Hi all, new here. I am considering buying VEPro, it looks like such a super solution.
I have Pro Tools in an older 2.4GHz MacPro Quad with 6GB memory. I currently use OS 10.6.4. I am running a few VI and sample libraries, most are in my signature plus a few others, and I have my eye on several more I would like to acquire.
Of course, Pro Tools chokes pretty soon after several instances of VI's are running. My big concern is that I am currently studying, on my own, orchestral composition, arranging and MIDI orchestration etc. What I want to avoid, is getting to a point where I am wanting to try examples, but then run into computer/DAW problems that will distract my attention to what I should be doing. I already know Pro Tools will choke on a heavy sample load if there are other VI's as well.
So enter VEPro. My questions have to do with connectivity.....to slave or not to slave?
I also have an older MacBook Pro laptop. It is a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB memory. Many of my VI's are already installed on it.
Will this laptop be a powerful enough computer to use as a slave, with VEPro on it and all of my VI's and sample libraries?
Or would I be better off running VEPro in my MacPro, the same computer as my ProTools DAW?
I really cannot afford yet another computer at this point so it will be one or the other for now. I suppose another option would be to get an iMac to host Pro Tools and use the MacPro as the slave, but really I cannot afford it at the moment.
Lastly, in the case of a slave. Is the audio that passes over the LAN connection, from slave to DAW, the same or better quality that could be achieved by connecting the slave to the DAW using the optical audio connection?
Thanks.
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Mac's, Pro Tools etc
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You might consider adding more RAM. 6GB is not much for ProTools AND Omnisphere AND Superior. I'd say do that if you can, then run VEP on the same computer.
You can absolutely slave the MacBook Pro , but don't expect it to do everything. Again, RAM will be an issue. But there are no audio quality issues over LAN.
Cheers.
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Thanks dragsquares. I will look into more RAM. I was told Pro Tools cannot access more than 4GB anyway, but I gather that once I have VEPro, it will be able to access more RAM. Is that correct? Also when you say about the MacBook Pro as slave "but don't expect it to do everything"........ would I have VEPro in both the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro, and be sort of sharing the duties?
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VEPro uses its own memory. The 64-bit version will address all of your remaining memory, and run lots of Vienna Instruments along with the Spectrasonics stuff. Not sure about your other stuff.
And yes, you'd have it in both computers and dedicate some things to the laptop.
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Thanks. I bought my Vienna key today and have downloaded the VEPro software....so tomorrow maybe I will give it a go.
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I would say use the more robust machine as slave, and definitely expect a bottleneck trying to use the MacBook's internal drive for streaming. If you absolutely need to keep PT on the big machine, get a dedicated drive or four for streaming to the small machine. same goes for streaming on any machine, dedicate drives to tasks, don't use the applications/OS drive, it's too high maintenance and a potential bottleneck. You might consider running VE Pro as local host on the big machine as well as LAN on the MacBook.@HighwayChile said:
...Pro Tools in an older 2.4GHz MacPro Quad with 6GB memory... a point where I ... run into computer/DAW problems that will distract my attention to what I should be doing. I already know Pro Tools will choke on a heavy sample load if there are other VI's as well. So enter VEPro. My questions have to do with connectivity.....to slave or not to slave? I also have an older MacBook Pro laptop. It is a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB memory. Many of my VI's are already installed on it. Will this laptop be a powerful enough computer to use as a slave, with VEPro on it and all of my VI's and sample libraries? Or would I be better off running VEPro in my MacPro, the same computer as my ProTools DAW? I really cannot afford yet another computer at this point so it will be one or the other for now.
I would definitely use the resources of both machines given these specs.
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Thanks civilization3. Unfortunately I 1/2 way still don't fully get it. As for my MacPro it has 4 internal drives. At the moment (1) is a dedicated samples HD and (2) are dedicated audio recording drives, with the other the main system drive. I would do what you say about using the MacPro as the slave, being as it is the more robust by far......... however....... the MacBook Pro only has a 5400 HD. I have my doubts this will run Pro Tools very well. I could easily hook up a FW drive to record the sessions to, but I fear the slow seek times etc of the 5400 system drive will cause issues. It seems to me the only way to do this is, in such a way as to have few to no issues, will be to get one or two very stout computers as slaves with a similarly stout computer to record with......host the DAW. Does this seem accurate? Can I at least for now just run VEPro and Pro Tools in the same MacPro while I learn VEPro and also the craft of orchestral composition, MIDI orchestration etc and then look to more computers in the future? With the current 6GB of memory and perhaps if I get more, [i]roughly[/i] how large of an orchestral setup might I get running everything on the same computer?
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when I was using my MacBook Pro, which is the same model as yours, all I did with it was Cubase running 2 maybe 3 instances of Absynth 4 inside of Kore 2, doing some sound design. It held up ok for that but I was at the brink of bringing it down. I know that one instance of BFD2 totally brought the system down. Cubase was installed on that computer and running off of it, but the project files resided on an external 7200 SATA, which I also rendered to.
I have a little experience with an octocore MacPro, 2.93, 24GB. and VE Pro as local host with Cubase 5. Cubase isn't light, on a Mac it's probably worse than PT. Compared to using a master slave setup, sharing the sandbox with Cubase took a lot more away from VE Pro than I would have thought and I was pessimistic.
I have a MacPro quad (2.66, 3GB) as the master machine and I use an external drive by FW for the project files and to render to. I use one slave, the octocore mentioned above. It has four internal drives, three of which are for streaming (NI, BFD2, VSL). My last project was heavy-ish for me and I still maintained low enough latency throughout, and this is a produced sound with a lot of FX on most busses in VE Pro. Not exactly symphonic music, though. I would venture to say that VSL's libraries in VI Pro are more efficient than the other engines I've used, Kontakt, Play. I think if I went for full symphony 100+ pieces and dealt with strings meticulously and detailed, loading full-ish presets, that I would run out of machine at some point.
Let me look at the memory usage and describe this project and you'll have some facts.
I'm using just below 16GB. This is off a fresh startup... Says I'm using around half of my CPU. That's a first.
Winds: Piccolo, flute, alto flute; clarinet, bass clarinet; tenor and bass sax; Bb trumpet (full preset), flugelhorn (fullish), trombone, trbn ensemble and bass trombone. Half of these are Warp IV horns and the full sample loads possible. Piccolo, alto flute, and bass clarinet are VSL standard/full. But for the trbn ensemb, these are solo insts.
Percussion: Glockenspiel, vibes & vibes specials, xylophone & xylophone specials, marimba & marimba specials, lithophone small; timpani, snares, bass drum; crash cymbals, china crash cymbs; and 8 more FX type of sundry percuss. I guess these average to 'medium loads'.
Electric etc: five instances of Absynth 4 (long envelopes of my own design and a major resource hog); Scarbee JBass (heavy); an 18 pc. kit in BFD2 (heavy); 4 more percussion instruments (lite-ish) in Kontakt; XXL TamTam, standard/full; Overdrive Guitar (not that full) with two amp sims and two FX sends besides.
and, the cheapo Appassionata strings that come free with VE Pro. There are five convolution 'verbs from Vienna Suite, and EQ & compression on nearly every channel, exciter on a lot of it, power pan... I'm returning all in all 38 stereo channels to Cubase. NB: my RME card is set at 128 samples in the buffer [edit: today, system flaky and 192] and the VE Pro buffer triples that (but I'd never know it by the latency, I had no issues with lag) and no audio hesitation. Based on this, I'd say if I had to get another slave, I'd fill it with 24 GB again. I don't expect to get a symphonic thing up with just this much machine not without a *lot* of selectivity/cleverness and memory optimization.
I have done rock projects with some sweetening, say take out 2/3 of those winds/brass and extras, that got me over 6GB. Mind you, I have not messed with memory optimization in VE Pro really at all.
What I did very briefly on the one machine shared with Cubase 5.01 {NB: not great with multiprocessors} was much smaller projects than this and I was freezing a LOT of tracks, it wasn't very conducive to a flow, it was high maintenance and high latency. The difference using a slave is huge IME. Also, the decent-ish latency now is partly due to improvements in multiprocessors handling with Cubase 5.5.2.
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Thanks so much for getting back with that detailed analysis of your setup. Just looking at that it seems like pretty danged big sessions you are doing, dense mixes. Do you mind if I ask what sort of music this is and is it for film, TV media stuff or are you doing your own music, indie stuff...label etc? I am just curious, if you have any links to where I can go listen that will be great otherwise I understand, no biggie. Looking at this all...... my lowly little MacPro Quad is still going to choke pretty soon. I was considering buying VEPro as well as the crossgrade to Kontakt 4 so I could also buy some Cinesamples stuff that is on sale. But in effect I would just be adding to an already big problem. I guess I have to look at another computer. I know one thing......as much as I would love to have an 8 or 12 core, I just cannot afford it.....especially not with 24GB of RAM. One quick last question if you have time ( I feel like Columbo ) ......LOL......this is great though, I'm learning a lot........ .......you have the 8 core as the slave with 3 sample drives in it and the Quad as the recording machine. Why would you save the sessions etc to a FW drive if you have the ability to use 4 internal SATA drives? Wouldn't they be faster or are they all loaded up with samples also? If an external FW drive is just as good it will help me out 'cos I could use more of my internal SATA drives for additional samples as my current sample drive is almost full.
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Hi, no problem. I'll give you a link to a page you can hear it.
My samples drives are in the slave. I got this FW drive when I only had the MB Pro when I got some money in and got back to doing this. I don't know that it's no good by any lack of function, it seems fine to render to. It's in a housing [LaCie] some people say not to use for audio, but I can't tell any diff. I don't have any heavy duty demands on the drive, I'm just rendering a song at a time onto it. It's a seagate and FW 800, I donno
There isn't a lot going on vis a vis the world with the music I'm doing. I got a chance to get in and work a while with a decent setup, and I've been pretty driven; but less than attentive to pushing it onto the world. I've got an album done and most of the music for another thing which is geared to be a radio drama (sci fi area). People tend to say a lot of it is film music-like or like cues. I'd like to, but I haven't any gig atm. I think all of it functions as a demo of cinematic cues as well as be a musical narrative to stand alone. I'm kind of thought of in the avant-garde area, but two or three tracks aren't terrifically scarifying. It's just music I make because no one else will. I have to make it work for me soon though.
If you start from the top in order, all 15 tracks function like a longer composition, but all 15 stand alone as songs. I like the last track best to hear first if you want to go for a quickie. #1 is the most 'accessible', around the middle it gets darker.
