive than finding a way to use a way to use what you've already got. ;-) But if you're looking to buy a new computer for music use, Mac is not "ALWAYS more expensive. Much more." Sometimes it is more competitive than you think.

There was just a thread that touched on this on another forum. It depends on what you're looking to do. We were talking about a live performance rig. The Mac may be pricier out of the box, but it may not need the audio interface you'd need on Windows, so that can wipe out some of the "savings," and Mainstage is $30, whereas the closest thing to Mainstage on Windows is Cantabile at $130 so that's another $100 "advantage" that may be wiped out; and Mainstage includes 20 gig of high quality sampled sounds, whereas a comparable library would still be an additional purchase on the PC. So the Mac "premium" may not always be what someone might expect... in some cases the Mac "price penalty" could be substantially reduced or possibly even eliminated.