Hello,

I basically replaced my old G5 with the iMac, so it's doing the exact same thing (but with much more room to breathe and ability to add more if necessary).  The iMac houses 72 Kontakt instruments: string & winds from EastWest Platinum, VSL Epic Horns and a bunch of Storm Drum 1 instruments.  I'm NOT hosting each instrument in an instance though - I have 5 Kontakt instances (each with 16 instruments loaded) running in a single 64-bit server.

It works flawlessly, and as I mentioned - the iMac never breaks a sweat.  I have all the samples running on a FW800 enclosure which contains 4 10kRPM Velociraptor drives.  I was a little worried about Firewire bandwidth but it's been fine; the crucial thing is access time, and the Velociraptors are great for that.

Hope this helps - the iMac does make a great slave machine!

Jim

You're more than welcome.  FW800 has plenty of bandwidth for what I'm asking of that machine; again, it's the drive latency (seek time) that's more important.  I wouldn't run my main machine off FW800, but for a slave it's fine.  Also, the libraries are spread across 3 drives on the slave (strings/winds/brass/perc), so that helps too.  I would definitely NOT use the internal drive for samples.

The iMac only has 8 GB RAM in it right now, but that's adequate; the G5 it replaced only had 8 GB as well, and for what I'm asking of it, that's fine.  I'm running all the keyswitch patches of every solo & string group from EW Platinum, which pretty much covers every string articulation in that whole library.  I'm also running most of the Platinum wind articulations as well plus all the special effects, runs, grace notes, etc.  Then from Epic Horns I have all the commonly used stuff (sustains, staccatos, schmett, slow/fast legatos, glisses, etc.) and finally, all the big drums  & ethnic perc from Storm Drum 1.  Total is 80 instruments loaded at once (sorry, I was wrong in my earlier post) - 16 x 5 Kontakt instances.

As of Kontakt 4.1 and the new rapid load feature (forget the term they use), it loads AMAZINGLY fast.  The entire 80 instruments (saved as a single VE Pro "metaframe" on the iMac) loads in less than a minute.  On the G5 I think it took 9 minutes, so I'd call that an improvement!  My main Mac runs ~225 more Kontakt, VSL & EW PLAY instruments, and that whole template loads in around 1.5 minutes.  I also run the majority of LA Scoring Strings on my other slave - a MacBook Pro.  It all works incredibly well, except for a few minor issues with VE Pro & Logic (to do with latency compensation when bouncing) - but those are easily worked around.

I absolutely LOVE this setup, and it has fundamentally improved my workflow!

Hope that helps,

A high end imac, particularly the i7 version, is going to blow away a G5 in terms of performance.  It hurts to give up things like internal drive space, but for a slave machine FW800 will be fine for many things.

Hey Guys,

Sorry for the delayed response - it's been a crazy few days.  Here we go:

1. Yes, most of my EW stuff is in the old Kontakt format; I do use Storm Drum 2 heavily and EWQL Pianos on occasion, both of which are PLAY libraries - but those are on my main Mac (not the iMac slave). They work perfectly for me, but I do prefer working with Kontakt.

2. Yes, I absolutely recommend a current iMac over a G5 - the iMac will run circles around a G5.  As long as it's a slave machine, you should be OK with the lack of PCIe slots and drive bays.  As for my MacBook Pro, it's a 17" Core2Duo with 8 GB RAM.  I swapped the optical drive for a second hard drive (a 500 GB Hitachi Travelstar at 7200 rpm) and it works great for LASS.  I actually use the Lite version as LASS is just one of my string libraries - but that being the case, I have every articulation loaded for both 1st chair & sections, no problem.

3. The latency workaround I mentioned is to counteract a bug between Logic & VE Pro (and this may have been fixed in the new version just released - haven't tested it yet).  What happens is that you have to set your VE Pro plugin buffer to 'none' before doing an offline bounce - otherwise the resulting file will be out of sync by the buffer amount.  The other workaround is to turn off Logic's delay compensation before bouncing.  No big deal really, although it would be great if it were fixed!

4. Back to the iMac as slave - I'm using a 4-bay "Burly" drive enclosure by www.macgurus.com.  It used to be a straight SATA version but I modified it with a pair of FW800 bridge boards so I could use it with the iMac.  That's 4 drives on the iMac's single FW800 bus, but it's been working perfectly streaming all 72 loaded instruments as a slave (EW Platinum strings & winds, VSL Epic Horns & EW Storm Drum 1 kits).

Again, I wouldn't use an iMac as a main computer, but it makes a great slave!

Cheers,

@whinecellarstudio said:

Again, I wouldn't use an iMac as a main computer, but it makes a great slave!

Just curious as to the reason behind this: if it can stream 72 loaded instruments without problems, and assuming there's plenty of RAM and no need for a PCI audio card, why wouldn't the iMac make a good main computer? I'm hesitating myself between the iMac and Mac Pro and would be interested in the reasons for avoiding the iMac as a main machine.

@whinecellarstudio said:

3. The latency workaround I mentioned is to counteract a bug between Logic & VE Pro (and this may have been fixed in the new version just released - haven't tested it yet).  What happens is that you have to set your VE Pro plugin buffer to 'none' before doing an offline bounce - otherwise the resulting file will be out of sync by the buffer amount.  The other workaround is to turn off Logic's delay compensation before bouncing.  No big deal really, although it would be great if it were fixed!

This problem is actually due to Logic not acting properly on latency changes as other hosts do. We haven't given up on finding a workaround for it, but the current version should still behave the same.

One thing you might try experimenting with is setting the I/O Buffer Size and the Process Buffer Range of Logic to the same size, like this:
- I/O Buffer Size: 512, Process Buffer Range: Small
- I/O Buffer Size: 1024, Process Buffer Range: Medium
- I/O Buffer Size: 2048, Process Buffer Range: Large

Hopefully that helps with the bouncing situation on your side.

@Talino said:

Just curious as to the reason behind this: if it can stream 72 loaded instruments without problems, and assuming there's plenty of RAM and no need for a PCI audio card, why wouldn't the iMac make a good main computer? I'm hesitating myself between the iMac and Mac Pro and would be interested in the reasons for avoiding the iMac as a main machine.

I suppose it all has to do with the type of music you write and what demands you place on your main computer.  I tend to write larger scores that are really involved and I use a LOT of instruments at one time (up to 300), so I need the bandwidth that only an 8-core Mac Pro with lots of SATA drives can provide.   If there's even a slight chance that you'll work on a larger project, I'd steer clear of an iMac if only for the hard drive bottleneck.

If your needs aren't that ambitious and/or you don't use a bunch of streaming sample libraries, then an iMac might work for you.  In that case,  the 27" model with an i7 quad-core processor is actually a really good machine.  Furthermore, you can have an external SATA port added by OWC, which would give you up to (2) internal drives and an external as well - leaving FW open for further expansion.

Hope that helps!

Hi Karel,

Respectfully, I still don't get that - there are no "latency changes" involved.  I always run my sessions at consistent settings; it's not like I'm changing anything while working.  It's simply that any VE Pro buffers (1 or 2) get added to the bounced file; setting it to 'none' or disabling Logic's latency comp fixes it.  I don't mean to sound at all argumentative, it's just that turning off VE Pro's additional buffers fixes the problem, so it seems logical (no pun intended) that the problem is on that side.  Enough of that though - my knowledge stops at C+ programming, so I leave it to you to figure it out ;-)  Besides, as I mentioned, the workaround is 100% dependable and very easy.

As for working at higher buffer settings in Logic (512, 1024 or 2048), I don't see that as being a realistic option for anyone who wants to record their parts in real time as latency becomes a problem once you pass 128 for most folks?

Thanks as always for weighing in Karel!

It does. Thanks a lot!

@Talino said:

It does. Thanks a lot!

Was this in reply to my post?

@whinecellarstudio said:

As for working at higher buffer settings in Logic (512, 1024 or 2048), I don't see that as being a realistic option for anyone who wants to record their parts in real time as latency becomes a problem once you pass 128 for most folks?

The point is that you can try to set these settings before bouncing (rather than having to set the latency for each plugin). As absurd as it may sound, it could actually help. I would try it myself, but haven't been able to reproduce this here.

@Karel said:

The point is that you can try to set these settings before bouncing (rather than having to set the latency for each plugin). As absurd as it may sound, it could actually help. I would try it myself, but haven't been able to reproduce this here.

Ah - gotcha.  I actually find it's easiest to simply use the key command to toggle Logic's latency compensation just before bouncing any VE Pro tracks - works like a charm 😉

Thanks again Karel,