How do you setup your orchestra?

While upgrading your drives to SSDs are the easiest option, you might also want to consider a newer setup depending on how old or low end your current solution is.

Newer memory (DDR5) and motherboards provide way faster speeds and more bandwidth, which typically means faster loading times.

Also, remember to batch / re-save your libraries where they're installed (although I don't think this is needed for 1st party NI libraries).

One thing I must say though. The larger your project, the more you need to realize that there's so much data, that it will take longer to load things and set them up. Grab a coffee or take a short walk and get back to it whenever you put your project to load.

Doing things from an external USB 3 drive is going to be your first problem. Is it, at the very least, an SSD drive? The interface should also be USB-C.

Another thing you could do is to kill off unnecessary services before you start your project. It takes half a lifetime to find out what unnecessary services on your computer are but, here is a basic summary :

01) Windows Update

02) Program Compatibility Assistant

03) Anything with the word "Telemetry" on it

04) Services to do with the software that you have installed on your computer : eg. Adobe maintenance/update service; etc.

These services continually run in the background on your computer, hogging your resources.

If possible, dedicate your computer to music production only. Have nothing but the bare minimum installed on the computer for non-music stuff (eg. web browser for online research, etc.)

One last tip : anti-virus software is probably the biggest resource pig you can have on your computer - if you have that installed, temporarily disable it before you start your project - or, even better, get rid of it altogether.

I would get inspired by Sequis and then use Symphony Series Brass especially. Action Strikes and Action Strings 1 and 2 are the next step. And then Session Strings Pro for a spicy add on.

Big fan here of Sonuscore’s The Orchestra Complete 3’s Ensemble Engine for building up layers and movements. The preset examples are great but the real power is in building phrases and motifs and articulations from scratch and then being able to easily coordinate those within an ensemble set. Add some of Heaviocity’s “Damage” series suites for impact and amazing things start to happen.

I like adding some orchestral sounds to the background of my music. It adds a lot of atmosphere and depth to songs. Most of the libraries sound good on their own and don't require a lot of mixing. What works well for me is appropriate levelling and panning of these sounds so they don't overlap in the mix. I'd also be careful with the reverb because huge orchestral sounds might make your track a bit muddy.

Good Luck✨

Surely this has been said; but though it’s difficult in Live (though it may be easier now - I don’t use it), the thing to do is load up your template and then disable the instrument plugins for things you aren’t using. That means clear all clips on that track and disable all plugins on a track including effects. Enable only what you need. Also having your library on the fastest drive on the fastest bus is the way. So an nvme, preferably a PCie drive, but also Thunderbolt 3 or 4 or USB4 are good. I’m not saying one can’t work with slower usb protocols, but you may end up increasing the size of your pre-loading buffers in Kontakt to do so, and then RAM becomes more of an issue. Also, committing tracks is always helpful - you can render an instrument track and then disable the instrument, which helps a lot.

The more heavy iron you can throw on, the better. Also, really check your extraneous process list and kill what you can. Cloud backups in the background can grind your workflow. Freeze tracks as you go, it is still ultimately flexible but you have given the track(s) you are working on right then the horse power.

Remember you are not trying to benchmark the machines performance, you are creating music.

Get the impediments out of the way and... Play Play Play baby!!! 😀