Not a big thing but could the long boot-up time be addressed in upcoming FW updates ?

    Hi all


    I hope this post will be taking in good faith and spirit and i trust peope may know from my posts here and on the tgp forum [and the axe forum ] that I *love* my Profiler - I use it for about %70 of my live work and all my studio work. I also have an Axe 2 whcih is also like and use for some live work only.


    Anyway ..... I only have about 4 or so MBritt profiles on my Profiler and nothing else.


    4.0.1 went on smooth and clean.


    Cold-boot time thouhg is now up to 1 min 10 [ by way of comparison, my Axe 2 running Q3 takes 8 secs ]


    It would be great if the KPA boot time could be shortnened.


    Thats all.


    All the best,
    Ben

    Hey Ben, I see no reason why you'd get flamed for such a reasonable and understandable request; many have mentioned this too.


    I've no idea what will happen, but if it's any consolation, the way I look at it is that you shouldn't fire a tube amp up and grind straight away anyway - you either start very softly and work your way up or let it sit and warm up. Either way, it takes a whole lot longer than the KPA's boot time.


    You've probably thought of this already, but hey, I'm just puttin' it out there, bro'.


    Another thing: None of us, AFAIK, is savvy as to the size and complexity of the OS. Perhaps the KAOS files we use for updating give a clue (small), but my guess is that the core functionality might be already housed in the KPA's "firmest" of firmware. Out of my league here, but again, just puttin' this out there.

    I totally agree that regular boot is way too slow. Whether it is possible to do much about it is impossible to know without internal knowledge of the architecture. Without such knowledge it seems to me almost as if the profiler is running a thorough filsystem check during boot regardless of whether it was shut down properly or not. Such a situation could be remedied to some degree by using journalling filesystems that require less periodic maintenance. It could be that the platform isn't fully optimised and is firing processes that aren't strictly necessary. The firmware and data (profiles etc) is limited in size so NVRAM I/O should not be the bottleneck here. It could be that complex data structures are being built and cached at boot-time through a rigorous process that takes a lot of CPU-cycles, but I thought most of that was supposed to be prepared during the first boot after firmware installation/upgrade ... again I'm just guessing from my POV as a software engineer, but with no knowledge of the KPAs internals.

    Quote from Monkey_Man

    the way I look at it is that you shouldn't fire a tube amp up and grind straight away anyway - you either start very softly and work your way up or let it sit and warm up. Either way, it takes a whole lot longer than the KPA's boot time.


    I kind of look at it that way too, but I agree that the boot up process takes far too long and I only have a small hand full of profiles loaded. My Axe-Fx takes about 8 seconds like Ben's. The Helix, a little longer than that. I remember vaguely that the boot time was addressed many firmware revisions ago and it seemed to have improved, but with 3.x and above, the wait time seems to have gotten much longer.

    Booting time becomes an issue when you're on stage and there's a very short mains drop: a tube amp restarts immediately and is just ready, the Profiler reboots.
    For critical uses, an UPS is necessary IMO.