Using a Dual Quad described below, I am writing a piece for 8 players in Finale 2010 using VE Pro with 15 instances of VI Pro instantiated as the playback vehicle.
Each channel strip has between 2 and 16 articulations assigned to it. Activity monitor reports that 3.03 GB of RAM are Wired leaving 16.78GB free. A Vienna Suite equalizer instance has been inserted into each channel strip All send to a Bus in which the Vienna Suite Convolution reverb is instantiated. At first,, running both Finale and VE Pro Server (64 bit), I encountered problems with stuck and missing notes. I attributed to this to Finale's being a processor hog - - Activity Monitor reports that, during playback, on either a 2.5 Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro or on the Mac Pro, Finale consumes 102-110% of one processor.
This led me to try working wit a small network dedicating the MacBook Pro to Finale and using a MOTU 828 for the signal being sent back from the Mac Pro which was running VE Pro. This seemed to work much of the time. Then I asked about this problem on the Finale Forum and people told me that they had solved this issue by running VE Pro as a standalone accessing it via the IAC ports. I tried this and it worked well for a while. I was using Finale's Human Playback capabilities mainly to effect tempo - - tI've turned off the HP effect on continuous data.
I then tried to play back with HP turned off and ran into many more stuck, missing notes, notes that would start and then suddenly stop. These effects were less when I turned HP back on. But then during playback there was a frying/sizzling noise hinting that the problem might be with the MOTU 2408. I substituted the MOTU 828 and the sizzling noise disappeared but the stuck, missing and cut off notes appeared randomly. I then switched back to the two computer network and this seemed to help a little at first - - especially after I set VE Pro preferences to 4 threads (it had been set at 2 threads). I then increased the setting to 6 threads and it barely played back at all. I set it back to four threads and things improved a bit but still there are random stuck, missing and cut off notes. Oddly enough some of the more complex passages play back correctly whereas some simpler passages do not.
I uninstalled VI Pro and VE Pro Then reinstalled them (VI Pro in a newer version) Problem is worse afterwards.
One thing worth mentioning is that immediately prior to these events I ran the utility AppleJack (which I've used for at least a year) which, running in single user mode, checks the disk for errors, repairs permissions, cleans out caches and validates preferences. This was followed by rebuilding the directory with DiskWarrior. I did this after a crash that did not involve Finale, VE Pro or VI Pro.
I would very much appreciate help and insight. Thanks.
Stephen
