Akai Force VERY limited memory for audio recording

WarriorLite wrote:Sorry, what memory? I would have thought that memory is bypassed from the equation when streaming.

As for undo, I was referring to earlier posts in this thread. It was suggested on several occasions that when doing recording contributed to using up the ram, at least at that time, when there was no disc streaming.
It was then believed that streaming would totally sort out the problem of RAM. I wonder if that is the case.

Good to know that sd is ok with streaming. Maybe I'll do some performance tests, because I'm tempted not to go for SSD for a while.

Contrary to what was suggested here, I can't see how I would run into RAM or CPU shortage. That said, everyone works differently and it is 2 years later.

When you first sample something it holds it on the RAM, then you can set that sample to stream from disk or not, then save it to SD/SSD. The space on your SD/SSD is still limits your sample time. The longest I've heard was someone saving a 2½ hr live set.

Akai warns against using many short samples like drums from streaming from disk. But I never tested it to what's the breaking point. Sounds like a cool rainy day project.

If that longest sample on record was in one chunk, presumably, force was central to several external gear - correct me if I am wrong.

Two and a half hours is very long, more than enough for any of reasonable purposes, however, if it all comes the risk of extra instability (yes?) in the middle of the show, an external recorder, given the phone via the USB, might still remain the best option for any serious event.

Also, two and a half hours must have been no less than 270 mbytes at 16bit stereo. So it's 14% of RAM for that gargantuan recording.

If using all internal resources, you could just record into an arrangement. Does it make the device more skitty and prone to collapsing? Is there anything from your performance that could be missed in such an arrangement?

Where do you get that 14% number from? The software eats up around half of the 2 gigs, leaving only about 1+ gigs free for samples, which is your "100%". 10% of 1 gb is 100 mb. And the Force keeps in-memory audio in 32 bit float format, 1 second of stereo is 32/8 * 44100 * 2 = 344 kilos, 1 minute is 20 megs, 1 hour is 1.2 gigs. If you load 1 hour of stereo audio into RAM, you're maxed out. Two hours, no way, you need to use disk streaming.

But a two-hour live set doesn't have to contain two hours of audio data. Repeat the kick drum sample for two hours and you got a two-hour set. Then again, if you're blasting out stuff on 8 audio tracks and lots of keygroup and drum sample tracks, you can use 2 hours of audio data for a 10-minute set.

Just for the record it could've been a 2 hour set. It was over a year ago I read that.

Has any body ever tried to record over 2 hour on the Force?

@ HouseWithoutMouse
Your calculation makes perfect sense, indeed.
And it is fair to assume that force calibrates 0% to the status with system and stuff already in RAM.

@ B-Wise

Just for the record it could've been a 2 hour set. It was over a year ago I read that.

Has any body ever tried to record over 2 hour on the Force?

Recording into force imposes serious limitation on performing live with use of onboard instruments because showing the interface of an instrument interrupts the recording. Still what I will do now is load up a small project that I have, create an arrangement, set it to loop and fire up with recording into sampler on. I will keep an eye on the machine to see when it freezes.
The method is far from real life but will feature essential animation and will focus on RAM essentially.

Still, if anyone has done proper tests before, indeed, sharing the findings would be welcome.

I save my audio files onto a 128 Gb SD card. That has made it really easy to move clips to my PC.

I think its savvy to have the original hard drive be used only for the operating system and plugins.

You can add another internal hard drive, but the SD card is cheap, handy and works well.