@Paul McGraw said:
I have 48gb of RAM, and I know how to use the ram efficiently in both Kontakt and VI Pro, so RAM has not been an issue for me as of yet. I have had a few problems with CPU workload with a full orchestra. I have an i7, but if I use MIR Pro, plus lots of other plugins, it can get to be too much for my CPU. So far my best solution is to render in place some of the instruments or sections, which then frees up CPU power.
I have heard that VE is easier on resources. This seems a bit hard to believe since it is an additional level of program running. But if it really does save on CPU strain, that would be a big incentive to use it. Anyone actually test this out? Does it really use less CPU power?
I'm using a 12 core Mac and 64GB RAM so I don't expect to see too many resources issues (except for what seems like a bug I reported elsewhere) A full orchestral project I was running a couple of days ago which had some synths going too (including Serum which is CPU heavy) was running at approx 25% CPU in activity monitor during realtime playback and RAM usage is less than 50%. But that case would be with less than 10 Kontakt instruments. Most VIs being VSL. And also because the samples are on SSD I have RAM preload in VIPro Directory Manager at a much lower setting than I'd need with spinning discs. This all helps.
I wouldn't like to hazard a guess as to which method would really stress the CPU more with the exact same / equivalent project information - but Cubase definitely is more spritely than when I used to run everything on that, and crashes less often too. But if it does crash, it tends to take VEPro with it. Don't know why.
As to the time invested in creating a new orchestral template using the VEPro method - it took me at least a week's work, possibly two altogether, and with lots of changes along the way - and trial and error. It was far from simple but I'm genuinely glad I made that effort.
As you own MIR Pro I would personally say that on it's own is a great reason for trying it out. You can load up a couple of instances with VI's relatively quickly (and of course use just a single MIR Pro "instance" per VEP instance, because that's the way it works) in order to make a judgement about the CPU / RAM usage. You could do that in half an hour. Just use the duplicate instrument function (cmd D) if you want to hammer the system quickly. It dupes the instrument and all the midi/audio routing and any plugins too.
There is a CPU usage monitor bottom right corner of the VEPro window which helps too. I can't say I understand how that relates to core usage though.
To give you a rough idea my String section VEPro instance is split into the usual parts and I have 8 1st violin VIs all active at once (with some inactive extra ones ready to switch on) and a similar idea for the other parts of the string section - I count 31 altogether including a couple of ensemble patches (synchron ensemble and Cinematic Strings 2) These ones are all active and set up with MIR Pro Synchron stage. The CPU usage monitor in VEPro says 25% during playback, but this figure is not 25% of the entire CPU - VSL would have to explain it properly but I think pertains to the core usage and thread count set up in VEP (mine set to 3 threads). In reality it's no more than 5% of my entire CPU, if that. Hope that helps.