I'd like to read the exact items needed to build a great PC slave for VE Pro. Which motherboard etc, how much RAM, how many hard drives, total cost? And may I suggest products currently available in Europe.

The VE Pro on PC slaves is going to heip us keep our main computers going for more years. I'm on Logic with a 1st generation MacPro (4 x 2.66)

my suggestion would be to get (or copy) a prooved audio system, eg. http://www.xi-machines.com/xi_de/xi_systeme_audio_de.html

latency / voices / CPU / instruments ( i can't find the figures @ 128, but you get the picture)

core2quad Q9650: 256 / 450 / 96% / 13 -  512 / 670 / 98% / 18 - 1024 / 800 /96% / 23

single core i7 950: 256 / 890 / 65% / 27 - 512 / 1140 / 66% / 32 - 1024 / 1250 / 63% / 36

dual XEON 5550: 256 / 1000 / 63% / 30 - 512 / 1300 / 63% / 36 - 1024 / >1500 / 60% / 40

hth, christian

Christian, thanks for your post suggesting estimated latency, voices, instruments etc. in the post. However, how many voices would be typically used for one instrument with a a couple of matrixes loaded. I would like to run 6 instances of the Vienna instruments - so that I can complete a woodwind section without having to render the audio down and do each instrument seperately. I would like to do 6 instruments in realtime I.e Piccolo, Flute, Cor Anglais, Clarinet, Bassoon, Contrabassoon. Let's take for example a woodwind romantic symphony such as Brahms. What spec computer would I have to have in order to load play the all the woodwind parts simultaneously without having to reload instruments and render down to audio?

Personally I think this is the best way to work. Orchestrate and sample each of the four sections of the orchestra seperately (Brass, Woodwind, Strings, and Percussion) then once you have those rendered down to audio they can be mixed as four tracks. Of course if you are lucky enough to have 4 computers or 1 mega computer then that's preferable but a luxury that most of us cannot afford.

Stephen

understanding 6 instances as 6 channels in VE PRO i wouldn't care too much about CPU at all - every avarage core2duo, core2quad or i7 computer will do ....  available memory would be the main consideration (how large presets do you want to load).

say A+B cell plus P cell is filled plus release samples is 6 voices per note playing, multiply with the number of notes playing simultaneously from a single instrument, multiply with the number of instruments ...

(please note instruments like piano, harp, guitar can have many and long release samples playing)

in a nutshell: you shouldn't need too many or too giant machines - just have memory available for conveniently loading larger presets and matrices ...

christian

Hi, I'm planning on getting a PC slave w/ Windows 7 and VEP. Are there any calculations regarding RAM usage on the DVD products?

For example: to have all the samples from the "Brass 1" package (St + Ext), how much RAM does that take up? I'm also wondering if one machine is enough for having all (or almost) samples loaded from 5 DVD products (std + Ext): WWI, WW2, Brass I, Orch I & II.

Thanks much

I would be very interested to have your opinion on the speed of memory - is this as important as the capacity for sampling. The price per gigabyte is more expensive for the newer memory.Therefore if one had a budget of £170 to spend on memory the following would be possible.

2. Dual Channel DDR3 (1600mhz) memory. For £170 you can get about 8GB

3. Dual Channel DDR3 (1300mhz) memory. For £170 you can get about 9GB (average - you wouldn't want to put 3x 3gb sticks in)

4. Dual Channel DDR2 (1066mhz) memory. For £170 you can get about 10GB (again 10gb is not exactly a good amount to put in but this is just a comparison to get an idea)

5. Dual Channel DDR2 (667mhz) memory. For £170 you can get about 12GB

Ignoring the maximum motherboard capacities of a motherboard which would be the prefered option?! Of course if you wanted lots of memory such as 24gb the options would be considerable narrowed because most motherboards don't have enough capacity. I also guess that the bus speed of the computer will also have an impact because it may bottleneck. The bus speeds are better on the newer motherboards. Given that the user would not go beyond 16gb I think i would recommend option 2 because the motherboards are much cheaper and and memory is slightly cheaper.

to shed some light on the terms and prerequisites:

- DDR2 or DDR3 memory as well as its maximum frequency is detirmined by the motherboard (chipset, memory controller)

- triple or dual channel describes the number of memory modules which can be accessed parallel by the memory controller

eg: a core2duo board accepting dual channel DDR2 @ 800 up to 8 GB, or i7 motherboard accepting triple channel DDR3 @ 1066 up to 24 GB

between 1) and 2) there should be no difference in price per GB and if a motherboard allows triple channel you should always use triples of RAM sticks.

i7 9xx is always 1066 except the i7 965 and 975, which is 1333 (there is no i7 procesor so far using 1600).

only 3 modules per processor keeps the 1333, having 6 modules per 1 processor always drops speed down to 1066,

i7 9xx is always triple channel, i7 8xx and i5 is always dual channel, all i7 and i5 need DDR3 (unbuffered)

finally: not only capacity, also speed is important for sampling (loading times, number of archievable voices)

hth, christian

@jammusique said:

 Are there any calculations regarding RAM usage on the DVD products?

For example: to have all the samples from the "Brass 1" package (St + Ext), how much RAM does that take up?

to load each and every sample from the brass I collection would need 8-9 GB RAM - what makes it pretty obvious that you can't calculate it that way (= number of samples from a collection x 64 KB preload buffer).

the more reasonable aproach is to create an orchestral template from your collections which could start as low as 6.5 GB for a basic preset using the super package (all VI collections).

depending on the type of arrangement you maybe need to add another 6 GB for orchestrating a certain piece depending on instrumentation and character of the arrangement.

luxurious presets (for a more generic or flexible use) would go up to 20 GB, a few monumental pieces could need 30-32 GB (again: using all possibly needed articulations for a certain piece from the full super package, not considering any optimize process).

you get the picture, christian

Hi CM

Thanks for the precious info! I'm working more and more with VSL and am understanding the importance of workflow. I need to have almost everything loaded, so the time between idea and realization is minimal, so as not to kill the inspiration and lose precious time.

I'm sure that I could get by with the "Luxurious" preset that you mention. Now, would  1 top on line CPU be powerful enough to push all those 20 GB of samples (via VEP)?

All best,

jam

to be honest - with performance tests we focussed on MIR during the past time, but if you consider say an i7 975 as one top on line CPU i can hardly imagine you will run out of CPU before running out of memory (which is 24 GB for the i7) ...

christian

[Y]

I know I'll be the outsider on this thread but I'm quite happy with my recent MacMini purchases. I bought the basic model (2.26gHz), updated the internal HD to 7.k RPM and the RAM to 8 GB - costs about $1130. The actual RAM for sampling is then closer to 7GB, but that's still pretty good I think. They are super quiet, super small and from what I read very energy efficient. I run Snow Leopard, VEPro with VSL and Kontakt on them without any issues. So I think if you don't need one big machine but can go with "smaller" (7GB RAM is still pretty sizable) increments to your setup, this is a viable option.