10-16-2017, 01:53 PM
Well, if you've got money to burn on hardware, then yes, all of the above. An SSD will reduce load times and increase the amount of DFD sampling instruments you can run simultaneously.
If you do run into a disk access bottleneck, though, you might want to check out the memory options in your sampler. For example, many samplers allow you to set how much of each sample always stays pre-loaded in RAM. If you've got the RAM to accommodate, you can increase the size of the pre-loaded chunks. This relaxes the real time requirements of disk access and might allow you to fit in more instruments.
Finally, you might be able to optimize the sample libraries themselves. Some samplers allow lossless compression (e.g. .ncw for Kontakt, FLAC for ARIA/Sforzando and UVI), which decreases disk access at the cost of slight additional CPU load. High bit depth samples can often be normalized and dithered down to 16-bit with zero audible degradation (unless you'll be doing something that benefits from a lower noise floor, like adding LOTS of overdrive). I'm in the midst of doing this to Miroslav Philharmonik, and it looks like the original 7 GB library will take up less than a third of it once I'm done. Naturally, these types of tweaks tend to be a hassle, and if you can fix your issues with a not-too-expensive hardware upgrade, that's most likely a better idea.
If you do run into a disk access bottleneck, though, you might want to check out the memory options in your sampler. For example, many samplers allow you to set how much of each sample always stays pre-loaded in RAM. If you've got the RAM to accommodate, you can increase the size of the pre-loaded chunks. This relaxes the real time requirements of disk access and might allow you to fit in more instruments.
Finally, you might be able to optimize the sample libraries themselves. Some samplers allow lossless compression (e.g. .ncw for Kontakt, FLAC for ARIA/Sforzando and UVI), which decreases disk access at the cost of slight additional CPU load. High bit depth samples can often be normalized and dithered down to 16-bit with zero audible degradation (unless you'll be doing something that benefits from a lower noise floor, like adding LOTS of overdrive). I'm in the midst of doing this to Miroslav Philharmonik, and it looks like the original 7 GB library will take up less than a third of it once I'm done. Naturally, these types of tweaks tend to be a hassle, and if you can fix your issues with a not-too-expensive hardware upgrade, that's most likely a better idea.