Hi, I am About to take the plunge and purchase VEP 5 + slave machine to enable me to run a decent sized orchestral template in either logic or cubase. Main DAW host is a mac and i want to get a PC for a slave. As i know nothing about PC's and have searched for hours i am stuck on what to buy? If anyone has any suggestions on what i should get that would be amazing as currently lost. Would be using lass, cinebrass etc..... and budget wise was looking at £500/€570 or would go more if would last longer. Any help be really appreciated.
thanks
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VIENNA ENSEMBLE PRO 5 SLAVE PC
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Are you looking to build one yourself or buy something already assembled & tested? If you are looking for DIY, an i7-4770, H87/Z87 motherboard (Asus or Gigabyte is usually a safe bet), 32GB RAM and 2-3 SSD's for the sample libraries is currently the best value. An i7-3930 6 core with an LGA 2011 motherboard has more CPU horsepower but is more expensive and the LGA 2011 chipsets only have 2 SATAIII ports. For a pre-built, there are folks like VisionDAW & ADK (there are others) that sell prebuilt computers especially configured for audio. If you have no experience with Windows and PC hardware, buying a prebuilt from a pro audio vendor is the safest route. Buying a prebuilt computer from an audio oriented company will run about $400-500 more than a DIY route for similar components. At current US prices, a DIY i7-4770/32GB RAM/2x240GB SSD's for samples will be about $1300 depending on case/PS A similar ADK is about $1700 from their website. No monitor/KB/mouse. You want Windows 7 Professional so you can use remote desktop to your Mac. CORD is a free Mac RDP client that works fine.
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Thanks for input, yes will get a prebuilt as no experience but better it works and pay a bit more than face problems moving forward. I have read up lots on what to put samples on do i really need SSD's for the sample libraries? alot of people have stated once loaded would be the same as 7200rpm drives say running la scoring strings, so only load time noticeable not streaming. Excellent advice, will start looking at companies for build.
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SSD's make a huge difference in playing back large templates because they allow you to use much pre-load buffer sizes in Kontakt (streaming from disk instead of loading everything into RAM). The key parameter is the random seek time - SSD's are far faster than HDD's there. The sequential read times that everyone quotes are less important for sample playback because you are reading a large number of individually small samples, a much different scenario than working with multi GB HD video files that tend to be primarily sequential reads. Especially if you are using any EWQL libraries since PLAY is very unoptimized for read performance.
32GB on a LGA 1155 (Sandy/Ivy Bridge) or LGA 1150 (Haswell) based system (which max out at 32 GB) goes a very long way with SSD's. Once you have worked with an SSD based sample playback system, you will never want to go back to HDD's. The Crucial M500 and Samsung 840 disks are pretty reasonable these days. You can get a 250 GB Samsung 840 for $175 from Amazon. There is a lot of discussion on the web about the write longevity of the TLC Samsung 840, but in a sample drive that is 99% reads, it is absolutely no problem.
FYI, the i7-3770 is an Ivy Bridge CPU, the i7-4770 is Haswell (Intel's latest generation). One advantage of Haswell is that the chipset supports 6 SATA III ports as opposed to SB/IB which supports only 2 SATA III ports and 4 SATA II ports.
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Will go for SSD drives for samples and as mentioned other specs for PC build. Will take a while to get template sorted but really looking forward to having it all loaded and concentrate on writing music rather than the tech side. really great advice has helped me out loads, thankyou
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The 840 (non pro) is fine for samples. The pro version has a bit better read performance, a lot better write performance and much better write endurance at a substantially higher cost. Since sample drives are read-only other than occasional updates/installs, the regular 840 is by far a better value. Also bear in mind that multiple drives provide more independent channels of I/O, e.g. I would prefer 2 250 GB drives than a single 500 GB. Don't go below 250 - the smaller models (at least on the Samsung) have inferior performance and write endurance to the larger ones.
This one reason I prefer the Haswell platform - more SATA III ports. As your sample library grows you will need 3 or 4 SSD's. Also make sure whatever case you get has room for at least 6 drives.
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Thanks 840 non pro it is. Got all the specs now so looking at a few custom builders to put it together. thanks again for help
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Hello to all, I have purchase vienna ensemble pro 5 in order to use the power of two pc I have a master in 64-bit and a 32-bit slave pc and I use cubase 7 to mix everything. But this is after a long stop mao and relocation and config I can most serve me Pro 5. I do I recall more in what sense it is necessary to open applications. I think have everything downloaded but the level is a little complicated for me finally start slave pc Pc master and then launch cubase and open pro 5? And thus impossible to match all this small world if there is a method because the documentation in English is not very clear. Thanks in advance... message traduit merci
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Hello danybab,
1) Launch Vienna Ensemble PRO SERVER (32 and/or 64 bit) on your computers. On Windows (and if you are a Mac-user): Click the "START" button => "All programs" => "Vienna Ensemble PRO SERVER"
2) Start your sequencer.
3) Insert "Vienna Ensemble PRO" as a plug-in in your sequencer => the SERVER INTERFACE will open (this CONNECTS to your SERVERs, which are outside of your sequencer).
4) Connect to the available instances.
Of course you need a working ethernet connection if you are connecting 2 computers.
Best,
Paul
Paul Kopf Head of Product Marketing, Social Media and Support
